Steven Hoefer's Reader's Room Podcast

Reader's Room features the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week I talk about alternate histories, snappy pitches, and what Sarah Gailey's new novel, River of Teeth has to do with them both. Oh, and that one time when America almost started wide-scale hippo ranching. Show links: Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth American Hippopotamus, read or listen. (A much shorter summary at Wired.) Links NASA's Personal Rescue Enclosure The MOOSE (Man Out Of Space Easiest) personal reentry device 3D printed ovaries restore reproductive functions. (In mice.) (Scientific paper.) Google's AI/Artist collaboration. (Video) Suggestions, comments, or subscribe to the newsletter: ReadSteven.com

Reader's Room features the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week I talk about how astronauts see Earth, when and why to quit something in the middle, and Alistair Reynold's latest. Show links: Jack Fisher's Tweet, wondering, from space. Alistair Reynolds' The Iron Tactician (Previous stories in this world are available in Zima Blue and/or The New Space Opera) Links Locus Award Finalists. Charles Stross's Atrocity Archives, on sale this week. Quantum Computing For The Mildly Curious. Suggestions, comments, or subscribe to the newsletter: ReadSteven.com

Reader's Room ponders the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week we talk about the influence that science fiction has on science. Show links: H. G. Wells's The World Set Free Astro Boy (AKA Mighty Atom) Tricorder X Prize Linkdump: Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep free this month. When an AI anticipates itself (video) Autonomous Robot Colonoscopies text Suggestions, comments, or subscribe to the newsletter at ReadSteven.com  

Reader's Room ponders the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week I share a story—a memoir, really, since it's true—about waking up in another body. Linkdump: Kate Lechler'sThe Hulder’s Husband Says Don’t Flash fiction. The World's First nanocar race Japanese researchers 3D print scaffold-free ‘human mini-liver’ Suggestions, comments, or subscribe to the newsletter at ReadSteven.com