Two Chairs Talking

Episode 38: Big, bigger, biggest, bigly!

Perry and David have fun talking about BIG objects in science fiction, from flying cities to spheres totally enclosing stars.
Megastructures (06:36)
Cities in Flight by James Blish (06:05)
Feersum Endjinn by Ian M. Banks (04:32)
Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke (00:39)
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (00:23)
The Web Between the Worlds by Charles Sheffield (03:28)
Eon by Greg Bear (06:14)
Marrow by Robert Reed (09:17)
Pellucidar Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs (07:10)
Dyson Spheres (01:50)
Tabby Boyajian's Star (01:14)
Star Classifications (01:36)
Orbitsville by Bob Shaw (05:47)
Other big objects in SF (10:19)
Riverworld Series by Phillip Jose Farmer (02:15)
Bowl of Heaven by Larry Niven and Greg Benford (01:32)
Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner (02:11)
Culture Series by Ian M. Banks (04:10)
Windup (01:21)
Photo by sergio souza from Pexels

Episode 37: One Hundred Years of Cyberitude

David and Perry discuss the centenary of the coining of the word ‘robot’, the winner of the 2020 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and take the Hugo Time Machine whizzing back to the year 1964.
R. U. R. by Karel Čapek (03:44)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (03:09)
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (02:28)
Hugo Time Machine~1964 (01:17:03)
Glory Road by Robert Heinlein (02:59)
Witch World by Andre Norton (06:35)
Dune World by Frank Herbert (11:25)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (08:09)
Way Station by Clifford Simak (12:11)
Voting results - Novels 1964 (02:06)
Other possible novel nominees for 1964 (01:17)
1964 Short Fiction (00:24)
Code Three by Rick Raphael (03:43)
Savage Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs (04:40)
A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny (07:49)
No Truce With Kings by Poul Anderson (05:26)
Voting results - Short Fiction 1964 (01:28)
Other possible short fiction nominees 1964 (01:43)
Internet Archive, SF Database, etc. (02:29)
Other Hugo Awards in 1964 (02:23)
Wind-up (01:08)
Photo of toy robot by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

Episode 36: Marrying the genre next door

Perry and David talk about novels which blur the boundaries between genres: literary novels with strong elements of fantasy or science fiction. We can call them "genre adjacent" fiction.
Children of Men by P. D. James (00:23)
Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (00:52)
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (04:34)
A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer (08:28)
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (07:36)
The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay (08:27)
The Second Cure by Margaret Morgan (00:57)
Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson (10:19)
The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott (08:43)
What the Wind Brings by Matthew Hughes (12:43)
Interview with Matthew Hughes (21:09)
What the Wind Brings (11:29)
Vance Space novel (07:58)
A God in Chains (01:12)
Windup (01:44)
Photo by Emma Bauso from Pexels

Episode 35: The gifted grotesqueries of Terry Gilliam

David and Perry farewell John Bangsund, a stalwart of the Australian science fiction community; and look at three movies directed by Terry Gilliam: Time Bandits, Brazil and 12 Monkeys.
Vale John Bangsund (09:12)
Terry Gilliam (41:07)
Time Bandits (11:26)
Brazil (14:36)
12 Monkeys (09:26)
La Jetée (04:24)
Windup/Next Episode (02:00)
Image: Jonathan Pryce in the movie Brazil. Photo reproduced here for purposes of review (fair use copyright exemption).

Episode 34: Location, location, location

Perry and David return to a life of crime! Well, reading about crime, anyway. They discuss:
Under the lockdown (01:41)
Corrections (06:10)
Kim Huett's articles on the history of the Hugo Awards.
What we've been reading (01:14)
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey (06:48)
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (00:25)
The View from Chickweed's Window by Jack Vance (06:05)
Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay (08:14)
An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire (05:52)
The Ruin and The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan (13:29)
Where the Dead Go by Sarah Bailey (06:54)
Raven Black by Anne Cleeves (07:15)
Truth by Peter Temple (08:35)
Wind-up (00:16)
Plans for next episodes (00:55)
Photo of Shetland by Neil Roger on Flickr

