If This Goes On (Don't Panic): Science Fiction, Fantasy & Progressive Politics
Bringing hope to the world through Speculative Fiction. Interviews with Science Fiction and Fantasy writers, gamers, creators, and activists.
Episodes
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to software developer and award nominated writer, Matthew Kressel. They discuss writing with authenticity, writing unfamiliar cultures, Dungeons and Dragons, what writers can take from RPGs, Matt's new novels Spacetrucker Jess and The Rainseekers, AI, plagiarism, and much more.
You can find The Rainseekers here: https://books2rea...
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to poet, podcaster, author, and tarot reader, Beatrice Winifred Iker. They discuss religion, horror and religion, queerness, writing neurodiverse characters, Appalachia, organizing complicated plots, Mothman, perfume recommendations, and much more.
You can find Beatrice and their books here: https://www.beatriceiker.c...
In this episode, Alan talks to writer and educator Brandon Crilly. They discuss the challenges in con running, religion, alien gods, characters with major personality shifts, magic, historical cycles, Hopepunk, messages in fiction, and much more.
You can find Brandon Crilly and his books here: https://brandoncrilly.com.
In the Fifth part of this column, we Read more
In this episode, Alan talks to writer Premee Mohamed. They discuss imposter syndrome, awards, being caegorized as horror, the state of the horror genre, Stephen King, the correlation between social media and sales, quicksand, Premee's favorite ink, audience questions, and much more.
You can find Premee Mohamed and her books here: https://premeemohamed.com/autho...
In the fourth part of this column, Alan and Jordan Read more
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to writer Thomas Ha. They discuss the effects of covid on genre, Lit RPG, cozey fiction, writing across genres, Clarkesworld Magazine, Matt Diniman, Brian Evenson, preserving the status quo, writing villains, writing children, killing children in prose, inventing monsters, Thomas' recent collection, Uncertain Sons, and much more.
You can find Uncertain Sons And Other Stories here: https://undertow...
In the third part of our column about the alt-right and Speculative Fiction fandom, Alan and Jordan Read more
In this episode Alan reviews (books linked below):
- Double Edged Sword & Sorcery 1 published by Brackenbury Books 2024
- The Walls of Shira Yulun by Dariel R.A. Quiogue
- Waste Flowers by Bryn Hammond
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How to Surf a Hurricane by Todd Medema published by Atmosphere Press 2025
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Vigilance by Allen Stroud publi...
In this episode, Alan and Diane talk to writer and neuroscientist Arula Ratnakar. They discuss Phillip K. Dick, computational neursocience, hard science fiction, science and math communication, preceptions of reality, the neuroscience of neurodiversity, psychedelics, being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world, AI, Clarkesworld, evolving in public, and much more.
You can find most of her fiction here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.co...
In this episode, Alan talks to author and musician Josh Denslow. They discuss writing dialogue and movie scripts, music's influence on his writing, Marlon James, the break down of walls between speculative fiction and Literature, suprheros and comics, the importance of exploring new forms of art, Josh's novel Super Normal, living outside the US, extreme politics and family, humor in fiction, listening to music, their mutual struggl...
This time Paul Jessup tackles the politics of zombies i...
Alan and a couple of engineers from the the Solapunk community, Navarre Bartz and Todd Medema, discuss everything you want to know about electric vehichles, battery technology, EVs that are not Tesla, and charging stations. Todd also discusses his new book, How to Surf a Hurricane, and how he got involved with Solapunk, and much more!
You can find How to Surf a Hurricane here: https://howtosurfahurricane.com/
In this episode, Alan and Diane talk to scholar, laywer, and author Gautam Bhatia. They discuss Bhatia's book The Sentence, The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, Anarchism, the Paris Commune of 1871, the Mondragon Cooperative, publishing in India, the views on genre in India, the sequal to The Sentence, and much more.
As discussed in the episode you can find the article Forest and Factory here: https://endnotes.org.uk/posts/fo...
In the second part of our column about the alt-right and Speculative Fiction fandom, we discuss the right wing and fandom. Alan and Jordan discuss why nerds/geeks are easy pickings for the alt-right, neurodiversity, eugenics, how the right wing uses fandom, Sad Puppies, Robert Heinlien, and much more.
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to writer, aid worker, and sociologist Malka Older. They discuss new installments of The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, developing characters over the course of multiple books, exploring different forms of governance, writing mysteries, neurodiversity, Sherlock Holmes, Global Voices, justice in fiction, and much more.
In this episode Alan reviews (books linked below):
- Cholorophilia by Christina Jurado, Translated by Sue Burke, published by Apex Books 2025
- Queen Bess: A Tudor Come to Save America by Maria Vetrano, published by Regalo Press 2024
- Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh, published by Titan Books 2024
- Luna by Allen Stroud published by Flam...
In this mash-up column, Paul Jessup, of Fear is the Fire That Lights the Heart, and our own Alan Bailey along with guests Maurice Broaddus, and Susan Kaye Quinn explore the differences and simularities between the genre of horror and the subgenre of Solarpunk and come to some very surprising conclusions. We discuss community, resiliance, Weird fiction, anger and anxiety as inspiration, libraries, and the creation of possibilities. ...
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to prolific writer and historian Harry Turtledove. They discuss Cat and Harry's collaboration on The Trumps Will Sound, Turtledove's new book: Powerless, Vaclav Havel, Totalitarianism, the power of the individual, Elon Musk, the alt-right in Science Fiction, reader interpretation of work, how the US would break up, staying inspired, Imposter Syndrome, Peter Beagle, Ted Sturgeon, staying relevent, ...
In the first part of this new column about the alt-right and Speculative Fiction fandom, we get to know the author of the groundbreaking discussion, Speculative Witeness. Alan and Jordan discuss gateway genre authors, JRR Tolkien, transgressive science fiction, how SF fans experience time differently, how Jordan started studying the alt-right in conjunction with Speculative Fiction, Jordan's relationship to fandom, becoming a Hugo ...
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