Podcast #3- VanderMeer and the Weird

Okay! Our third episode is live. Michael & I have a long conversation inspired by Jeff VanderMeer's new novel Borne, as well as The Southern Reach, and we attempt to dig into the concept of The Weird (and the New Weird) in fiction.

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• 0- Introductions & what we've been reading & thinking about
• 9:48- Brief Hugo excitement
• 12:08- Upcoming Events
• 13:20- General Vandermeer Thoughts
• 21:33- The Weird!
• 31:21- Our thoughts on VanderMeer's talks at DePaul & Volumes
• 34:15- We Return to the Weird
• 45:18- The New Weird
• 52:45- Slightly more focused thoughts on the Southern Reach Trilogy
• 1:07:35- Borne! We Likes it.
• 1:17:10- Credits

(We'll put some extended show notes here later.)

Also, we are probably making a blood-pact to never do an episode this long again.

You might want to check our notes from Jeff VanderMeer's talks at DePaul and Volumes.

Our events-reader this episode is Dr. Jacob Matthews from the Chicago Nerds  book-club. You can find lots of meeting notes from CNSC on Positron.

Our music is provided by Pelafina. Check them out on Facebook and Bandcamp!

Hope you like the show! Questions, comments? Sound off in the comments, or drop us a line at positronchicago@gmail.com.

Jeff VanderMeer Volumes Talk

Last week, I got to catch Jeff VanderMeer speak again, this time hosted by Volumes Books at the illustrious Chicago Athletic Association.

This was part of the official Borne tour, with a few readings from the novel and then a quick Q&A with Chicago author Jac Jemc.

For some chunkier notes, I'd suggest checking out my scribbles from VanderMeer's talk at DePaul. However, still much of note at this event, so I wanted to record a few things:

Jeff VanderMeer @ DePaul

photo by Kyle Cassidy

This last Wednesday, I was able to catch Jeff VanderMeer's talk, "Area X: Environmental Storytelling in the Age of Trump and the Anthropocene". Hosted by DePaul's Institute for Nature and Culture, his lecture meditated on the material and experiences that went into the Southern Reach trilogy, as well as some interesting post-publication developments. Most fascinating, for me at least, was his exploration of how weird art, philosophy, ecology, and politics intertwine—what we can learn about the world, about storytelling, and about resistance in this deeply weird time we're going through. Lots of discussion of animals and thinking/writing about the non-human.

This talk was delightful and thought-provoking. Annihilation has quickly joined my inner circle of most-important books (most re-read, most recommended, most pondered-upon), and learning some of the nature experiences & philosophical/ecological thought that went into that was really cool—speculative fiction, philosophy, and nature are so central for me, this lecture had me in the clouds.

The Southern Reach has become a touchstone for most of my Chicago book-clubs (it seems Think Galactic's discussion is the only one I have recorded on Positron); his forthcoming novel Borne sounds great, and there's two more chances to hear him talk:

• Monday 4/24 in Dekalb, hosted by Anderson's Books
• Wednesday 4/26 at the Chicago Athletic Association, hosted by Volumes

Brief, incomplete, and possibly-disjointed notes from the lecture below:

Think Galactic- Sisters of the Revolution

For December's meeting of Think Galactic, we discussed selections from Sister of the Revolution (2015), edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer.

As usual, when we discuss an anthology, we had a handful of stories that we focused on, a few bonus stories, and then of course a few of us read more/all of the collection, as well. Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Think Galactic: Vampire Junction & Annihilation

For October's meeting of Think Galactic, we had a Monster Mash: a double-header book-club featuring S.P. Somtow's "Vampire Junction" (1984) and Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation" (2014). Spooky stuff.

While we had a fairly low completion rate for "Vampire Junction", we had a pretty interesting discussion, especially qua horror novel.

"Annihilation" generated a ton of discussion--it's a really engaging novel from a literary angle, and doing a lot of interesting things with genre as well. We got pretty far out on some possibly shaky but definitely fruitful theoretical branches for this one.

Probable spoilers, Monster Mash MIDIs below: