Pagenerd
Pagenerd is a sci-fi book club for people who struggle with traditional book clubs. Each episode, the hosts pick a sci-fi novel—current or classic—and explore its world, characters, and the science behind it. They discuss what it would be like to exist in that novel and how well it's realized on the page. Listeners can read along if they wish, with a full list of upcoming books available at pagenerd.com. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn and hosted by Sarah Stockdale, Tommy Guy, Richard Vieweg, and Andrew Corway.
Episodes
Carrie, by Stephen King
It’s officially spooky season at Pagenerd, so we’re kicking off the creepiness with Stephen King’s first weird book about teenage girls: Carrie! This episode has everything: lots of different kinds of blood, your high school bully, telekinesis, bearkenisis, famous authors contributing to 70s porno mags, hell-prom, rock showers and trauma showers. This episode is a pure romp; I hope you j
An interview with Emily St. John Mandel
She’s really here. Our Queen Emily St John Mandel joins Sarah and Tommy for a chat about her brilliant new novel Exit Party, writing, America, and the low thrum of existential dread we live with day to day.ESJM is also the author of ‘nerd faves: Station Eleven, Sea of Tranquillity (which is an early episode of ours), The Glass Hotel, and The Singer’s Gun.We are so grateful for her time; please go
Exit Party, by Emily St. John Mandel
We are back with Our Queen Emily St. John Mandel, and her incredible new American dystopian novel, Exit Party, that asks: What happens if gestures around we keep this shit up?This novel has everything. Surveillance-state-flavoured fascism, well-lit parties, a fabulous art collector dame, murder, gun smuggling, neglectful parents, pretty decent parents, secret police, and multiversal travel.It will
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin (Part 2 of 2)
Don’t listen to this podcast or we will conquer you. The Pagenerds are back with part two of The Three Body Problem, and things are about to get chaotic, and not just mathematically.The nerds dive into alien nanotech, real, uh, slicey innovation, human computers and human jerky.The second half of this book is breakneck, it’s such a fantastic trip, and we can’t wait for you to strap on your extrate
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin (Part 1 of 2)
This week the dream team reads The Three-Body Problem, a book that asks the important question: What happens when you combine trauma and nihilism with intergalactic phone tag?
Sarah, Tommy, Rick, and Andrew nerd out over solar amplification, broken physics, space-age VR, and the dick-measuring contest that is billionaire space travel. This episode is truly a chaotic era.
And Rick finally asks the
Introducing: CBC Bookends, with Sci-Fi Legend Robert J. Sawyer
Just like we love public libraries, we pagenerds also love public broadcasting. So we want to introduce you to a show by some podcast friends of ours over at the CBC: Bookends, with Mattea Roach. If you like Pagenerd we think you'll enjoy this episode so we're sharing it in our feed for you to enjoy.
In this episode: If an asteroid were hurtling towards Earth, and you had no other choice … would y
Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke (Part 2 of 2)
In this spoilerful second part of Pagenerd reading Yesteryear we find our way to the conclusion of the book, and finally figure out what’s going on at Yesteryear Ranch.
Most of us do, anyway. Andrew figured it out in the first chapter and is not un-smug about it.
So, does Natalie redeem herself and do we even like her?
This is part two of our double episode on Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, so
Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke (Part 1 of 2)
This week on the pod Sarah has the unenviable task of explaining what a “tradwife influencer” is to the guys. We've got a cultural history of the people and ideas that inspired Yesteryear: Ballerina Farm, “The Hogfather”, ASMR sourdough, and cosplaying religious subservience for a right-wing project (it’s not great).
Gasps are gusped, jaws are dropped, everyone is thoroughly creeped out— sometime
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
This week, the gang tackles H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. We figured a century and a quarter was a fair amount of time to respect NO SPOILERS.
Sarah, Tommy, Rick, and Andrew dig into the novel that helped invent the alien invasion epic. We explore Wells' surprisingly radical attempt to help readers empathize with colonized peoples by putting Britain on the receiving end of an alien invasion.
Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente
This week, the gang dives into Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente, a novel that asks one important question: what if Eurovision decided the fate of entire civilizations? The answer involves flamingo anglerfish, intergalactic threesomes, washed-up glam rock stars, a hyper-masculine moonbeam, and enough commas to qualify as a form of literary jazz.
