Stages of Rot
The award-winning, Eisner nominated, highly praised debut book from Linnea Sterte (author of A Frog in the Fall). An alien desert comes to life around the body of a dying…
The Garden of Time: the sci-fi short story behind this year’s Met Gala
In an unnamed place and time, a majestic villa overlooks a garden of delicate, glass-stemmed flowers. Home to Count Axel and the Countess, the otherwise elegant landscape is unsettled by…
Five Answers to Questions You Probably Have
a flash fiction story told in the form of a crumpled up note, stuffed inside a geode, hidden in your bedroom wall, from the father you've never met, explaining how…
Better Living Through Algorithms
An Audacious Experiment in Human Happiness was one of the big pull-quotes from Margo’s series. It was how one of the researchers had described it. The professors running the project…
Five Views of the Planet Tartarus
All traitors to the Sibyllines go to Tartarus to receive the only punishment for rebellion: eternal life.
Not Lost (Never Lost)
You are broken, they said more than once. Take into you these numbers and tell us if it helped. But how would I know I was unbroken? Only they would…
The world’s humblest heroes, from plumbers to tardigrades
Inspired by The Super Mario Bros Movie, we're talking about a humble class of heroes whose lives are devoted to infrastructure maintenance and repair. There are heating engineer rogues and…
Chinese sci-fi has crossed the translation barrier
Netflix's lavish new adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem is the latest 'translation' of one of this century's best, and best-selling, sci-fi novels. In this episode, we track the…
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's (1903-1950) final novel, published in 1949, set in a dystopian London which is now found in Airstrip One, part of the totalitarian superstate…