Margret Treiber is Over It: Cranking Sci-Fi While Nobody Seems to Give a Sh$t

In this robust episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with Margret Treiber—a pissed-off, no-nonsense New Yorker by way of Long Island and Jersey, now out in the Soutwest desert but still swinging that East Coast edge like a light sabre. She’s been grinding for years, writing sharp, dark, often hilarious science fiction… and getting buried under the algorithmic avalanche.Margret lets loose, and Mookie loves it: She goes ballsitic in a pure Long Island–bred, Jersey-hardened blitz, calling bullshit and not caring who gets offended. "The Margret" is angry at platforms that reward noise over substance. at a content ecosystem flooded with mediocrity while serious work gets lost in the void, and at the her own endless cycle of submissions, rejections, fake promoters, and the illusion that “if you just keep going, you’ll break through.”Despite doing all the heavy lifting...Written novels (Death Engine Protocol, Japanese Robots Love to Dance)Pumped out short stories and anthology submissionsBuilt memes, animations, and marketing funnelsPlayed the social media game—and watched it fail in real time...Margret keeps getting her ass kicked, leading the conversation into the "polite lies" of indie publishing: The myth of meritocracy in a saturated content economyWhy algorithms don’t reward quality—they reward engagement loopsThe psychological toll of creating constantly while being ignoredThe brutal reality: a handful of names dominate, everyone else fights for scrapsMargret brings that classic New York survival energy to all of it—calling out the nonsense, tearing into the fake engagement economy, and refusing to play nice just to get noticed. They both hate "networking" and “building a personal brand," and rally around their shared catharsis. Mookie loves how Margret fights the machine and flips it off while she does it, continuing to grind content with her defiant and inspirational attitude because she can't live without creating. The GuestMargret Treiber writes sci-fi with bite: brutal, brilliant, and deeply human (according to Readers’ Favorite). She’s the award-winning author of Death Engine Protocol, Japanese Robots Love to Dance, and other glitchcore nightmares. She’s also editor-in-chief of Sci-Fi Lampoon, a speculative humor mag for people who suspect the singularity will be deeply stupid. When not working in tech or supervising cockatiels with a vendetta against furniture, she builds weird robots and breaks algorithms. For more: www dot the-margret dot com or www dot rhobot dot info.Want to be on the show? Have feedback? Send Mookie a text!Support the show