Sarah, Tommy, Rick, and Andrew do their best to
Aurora Rising/The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds
This week, the Pagenerd crew tackles hyper pigs, consensual cannibalism, corpse-eating architecture, a freaky little child AI, planetary genocide, and a supervillain called “The Clockmaker.” Alastair Reynolds Aurora Rising (originally called The Prefect) is a fever dream of a detective novel that somehow manages to jam all those things into a single story.
Sarah, Tommy, Rick, and Andrew attempt to
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Somehow, Ishiguro has written a book that Sarah found both boring and emotionally devastating at the same time. The banality of the language is part of the darkness of this semi-dystopian trip inside the mind of Klara, a solar-powered artificial friend who is generally treated like crap by the humans around her.
The novel is a masterpiece by the Nobel laureate who wrote Remains of the Day, but it
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Leguin (Part 2 of 2)
The Pagenerds are back with part two of The Dispossessed, where Ursula K. Le Guin somehow takes an already brilliant book and makes it hit even harder.
This section gets deeply personal. We follow Shevek as he wrestles with fame, isolation, intellectual ego (and the consolidation of publishing power), and the very messy reality of trying to build a better world with other humans. The political con
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Leguin (Part 1 of 2)
The Pagenerds finally tackle Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, which is a lot in the best way possible. Naturally, we had to split this one into two parts.
This book absolutely rocks. Le Guin drops us onto two sister planets locked in ideological opposition, then uses one physicist’s journey to unpack capitalism, anarchism (the good kind?), power, sex stuff, academia, love, and what it actuall
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
The Forever War is a book that asks "Who hurt author Joe Haldeman?” and the answer is: The United States Military.
This book is about a futuristic war fought by soldiers in power armour, but really it's about every war and every soldier. It was written in 1974, yet it feels disturbingly current.
Haldeman wrote this book after his experience as a combat engineer in the Vietnam War. So it reads as a
Intercepts, by T.J. Payne
The Intercepts is an excellent beach read if you’re deeply unwell. It’s also the Pagenerds very first horror sci-fi, so thanks T.J. Payne.
The novel drops us into a secret government facility where people are kept underground and understimulated for some… experimentation. We uncover what in the MKUltra is going on through the eyes of a program manager and his teenage daughter. There’s a beige, mi
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
Wild Dark Shore is the kind of book that makes you openly weep on the subway.
Charlotte McConaghy drops us onto a remote, storm-battered island filled with seals, secrets, and a family holding on a little too tightly to both. In this episode the Pagenerds attempt to unpack it and emotionally survive it, as the story unfolds into something about grief, survival, and what we owe each other at the en
All Systems Red (Murderbot), by Martha Wells
Murderbot is the patron saint of “please stop talking to me”, and we love that for it.
The pagenerds dive into All Systems Red by Martha Wells and the deeply relatable life of Murderbot— an anxious, rogue security android that saves humans mostly so it can get back to watching its shows. They talk about corporate dystopias, introversion, androgynous (hot) Alexander Skarsgard, and why this novella
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is often called the first science fiction novel for good reason. The problematic goth queen was only 18 when she wrote this novel at a gloomy lakehouse in Switzerland in 1816, but its lessons about scientific hubris and themes of parental abandonment and guilt are forever relevant. Shelley’s prose remains haunting and gorgeous, and her social
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is an elegantly told time travel mystery that takes us from the dark and beautiful woods of Vancouver Island to a dilapidated old city on the Moon — a lunar Toledo, according to Pagenerd Tommy. The Pagenerds follow some less-than-competent time detectives across eras and try to explain how time travel actually works using dinosaurs, toilets and movies Tom
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter is like a sci-fi thriller version of Sliding Doors if you needed a basic understanding of quantum mechanics to watch Sliding Doors. The novel asks “what if in a different timeline there’s a version of you that didn’t have a kid, and instead became a famous scientist?”, and “what if you got in a big fight with all the other versions of you?”
Pagenerd Sarah read this boo
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
If you like movies with hot basic boys doing science magic then you’ll love Andy Weir. The Martian had Matt Damon as Mark Watney and now his next novel, Project Hail Mary is coming out as a movie starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. Join the Pagenerds on our spoiler heavy adventure into stinky spaceships with dog-sized spiders (crabs?) as we figure out whether Ryland Grace could actually save Ea
Pagenerd, out now!
Pagenerd is a sci-fi book club for people who suck at book clubs. You can read along if you want, but we’ll tell you what happens and have some fun figuring out the science, plot and characters along the way. In each episode we pick a sci-fi novel — current or classic — and explore its world and characters, discussing what it would be like to exist in that novel and how well it's realised on the p
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