Last week I sat down with Sindhu Rajasekaran of The Subjective Space podcast to talk about why I believe Fantasy and SF are so good to think with. You can listen to our chat, ‘Episode 21: On New Realities, Fantasy and Videogaming’, now on YouTube and Spotify Podcasts.
Amongst the things we discussed were the Alien movies, Star Wars, Elden Ring, disability mods in tabletop RPGs, Red Dwarf, Shoreline of Infinity, and how playing videogames can help you explore environments in your fiction .
(Please note subtitles are not available so make sure your in-browser apps are enabled.)
Those familiar with India’s lit scene may know Sindhu as the author of Smashing the Patriarchy: A Guide for the 21st Century Indian Woman [Amazon], as well the short fiction collection exploring loss and longing So I Let It Be. She’s a fellow creative writing PhD, an award-winning film producer, and a refreshing wellspring of creativity.
(Also she co-wrote a play called the The Tiara Gynaelogues, which is about as must-read a recommendation as I can make.)
Check out the rest of The Subjective Space for chats with those working across film, art and books, including former Alasdair Gray Biographer and author Rodge Glass, surrealist and landscape author Mirri Glasson-Darling, and author and Rainbow Lit Fest director Sharif D. Rangnekar.
https://www.thesubjectivespace.com
PS. For anyone who’s interested in finding out more, here are some of the books we talked about. None of the academic texts are obscured by jargon too badly, though the Creed, Popper and Kuhn are in a more conventionally academic style.
Referenced Works:
Creed, B. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993: Routledge, Oxon. UK).
Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [2012 (1962): University of Chicago Press; Illinois US].
Le Guin, Ursula K. ‘The Child and the Shadow’, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32.2 (1971): 139-148.
Livesey-Stephens, B. ‘Combat Wheelchairs, Service Mimics, And You: Homebrew Disability Representation In Tabletop Roleplaying Games’, BFS Journal #24: Fantasy and Gaming, 24 (2024): 51-58.
Lewis, C. S. ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’, in Of This and Other Worlds, ed. by Walter Hooper, Fount Paperbacks (1984: Collins, London UK), 56-70.
Machado, C.M. In The Dream House [2020 (2019): Serpent’s Tail, London UK].
Popper, K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery [2002 (1934): Routledge; Oxon. UK].
Tolkien, J.R.R. ‘On Fairy-stories’, in Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, ed. by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson [2014 (1947): HarperCollins; London ].
Warner, M. Once Upon A Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale (2014: Oxford University Press, Oxon. UK).
And as per usual, you can links for all my recent stories and columns can be found here:
http://linktr.ee/ruthejbooth.
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