Sunday, July 14, 2024

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Me on the Coode Street Podcast

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Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's first novel, Equimedian, has been described as "a love letter to the SF  of the '70s and '80s." Which I suspect is going to be the standard description of this book. So Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan invited Alvaro to discuss it, along with last year's non-fiction book-length interview with me, Being Michael Swanwick on their Coode Street Podcast.


I was a participant in the conversation, so I realize that you're going to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. But I think it was pretty darn good--and I've been in enough public conversations where I was less than stellar to know the difference.


If you're curious, you can find the podcast here.  You should check it out. It's an hour well wasted.



And . . .


Just to be clear, I greatly enjoyed Equimedian. You don't need to know science fiction in the extraordinary depth that Zinos-Amaro does to appreciate it. And the completely satisfying ending took me by surprise. You have no idea how rarely a book does that.


As for Being Michael Swanwick, it's a story-by-story examination of every work of short fiction I ever published as of when the book came out. And now you know whether you want to read it or not. Nothing I could say would change your decision one way or the other.


Isn't that charmingly modest of me? I am the king of the soft sell!


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1 comment:

HANNAH'S DAD said...

I just heard the podcast yesterday and bought Equimedian on the spot. There’s nothing like an author interview to bring my buying defences down - and I loved the discussion of forgotten mid-range sf authors Gordon Ecklund and Kenneth Buller indeed!

As for Being Michael Swanwick, I have that already and am waiting for the extended edition:) It’s good to see someone talking about short fiction as opposed to novels.