Book Club: A Not-Too-Spoilery Convo With Sci-Fi Author N.K. Jemisin

Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal

WBEZ

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does one deal with existential horror from beyond? That’s one question at the heart of The City We Became, a new novel from Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin, in which New York City literally comes alive in order to fight off “creepy tentacle monster creatures."

Nerdette's Greta Johnsen talked to Jemisin earlier this week about the novel, how all cities have personalities, and why she doesn’t describe racism with subtlety.

AND in a couple weeks, we'll bring you a panel discussion on The City We Became for our May Nerdette Book Club.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen, wherever you get your podcast.
0:34.1	Okay, this is a totally off-topic question, but do you refrigerate strawberries?
0:40.1	No, right? Like, they don't refrigerate them at the store, do they?
0:48.3	From WBEZ Chicago, this is the Nerdat Book Club. I'm Greta Johnson. And as you may know,
0:53.7	the way Book Club works is we've been choosing a book each month and talking about it with a rotating panel of awesome humans.
0:56.2	And sometimes the author even shows up.
0:59.7	Our May book is The City We Became by NK.
1:02.6	Jemison.
1:03.6	And the panel discussion is still happening later this month, two weeks from today, in fact.
1:08.2	But today we're going to bring you a conversation I had with
1:11.8	Nora earlier this week for WBEZ event that took place on the interwebs. So as you may already
1:19.3	know, Nora, also known as N.K. Jemison, is the author of a bunch of speculative fiction novels
1:25.2	and trilogies and short stories. Her series, The Broken Earth
1:29.3	Trilogy, won three Hugo Awards in a row, which, if you don't know what a Hugo Award is,
1:35.4	just know it's a big, a deal. So, as I mentioned, the first book in her new trilogy is out now.
1:41.5	It is our May book pick. It's called The City We Became, and if you haven't
1:44.9	read it yet, that is totally okay for the sake of this episode. This is actually a spoiler-free
	...

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