Episode 695-With Damien Ober

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Damien Ober, author of Voidverse. About Voidverse: When the Sinker was a child, all she knew was violence. To survive, she fled into the Void—a seemingly infinite nothingness where people live on “rocks,” individual lands spread out in all directions, floating in the vast empty space. Some rocks are giant magnets, others burn with eternal flame, and some are influenced by seemingly magical anomalies with such great powers that evil forces would stop at nothing to possess them. And while most are afraid of traveling through the Void, the Sinker is not. With a sword on her back, she speeds through the darkness, running from a past that is quickly gaining on her. Emery only knows the comfort of Fairviel, but when her son falls ill and the Sinker arrives on her doorstep, she ventures into the Void in search of a cure. When she returns, Fairviel is destroyed. With no home, Emery begins to sink, chasing a recurring dream that feels bigger than a dream, that feels like the key to everything. But they are not alone in the Void. Mercenaries rise and fall around them, princes and kings guard their kingdoms, and a great machine fuels its ascent by consuming all in its path. With the Void destabilizing, Emery and the Sinker find themselves at a turning point in history, a moment when everything could collapse or realign, and the only thing that may save them exists at the bottom of it all. Or so legend says… About Damien Ober: Damien Ober is a novelist and screenwriter. He was a writer for the Netflix series The OA and has written scripts and developed TV shows for Paramount+, AMC, Netflix, and Warner Brothers. His work has appeared in The Rumpus, NOON, B O D Y Literature, The Baltimore City Paper, VLAK, and port.man.teau. He was a co-winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award, was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize, and his screenplay Randle Is Benign was selected for the 2013 Black List. This week’s picks: Damien: Star Trek: Ascendancy (Board Game) Tracy: Sea Salt & Paper (Game) Patrick: The Game Master’s Book of Instant Towns and Cities by Jeff Ashworth (Author), Tim Baker (Author), Matheus Graef (Illustrator), Luke Eidenschink (Illustrator) & more Links: Damien Ober on Instagram Tracy Townsend on BluSky Patrick Hester on Instagram The Functional Nerds Patreon Page © 2026 Patrick Hester The post Episode 695-With Damien Ober appeared first on The Functional Nerds.