The Worldshapers: interviewing science fiction & fantasy authors

March 19, 2023March 19, 2023

Episode 131: Alex Shvartsman

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An hour-long chat with writer, translator, game designer, and anthologist Alex Shvartsman, author of three fantasy novels and more than 120 short stories.

Website
www.alexshvartsman.com

Facebook
@shvartsman.alex

Twitter
@AShvartsman

Alex Shvartsman’s Website

Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator, game designer, and anthologist from Brooklyn, NY. His adventures so far have included traveling to over thirty countries, playing a card game for a living, and building a successful business.

Alex is the author of Kakistocracy (2023), The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani’s Crown (2019) fantasy novels. . Over 120 of his short stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, Fireside, Weird Tales, Galaxy’s Edge, and many other venues. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction in 2014 and was a three-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction.

Alex’s translations from Russian have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov’s, Apex, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere.

He’s the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects series of humorous SF/F, as well as a variety of other anthologies, including The Cackle of Cthulhu (Baen), Humanity 2.0 (Arc Manor), and Funny Science Fiction (UFO). For five years he edited Future Science Fiction Digest, a magazine that focused on international fiction.

March 5, 2023March 5, 2023

Episode 130: James S. Peet

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An hour-long chat with James S. Peet, author of the Corps of Discovery science fiction series, set in the multiverse.

Website
jamespeet.com

Facebook

James S. Peet’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

James S. Peet is a modern-day Renaissance Man. He’s lived on four continents in six countries and visited countless more. He’s been a National Park Service Ranger, a police officer, a tow-truck driver, a college instructor, a private investigator, a fraud examiner/forensic accountant, an inventor (the Simple Shower–sold on Amazon!), and an entrepreneur. He’s walked the Camino de Santiago (two short ones and the long one from St. Jean Pied de Port to Muxia), a walkabout he highly recommends (and wrote a cookbook for his second Camino walk–it’s also on Amazon).

He lives on the top of a small mountain in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains with his wife, dogs, barn cats, and whatever adult daughter returns to the nest. He’s attended ten colleges and universities, two law enforcement academies, and has three degrees (all in geography) and multiple certificates (he really likes learning).

His Corps of Discovery series is set in the multiverse. His other writing endeavors include several articles on modern sea piracy, economics, and the private investigation of fraud.

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023

Episode 129: Julie Czerneda and Edward Willett

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Listen in as DAW Books authors Julie Czerneda and Edward Willett talk to each other about their latest books, To Each This World (Julie) and The Tangled Stars (Ed).

Websites
czerneda.com
edwardwillett.com
DAW Books

Facebook
@JulieCzernedaOfficialFanPage
@edward.willett
@DAWBooks

Twitter
@julieczerneda
@ewillett
@DAWBooks

Instagram
@julieczerneda
@edwardwillettauthor
@DAWBooks

Amazon Author Pages
Julie Czerneda
Edward Willett

February 19, 2023February 26, 2023

Episode 128: Eli K.P. William

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An hour-long chat with Eli K.P. William, Japanese literary translator and author of the Jubilee Cycle science fiction trilogy, set in a near-future Tokyo.

Website
elikpwilliam.com

Facebook
@elikp.william

Twitter
@Dice_Carver

Eli K.P. William’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Eli K.P. William is a novelist and Japanese literary translator. He is the author of the Jubilee Cycle trilogy, set in a near future Tokyo, where every action—from blinking to sexual intercourse—is intellectual property owned by corporations that charge licensing fees. The series includes Cash Crash Jubilee, The Naked World, and A Diamond Dream. It has been compared to works of classic cyberpunk by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson and to traditional dystopian literature by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Phillip K. Dick.

Born in Toronto, Canada, he has spent most of his adult life in Japan, and is the only member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan (SFWJ) who writes fiction in English. He also contributes book reviews and essays in both English and Japanese to such publications as Subaru, The Japan Times, and The Pacific Rim Review of Books, and has translated literature by some of Japan’s most renowned authors. His translations include Keiichiro Hirano’s bestselling novel A Man and various essays and short stories for Granta, Monkey, Kyoto Journal, The Southern Review, and more.

February 5, 2023February 5, 2023

Episode 127: Monte Schulz

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An hour-long chat with Monte Schulz, novelist, composer, owner of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and eldest son of the late Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz.

Websites
www.monteschulz.com
www.metropolisthebook.com

Facebook
@monte.schulz.7

Twitter
@monteschulz

Monte Schulz, author of the dystopian coming-of-age novel Metropolis (Fantagraphics), received his M.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He published his first novel, Down by the River, in 1990, and spent the next twelve years writing a novel about the Jazz Age, available as a whole in Crossing Eden, or in three parts: This Side of Jordan, The Last Rose of Summer, and The Big Town. He wrote it for his father, the late cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz.

Monte is also a composer, songwriter, and producer whose most recent album is titled Seraphonium. In 2010, he became the owner of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA.

