Book Club: Micaiah Johnson On Her Debut Sci Fi Novel, ‘The Space Between Worlds’

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4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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	This fall, W bez invites you to our upcoming live events.
0:05.0	Join us in person for smart discussions, heartfelt storytelling, and more.
0:09.0	Check out the full calendar now at W be easy.org slash events.
0:17.2	From W be easy Chicago I'm Greta Johnson and this is the
0:20.5	Nerd at Book Club it's just like a regular book club,
0:22.8	except sometimes the author stops by.
0:25.2	Our January pick is Macaya Johnson's
0:27.5	sci-fi novel, The Space Between Worlds,
0:30.2	and she is our guest today.
0:32.3	The book is about a multiverse, which if you don't already know is a universe where there are hundreds of other planets a lot like Earth.
0:40.0	So much like Earth, in fact, that the same people are on every planet.
0:46.0	It's just that their storylines are slightly different on each one.
0:50.0	And it turns out it's possible to travel between these Earth's as long as the U on that planet is already dead,
0:57.0	which makes our main character Kara quite a commodity because she's already dead on every planet except for eight of them.
1:06.4	Later this month we are going to spoil this entire book in our panel discussion but today
1:11.0	this is going to be a spoiler-free conversation so if you haven't read the book yet you are totally in the right place
1:16.8	Macaya welcome to Nurdette. Oh my god thank you for having me and I'm going to do my best to not spoil I didn't know how spoiler a spoil a bowl my book was until I started doing interviews. It's like, oh yeah, I can't say any of that.
1:30.0	Well, so what do you think about like the summary I gave? Like is that a decent setup? Is there anything that you think I missed that you want to add without spoiling a little thing?
1:39.0	Thank you for a giving that amazing kind of introduction to it and not asking me like so what's the elevator
1:46.2	pitch for this book because every time I freeze up and I forget words and I don't know what character
1:51.8	I'm even I'm like I don't know there's a girl that's a vampire wait no that's not my book and I just like kind of panic so I appreciate that like you said it better than I have ever said it this entire time.
2:03.4	Well I'll email the text over to you
	...

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