Critical Friends Episode 14: Hard Times with Octavia Cade and M.L. Clark episode artwork

EPISODE · Aug 4, 2025 · 59 MIN

Critical Friends Episode 14: Hard Times with Octavia Cade and M.L. Clark

from Strange Horizons · host The Strange Horizons Editorial Collective

In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland speaks with writers and critics Octavia Cade and M. L. Clark about writing in hard times. How and why is speculative friction written in contexts of defeat, despair, or decay? They discuss climate change and artificial intelligence, systems political, biological, and economic—and how SF might be, and yet sometimes isn't, a key tool in opening up new modes of understanding during a time that Octavia suggests might best be termed the Necrocene.M. L. Clark's review of Ray Nayler's Where The Axe is Buried.Octavia Cade's review of Vanessa Saunders's The Flat Woman.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Aug 4, 2025

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Critical Friends Episode 14: Hard Times with Octavia Cade and M.L. Clark

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