January 22, 2023January 22, 2023

Episode 126: Robin Stevens Payes

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An hour-long chat with Robin Stevens Payes, author of four novels in the Edge of Yesterday series, intended to entertain young adult readers and spark an interest in STEM/STEAM careers, especially for girls.

Website
edgeofyesterdaybook.com

Facebook
@RobinStevensPayesAuthor

Twitter
@robinstevenspayes

Instagram
@robinstevenspayes

Robin Stevens Payes’s Amazon Page

About the Author

Robin Stevens Payes is the author of four novels for middle-grade to YA readers. She offers workshops on storytelling and is in the process of launching a company that focuses on relationship solutions for mothers and their teen daughters. She was founding editor-in-chief of LearnNow, an online publication on the science of learning, and has written for The American Leader, Discovery Education, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Her Edge of Yesterday series is intended to entertain young adult readers and spark an interest in STEM/STEAM careers, especially for girls. Robin lives around the DC beltway in Maryland.

January 9, 2023

Episode 125: Brian Trent

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An hour-long chat with Brian Trent, award-winning author of Redspace Rising and Ten Thousand Thunders plus numerous short stories.

Website
www.briantrent.com

Facebook

Brian Trent’s Amazon Page

Brian Trent’s work regularly appears in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the New York Times-bestselling Black Tide Rising anthologies, The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Terraform, Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Pseudopod, Escape Pod, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, and numerous year’s-best anthologies.

The author of the science fiction novels Redspace Rising and Ten Thousand Thunders, Trent is a winner of the 2019 Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF Readers’ Choice Award from Baen Books and a Writers of the Future winner. He is also a contributor to the Baen anthologies Weird World War III, Weird World War IV, Weird World War China, and the newly released Worlds Long Lost. Trent lives in New England.

December 29, 2022December 29, 2022

Episode 124: Chadwick Ginther

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An hour-long chat with award-winning Canadian fantasy writer Chadwick Ginther, author the Thunder Road Trilogy.

Website
chadwickginther.com

Facebook
@chadwickginther

Twitter
@chadwickginther

Instagram
@chadwickginther

Chadwick Ginther’s Amazon Page

Chadwick Ginther is the author of When the Sky Comes Looking for You, the Thunder Road Trilogy, and Graveyard Mind. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and his story “All Cats Go to Valhalla” won the 2021 Prix Aurora Award for Best Short Story. He lives and writes in Winnipeg, Canada, spinning sagas set in the wild spaces of Canada’s western wilderness where surely monsters must exist.

December 11, 2022December 11, 2022

Episode 123: Alan Smale

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An hour-long chat with Alan Smale, NASA astrophysicist and Sidewise Award-winning author of alternate and twisted history and hard SF, including Hot Moon and Clash of Eagles.

Website
alansmale.com

Facebook
@alansmale

Twitter
@alansmale

Alan Smale’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Alan Smale writes alternate and twisted history and hard science fiction. His novella of a Roman invasion of ancient America, “A Clash of Eagles,” won the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and his series of novels set in the same universe, Clash of Eagles (2015), Eagle in Exile (2016), and Eagle and Empire (2017), are available from Del Rey (US) and Titan Books (UK and Europe). His Roman baseball collaboration with Rick Wilber, The Wandering Warriors, came out from WordFire Press (2020), and Hot Moon, his alternate-Apollo “technothriller with heart,” set entirely on and around the Moon, was launched by CAEZIK in July 2022.

Alan has also sold more than forty pieces of shorter fiction to Asimov’s and other magazines and original anthologies. His short story “Gunpowder Treason,” set in London in 1605, the lead story in Tales from Alternate Earths Vol. III from Inklings Press, won the 2021 Sidewise Award. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Lightspeed and Journey Planet, and he writes a regular column about scientific and historical turning points for Galaxy’s Edge.

Born and raised in England, Alan lives in Maryland and works as an astrophysicist and data archive manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In what is humorously referred to as his “spare time,” Alan also sings bass and serves as Business Manager for high-energy vocal band The Chromatics, who have performed at various science fiction conventions (Balticon, Shore Leave, Farpoint) and were Music Guests of Honor at Philcon.

November 27, 2022

Episode 122: Brad R. Torgersen

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An hour-plus chat with Brad R. Torgersen, Dragon Award-winnning (and Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell-nominated) science fiction and fantasy author.

Website
www.bradrtorgersen.com

Facebook
@brtwrites

Twitter
@bradrtorgersen

Brad R. Torgersen’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Brad R. Torgersen is a multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer whose book A Star-Wheeled Sky won the 2019 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel at the 33rd annual DragonCon fan convention in Atlanta, Georgia.

A prolific short fiction author, Torgersen has published stories in numerous anthologies and magazines, including several Best of Year editions. Brad is named in Analog magazine’s who’s who of top Analog authors, alongside venerable writers like Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, and Robert A. Heinlein.

Married for almost thirty years, Brad is also a United States Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer—with multiple deployments to his credit—and currently lives with his wife in the Mountain West.