Pure speculation
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Speculative fiction — the catch-all term for non-realist genres — in its many forms. Remembering the irascible speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison. How reading a sex scene in an Isaac Asimov book changes an adolescent’s understanding of gender identity. Colson Whitehead reads from his zombie novel “Zone One.” And tracing the sci-fi-themed Afrofuturist tradition in music, from Sun Ra to Janelle Monáe.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | From PRX |
| 0:03.4 | This is Studio 360. |
| 0:09.8 | I'm Curtis, and I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. |
| 0:12.9 | This first level of gardens. |
| 0:14.2 | This is Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden. |
| 0:16.1 | I like to have the roasted chicken base. |
| 0:17.7 | Very well done. |
| 0:18.9 | Editing is all about timing. |
| 0:20.6 | I try to get a little bit away from the actual subject. |
| 0:23.2 | You must get sick of your own voice, right? |
| 0:25.6 | Studio 360. |
| 0:27.6 | It's good. Anderson. |
| 0:35.6 | It's been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. |
| 0:40.2 | The line separating fictional genres can be blurry, as Rod Serling noted on The Twilight Zone in 1962. |
| 0:47.8 | Science fiction, the improbable made possible, fantasy the impossible made probable. |
| 0:52.8 | What would you have if you put these two different things together? |
| 0:56.5 | Well, what you'd have is speculative fiction. |
| 1:00.0 | It's an umbrella term that's kind of taken off during the last couple of decades. |
| 1:04.0 | Lots of writers and readers prefer it to the older, narrower genre definitions. |
| 1:09.5 | It encompasses not just sci-fi and fantasy, but magical realism, |
| 1:13.3 | horror, counterfactual history, dystopian fiction, anything not strictly, normally realistic. |
| 1:20.5 | Harlan Ellison wrote speculative fiction across a 60-year career publishing more than 1,700 short |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PRX, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PRX and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.