The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory

J.Z. Pitts doesn’t posture, pretend, or pose behind “author brand” theatrics. He comes on the Factory floor to pod with Mookie Spitz, where they tell the truth about what it costs to write, to fail, to get back up, and to self-publish when the world is drowning in content and nobody’s handing out golden tickets.

In this episode, Pitts walks us through Virtual Rebel, his YA sci-fi novel about a teenage girl fighting through a virtual...

The twelfth episode of the SFFF features Mookie chatting up the genre with Princeton astrophysics grad student turned tech consultant Ed Powell, where they immediately launch into hard science, bad science, and unraveling state of a genre that used to dream big and think smart. 

Ed walks in with his PhD, his plasma-physics past, and his lifelong obsession with Clarke and Asimov. He remembers buying The Sands of Mars on the Jersey sh...

This episode of the SFFF drops you straight onto the factory floor with Robert Reif, the Zoomer indie author who somehow writes like a pulp-era wanderer inebriated on optimism. His debut novel, Frontier One, feels like Tarzan meets Sally Ride, wrapped in that old-school, high-adventure energy that so much of science fiction abandoned when it got moody, preachy, and self-righteous. 

Robert riffs about Charlie, the jungle-raised flat-...

Mookie gets chatty with speculative-fiction author Lou Iovino about the long, uneven road to becoming a working writer. Lou shares how his creative life started in comics through co-authoring a ten-issue graphic novel on his commute to Manhattan, hiring artists out of pocket, and learning the discipline of concise storytelling and crisp dialogue.

That foundation carried Lou into screenwriting and eventually novels. He explains why h...

Mookie is thrilled to chat with Blake and Sherry Shimshock, the husband-and-wife team behind the Chronicles of Derek Fade: a fast-paced sci-fi adventure series that fuses James Bond swagger, Star Wars style, and Firefly heart. 

Their partnership echoes the creative chemistry of The Expanse’s Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck: Blake provides the action, imagination, and cinematic energy of a screenwriter, while Sherry crafts the emotional...

The engines of creativity are humming, the publishing lights are flickering, and an electrifying story just streamed off the line. On this launch-day episode of The Science Fiction Factory, host Mookie Spitz welcomes indie author Nathan J. Pearce, whose debut cyberpunk thriller Faith Faraday and the Cyber Samurai hits screens and shelves today!

Set in 2076 Tokyo, the book follows Faith Faraday, a daemon hunter chasing rogue AIs that...

The seventh episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory explores how speculative fiction actually gets made — the grind, the vision, and the madness behind the worlds we can’t stop dreaming about. 

Hosted by writer, ranter, and raconteur Mookie Spitz, he sits down with Matthew Carauddo, creator of the Diamond Dragons saga — a richly illustrated six-book fantasy series blending martial arts, mysticism, and philosophy. But Ma...

What do you get when a dopamine-deficient bald guy, a stack of manuscript pages, and an accidental reader with a doctorate walk into a podcast? 

You get this wild, heartfelt, and honest episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory—where Mookie Spitz, podcaster, ranter, and writer talks about the creation of his latest science fiction novel: Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine.

In a full-circle moment of gratitu...

Sci-fi author Ingrid Moon and voiceover wizard Scott Allen join your  host, Mookie Spitz, for an unfiltered ride through the making of audiobook for Biohunter—a post-apocalyptic sci-fi love story between a deadly alien tracker and a teenage human target. They talk shop about audiobooks, content repurposing, and self-publishing in the age of AI. 

Ingrid reveals how the novel began as a pseudonymous writing challenge—complete with a m...

Your sci-fi obsessed host Mookie Spitz sits down with science educator, technologist, and multi-genre author Ingrid Moon to dissect writing and self-publishing — and why it’s so damn hard to do it well.

They start with Ingrid’s journey from tech marketing to science classrooms to building reference books for sci-fi authors who don’t know enough science. Astrofiction, Biofiction, Robofiction — yes, those are real, and they’ll save yo...

Step back inside The Science Fiction Factory, where host Mookie Spitz joins fellow indie author Greg Sorber as they transform vivid imagination into great storytelling. Recorded fresh off LA Comic Con 2025, this episode dives into what it means to build worlds, fight algorithms, and write science fiction without a corporate mothership.

Greg opens up about the making of his Mechhaven saga—a gritty space opera he describes as “Transfo...

We can't get enough science fiction! But why...? 

Science fiction isn’t just a genre, but the way we see the world and ourselves. Great science fiction is where philosophy meets spectacle, where we project our fears, fantasies, and future selves into strange new worlds to see reflections of our possibilities. 

After talking to die-hard fans, veteran writers, and creators across the sci-fi spectrum, I started noticing patterns — ...

What makes science fiction & fantasy great? 

Step onto the shop floor where imagination meets machinery. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory is where writers, artists, filmmakers, and dreamers reveal how the genre gets made—story by story, world by world, effect by effect.

Join your host Mookie Spitz to talk about the craft and chaos behind your favorite futures: from character arcs to cosmic engines, from special effects t...