Welcome back to the Rocket Talk podcast!
Recently released from Tor, Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant has spawned a multitude of reactions across the genre community. Amal El-Mohtar and Kameron Hurley join Justin on Rocket Talk to discuss how this response reflects a larger conversation: how has social media and online book discussion impacted how we engage one another in dialogue about the things we love? It’s an honest and riveting conversation that doesn’t shy from controversial subjects.
Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian author and blogger. She’s won several awards for her poetry and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2011 for her short story “The Green Book” and won the 2015 Locus Award for “The Truth About Owls.” Her non-fiction work can be found at Tor.com, NPR, and Lightspeed Magazine.
Kameron Hurley is the author of Mirror Empire and Mirror Ascendant, the first two novels in the Worldbreaker Saga from Angry Robot Books. He previous novels God’s War, Infidel, and Rapture, earned her the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel. She is the winner of two Hugo Awards, and has been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award and the BSFA Award for Best Novel.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is Seth Dickinson’s highly anticipated debut novel—a brutal tale of empire, rebellion, fealty, and high finance, available from Tor Books and Tor UK (released as The Traitor). You can read an excerpt from the novel here on Tor.com.
Rocket Talk Episode 65 (1:10:14):
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Listen to Episode 65: Amal El-Mohtar and Kameron Hurley
Also! If you have an idea for an episode of Rocket Talk or would like to come on as a guest, reach out to Justin Landon at justin.landon@gmail.com. Obviously, we can’t accommodate everyone, but we’re always looking for new ideas and fresh perspectives. You can find all of the episodes of Rocket Talk on Tor.com here.
This was such a brilliant and interesting episode to listen to – there was so much really good crunchy discussion on important stuff. I’m someone who has currently due to coping noped out of the queer person dying aspect, but it’s highly likely I’ll come back to the book in future when that’s less of a difficult thing for me. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s important to discuss the stuff about the book and the story and also to not lump things into one thing or another thing – or be too critical when there’s still such a dearth of diversity in characters and voices for authors being appreciated, that it’s very easy to be disappointed that a book or character is not about x aspect or y aspect – we’re still so early on that there’s still a need for these characters to appear at all before we can start really critiquing a narrow view of things – there’s simply not enough for that to make a great deal of sense.
I agree though that it is worth continuing to question, to ask for and seek myriad representations of diversity across the board. And, I want there to be more instances of awesome stuff being written by people outside of those experiences that are nuanced and respectful, daring and engaging – otherwise we remain alien to one another and connection and understanding fail to grow. The idea that people from diverse backgrounds can only write those diverse backgrounds and no one else sounds exhausting… and stifling, I think that there’s a better way. Try, try again, fail, try again, listen, be respectful, tell a really good story.