139: Mostly Just a Wide Spot on the Road

John was at the business meeting, Alison was at the cricket, and Tammy is Liz.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to comment@octothorpecast.uk, join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on Bluesky or on Mastodon) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: None

• Find Tammy at her podcast, my tiny bottles
• Letters of comment
  • Chris Garcia (email)
  • Colette Reap (email)
  • Farah Mendlesohn (email)
  • Ivan Sinha (Facebook)
  • Mike Glyer (email)
  • Niall Harrison (email)
    • Here are Niall’s 10 recommendations for you, listeners! [Interestingly, Niall did not mention any of the translators except for one, and so I had to go and look them all up—John]
      • A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-ran, translated by Chi-Young Kim
      • Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
      • Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda
      • Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva, translated by Rahul Bery
      • Sea Now by Eva Meijer, translated by Anne Thompson Melo
      • House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
      • The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton
      • Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
      • Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-Il Kim, translated by Anton Hur
      • Ice by Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips
  • Raj (Mastodon)
  • We also heard from Ali Baker Brooks, Brian Nisbet, Fredrik Coulter, Neil Ottenstein, and Sandra Bond
• 2027 Worldcon: Montreal bid
  • The timeline so far:
    • Terry Fong steps down, replaced by Darin Briskman
    • CanSMOF adds Bruce Farr as bid co-chair
    • Tammy writes “The Worldcon is in Trouble” on File 770
  • Site selection
• 2025 Worldcon: Seattle
  • Business Meeting, part 1
  • Business Meeting, part 2: this was entirely in executive session and so none of it ended up on YouTube. Sorry, listeners! You had to be there…
  • Further meetings will occur on 19 July and 25 July at 17:00 BST/09:00 PDT
• 2023 Worldcon: Chengdu
  • Chris Barkley’s 100th column
• Picks
  • John: DIE by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles
    • Read the first issue free!
    • Future issues will eventually be available on Sweet Shop
    • My First Dungeon
  • Alison: After Us, the Flood and We Are Aliens
  • Tammy: The Nine Worlds by Victoria Goddard
    • The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard
    • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• Credits
  • Cover art: “Our Tiny Bottles” by Alison Scott
    • Alt text: The words “Octothorpe 139” appear at the top and the words “…our tiny bottles…” appear at the bottom. Three bottles are drawn in the middle. The left-hand bottle is a Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge Coca-Cola bottle. The middle bottle is a bottle that looks a bit like a moose. The right-hand bottle is Bottle #18, “The Original Canton Delicate Ginger Liqueur”.
  • Theme music: “Surf Shimmy” by Kevin MacLeod (CC BY 4.0)