I-O-9 presents, The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here are your hosts, John Joseph Adams and David Barr

Kirtley. Hello and welcome to episode 40 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Hi, I'm John Joseph Adams. I'm the editor of several anthologies such as Wastelands and Brave New Worlds, and I also edit Lightspeed magazine and Fantasy magazine.

And I'm David Barr Curley.

I'm the author of many short stories including Cats and Victory, about genetically engineered

catmen and dogmen battling for control of a post-apocalyptic earth.

The story appeared in Light Speed magazine and on the Starship sofa podcast and will also be appearing

in the upcoming anthology Light Speed Year One.

And our guest today is Genevieve Valentine. Her short stories have appeared in numerous

Best of the Year anthologies and her first novel Meccinec about a post-apocalyptic steampunk

circus was just published by Prime Books. She's also a frequent columnist and reviewer for Lightspeed magazine and Fantasy magazine.

All right, well let's get to our interview.

All right, so we're here with Genevieve Valentine.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, thank you. Okay, so first of all,

tell us about your new novel Meccanique. What's it about? Meccanique is about a group of circus performers in a sort of vague post-apocalyptic landscape where things have

receded governmentally to a series of walled cities and basically the only thing

that travels now is this circus, which is made up of half mechanical people.

And the force that's keeping them together is very mysterious, even to the people in the circus.

And as the war comes closer and closer to affecting them, the circus starts to sort of fall apart.

The circus is run by the ringmaster who is known only as boss and she is the person who fits everybody out with what they need and it

differs from person to person so you have the strong man who has the sort of reinforced

...