Book Club: Micaiah Johnson On Her Debut Sci Fi Novel, ‘The Space Between Worlds’
Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal
WBEZ
4.6 • 924 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! Each month, we read a book and chat about it with a rotating group of panelists. This month’s pick is The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson.
It’s an alternate-universe story about hundreds of different Earths slightly different from our own. It’s possible to “traverse” to other planets, but only if the traverser’s doppelganger is already dead. Enter Cara, our protagonist, whose impoverished and oppressed upbringing means she’s already dead on every planet except for eight of them.
This is Micaiah Johnson’s first book, and it’s an ambitious one. In today’s episode, Nerdette host Greta Johnsen has a spoiler-free conversation with the author about the book’s themes and how Micaiah’s own life story intersects with Cara’s.
Be sure to come back later this month for a spoiler-filled conversation about The Space Between Worlds. And don’t forget: we want to hear from you too! Record your thoughts about the novel and send an audio file to [email protected].
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. Join me as I share how the genre |
| 0:22.3 | began, their social impact, and why these stories endure. Listen, wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:32.3 | From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club. It's just like a regular |
| 0:37.7 | book club, except sometimes the author stops by. Our January pick is Mackiah Johnson's |
| 0:43.0 | sci-fi novel, The Space Between Worlds, and she is our guest today. The book is about a |
| 0:49.1 | multiverse, which if you don't already know, is a universe where there are hundreds of other planets a lot like |
| 0:54.8 | Earth, so much like Earth, in fact, that the same people are on every planet. It's just that their |
| 1:02.5 | storylines are slightly different on each one. And it turns out it's possible to travel between |
| 1:08.1 | these Earths as long as the you on that planet is already dead, |
| 1:12.5 | which makes our main character Kara quite a commodity because she's already dead on every planet |
| 1:19.3 | except for eight of them. Later this month, we are going to spoil this entire book in our panel |
| 1:25.2 | discussion, but today, this is going to be a spoiler-free conversation. |
| 1:28.9 | So if you haven't read the book yet, you are totally in the right place. Makaya, welcome to |
| 1:33.3 | Nerdette. Oh, my God. Thank you for having me. And I'm going to do my best to not spoil. I didn't know |
| 1:38.2 | how spoiler, spoil a bowl my book was until I started doing interviews. It's like, oh, yeah, I can't say any of that. |
| 1:46.3 | Well, so what do you think about, like, the summary I gave? Like, is that a decent set up? |
| 1:50.6 | Is there anything that you think I missed that you want to add without spoiling the whole thing? |
| 1:54.3 | I just want to thank you for, A, giving that amazing kind of introduction to it and not asking me, |
| 2:00.4 | like, so what's the elevator pitch for this book? |
... |
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