This ae nighte, this ae nighte, Every nighte and alle, Fire and fleet and candle-lighte, And Christe receive thy saule. In our final S3 bonus episode, we spend either three hours (from your perspecti

JOKES are against the rules. A tour of nineties Fantasyland, with stops along the way in California, Minnesota, Shannara, Valdemar, Derkholm, Dalemark, and the 'Maggots' entry in the Encyclopedia of ...

Truth is the fire that fetches thunder. A planned minisode on the Guide to Dalemark goes fully off the rails with the addition of early proto-Dalemark novella "The True State of Affairs," for a wide-...

""Why have we got six soppy men in a green haze hanging about?"" Tolkien and Disney, coffee and cotton, children and chattel, colonialism and capitalism, satire and sitcoms and sentimentality and as ...

I thought of Uncle Ted's wobbly windows, and I began to think he must really, truly never look through them or anything else. Can't anyone look out there and see that you need not to think of everythi...

Mitt at last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. "They told me it was free here," he said. "They told me it was good." North and South, history-time and story-time, pas...

This wood is like human memory. It does not need to take events in their correct order. Do you wish to go to an earlier time and start from there?  It's a portal fantasy! It's a space opera! It's an ...

The restraints of knowledge harmed this wild power. In order to use it, Zillah could not know what it was. It would only answer a being as untrammeled as itself. Time for elves, centaurs, demons, god...

What's the good of being civilized? That's what I want to know. It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.   The gender dictatorship, the horror of conformity, the limits of word p...

‘That djinn has taken liberties with a person's castle,’ Sophie said. 'Unless I'm entirely turned around, this used to be our bathroom.' Richard Burton's Arabian Nights and Edward Said's Orientalism,...

Nobody should be losing lives at this rate. What is wrong, Christopher? In our first episode of Season Three, the brilliant Iona Datt Sharma joins us for a discussion of bureaucracy, cricket boys, Bu...

The first time round most of the catching-up you do is retrospective. The second time round you see it happening. In our final S2 bonus episode, we do a terrible job of not looking ahead to Hexwood a...

"She has tremendous talent, of course, or she couldn’t do it at all, but I do sometimes feel that she—well—she repeats herself. Put it like this: I think maybe Carol doesn't give herself a chance to b...

The thing we must notice is frequently identified by what is not described or told or explained. In our first Season Two bonus episode, Farah Mendlesohn -- who literally wrote the book on Diana Wynne...

Twenty Century refugee equipment. Case is open to show clothing and protective mask.  A tale of one or two cities, three or four Vivians, four to fourteen badly translated old women, and at least two...

Her mind was such a blank that for a second, it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid!  The fantastic Freya Marske joins us for a discussion of John Donne, fairy tales, un...

She realized he had sat down on purpose near the door, and she knew, perhaps without quite understanding it, that if she ran away, it would mean he had to go back into the funeral again. She was his e...

I hate Mum, I hate Dad, I hate Howard and the Goon. Big brothers and bigger brothers, good words and bad infrastructure, the power of being a megalomaniac evil wizard, and the power of having parents...

"He was fairly sure it made you wicked too, to be kissed by a witch." The horrors of the British boarding school, the things you learn about yourself in the men's locker room, and what the Chrestoman...

"There are no rules, only principles and natural laws."    This week we're joined by the brilliant Adrian Tchaikovsky to discuss heroes and NPCs, gods and demons and sacrificial victory, and the wors...

"People write stories pretending you can alter the past, but it can't be done. All you can do to the past is remember it wrong or interpret it differently." The horrors of the past, the traps of the ...

"Tonino wondered how he could laugh like that at something so horrible until he remembered that he had stood himself a score of times and laughed himself sick at just the same thing."  Two households...

And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master... Dalemark conspiracy th...

"The story is largely self explanatory, but certain obscurities in the text have been amended to avoid confusing the reader."  The power of the land, the return of the king, and the magic of finding ...

"Mitt was not sure he knew what a free soul was – it never occurred to him that his mother had no idea either – but he thought it was a splendid thing to be." Revolution, righteous anger, gods and pr...

"God bless her dear little sugar-coated shining soul."  The English class system, American science fiction, and the Problem of Gwendolen.  [please again pardon our audio this week as we dealt with t...

"'But why should a few people suffer a lot,' he said, 'so that a lot of people shouldn't suffer at all?'" Thwarted tragedy, the useful myth of Christianity, and sad teen trios that transcend racism. ...

"I sing for Osfameron, I move in more than one world."   The power of art, the divided self, and Walemark. Transcript available here [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O49QCtSgh5WseoB3YedkiDTy2oiQKzL...

"Soon only Sirius was scratching and tearing at the dark, and he only kept on because he had a dim notion that anything was better than cold nothingness."  Politics, parenting, sex and death. [NB: We...

'He could only think of one solution: "Should have been me to hit you, I suppose. I will if you like."'   Revenge, violence, and several attempted murders [yakety sax].  (tw: it's a DWJ but this one...

"Wouldn't you say it was worth it to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after? Loki, Brunhilde, and the archetypal Diana Wynne Jones Cricket Boy.  (Trans...