Episode 33: Translations, transforms and traumas

David and Perry discuss the ConNZealand convention and the 2020 Hugo Awards and then take the Hugo Time Machine back to the interesting year of 1963.
A state of disaster (01:42)
ConNZealand 2020 (12:55)
2020 Hugo Awards (10:20)
Hugo Time Machine~1963 (01:15)
Novels Hugos 1963 (36:27)
Sword of Aldones by Marion Zimmer Bradley (07:39)
Sylva by Vercours (07:54)
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper (06:28)
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (01:59)
A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke (07:57)
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (02:42)
Other possible novel nominees Hugos 1963 (01:42)
Short Fiction Hugos 1963 (29:40)
Myrrha by Gary Jenkins (04:42)
Where is the Bird of Fire by Thomas Burnett Swann (03:32)
When You Care, When You Love by Theodore Sturgeon (07:39)
The Unholy Grail by Fritz Leiber (02:00)
The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance (08:08)
Other possible short fiction nominees Hugos 1963 (01:14)
Other 1963 Hugos (02:19)
Wind-up (00:48)
Photo of fox by Alex Andrews and photo of woman by Caio from Pexels.

Episode 32: The Masks We Wear

Perry and David talk about what they've been watching lately and discuss:
Coronavirus news (01:32)
Ad Astra (09:33)
Yesterday (09:13)
The Mandalorian - Disney Plus (07:58)
Tales from the Loop - Amazon (15:21)
The Old Guard - Netflix (14:08)
Graphic novels as source for movies (01:35)
War of the Worlds - SBS/Canal Plus (01:37)
Illustration from The Mandalorian is copyright Disney Corporation, used here for review purposes (fair use).

Episode 31: Through a dark glass

David and Perry talk about their recent reading, both good and bad; and special guest W. H. Chong talks about Ghost Species by James Bradley.
Coping with the pandemic (01:20)
Locus Awards (04:38)
Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore (07:55)
Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee (04:49)
Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller (00:43)
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (03:30)
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jnr (01:15)
The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts (05:11)
Wings Above the Diamantina by Arthur Upfield (05:43)
Silver by Chris Hammer (11:53)
Ghost Species by James Bradley (36:24)
Discussion with W. H. Chong (33:09)
Literature or SF? (02:05)
Wind-up (01:27)
Photo by Akshar Dave from Pexels

Episode 30: The many trouser-legs of time

Perry and David are joined by Dr. Lucy Sussex to talk about alternate history novels. In particular, they discuss those alternate timelines in which the Axis powers won the Second World War.
COVID-19 Restrictions (00:26)
How libraries are dealing with the pandemic (03:08)
Restrictions at aged care facilities (00:52)
Great time to catch up on books and TV (00:21)
Alternate History fiction (02:33)
Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore (00:07)
Lord Darcy series by Randall Garrett (00:28)
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (00:11)
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinson Kowal (00:20)
What if Hitler had won? (01:02:35)
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (06:43)
Small Change trilogy by Jo Walton (06:39)
Among Others by Jo Walton (01:22)
Dominion by C. J. Sansom (05:13)
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad (01:30)
SS-GB by Len Deighton (06:48)
Fatherland by Robert Harris (07:33)
Bosch series by Michael Connelly (01:28)
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (07:10)
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (17:08)
Image from Pexels.com

Episode 29: Omphalistic Hugosity

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Brian Robert Middlemiss (20 July 1930 - 5 June 2020).
David and Perry talk about the shorter fiction nominees for the 2020 Hugo Awards, and then take the Hugo Time Machine back to 1962, when Stranger in a Strange Land won Best Novel.
Dedication to Brian Middlemiss (03:26)
Awards season (00:46)
Nebula Awards (01:40)
Locus Awards (02:10)
Hugos 2020 Short Fiction (00:41)
Hugo Voting Package (01:16)
Novelettes (14:56)
Away With the Wolves by Sarah Gailey (01:23)
For He Can Creep by Siobhan Carroll (01:35)
Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin (02:09)
The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker (01:58)
The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim (02:49)
Omphalos by Ted Chiang (04:42)
Short Stories (11:24)
Blood Is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon (01:02)
And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas (01:49)
As the Last I May Know by S.L. Huang (01:21)
A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde (01:31)
Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen (02:06)
Do Not Look Back, My Lion by Alix E. Harrow (03:24)
The Hugo Time Machine~1962 (01:01)
Special awards (02:26)
Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy~Donald Tuck (01:31)
Novels (29:28)
Second Ending by James White (03:32)
Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye (04:06)
Planet of the Damned by Harry Harrison (03:10)
Time Is the Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak (05:16)
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (13:03)
Short Fiction (12:06)
Status Quo by Mack Reynolds (01:49)
Lion Loose by James H. Schmitz (01:24)
Scylla’s Daughter by Fritz Leiber (01:31)
Monument by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (02:32)
Hothouse series by Brian W. Aldiss (04:26)
Other categories (02:12)
Windup (01:20)
Photo by Bill Kasman on Flickr