Episode 3 - The Lathe of Heaven
For our third episode of Starship Alexandra, Emma puts forward Ursula K le Guin’s fascinating SF novel The Lathe of Heaven for Adrian to read and consider.
Other talking points:
Reality-bending in SF
Unusual power relationships
Tech billionaire problem solving
The perils of having superpowers
Inadvertent puns
Media Mentions:
The Fifth Element, film, dir. Luc Besson
Eye in the Sky, novel, Phillip K Dick
It’s a Good Life, short story, Jerome Bixby
Young Americans, film, dir. Danny Cannon
Dancer in the Dark, film, dir. Lars von Trier
Our next episode will look at: Top Ten volumes 1 and 2, graphic novels by Alan Moore, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon.
Emma’s music recommendation: Play Dead by Björk https://youtu.be/cw09VTTDRRo?si=WAaY0qeb7cC4OH12
Emma’s latest book: The Vengeance https://geni.us/thevengeance
Adrian’s most recent book: Bee Speaker https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/bee-speaker-adrian-tchaikovsky/7741036
Follow us at:
Emma: @[email protected] and www.enewman.co.uk
Adrian: @aptshadow.bsky.social and www.adriantchaikovsky.com
Starship Alexandria
The Sci-fi and Fantasy podcast from the best of futures!
In this future, humanity has solved its problems and is now sending spaceships from Earth, not in a desperate attempt to escape the apocalypse but because we can do so in a spirit of hope and exploration.
As a part of the Starship Alexandria Project, the far-future analogues of 21st century authors Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky have been tasked to make recommendations from the ship’s vast library of creative works based on the preferences of our 21st century counterparts.
Each of us will take it in turns to nominate a book, film or similar work, and the other will play judge and give the thumbs up or thumbs down to be recommended across the fleet.
- No. of episodes: 4
- Latest episode: 2025-07-09
- Arts Books Visual Arts
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