Special Session Of Worlds Of Speculative Fiction

This time I've invited a special guest!

Worlds of Speculative Fiction is a monthly talk series that I have been doing since 2016. It started originally as an in-person series hosted by the Brookfield Public Library, and then with the closures due to Covid in 2020, we shifted it into an online format. This, as you can well expect, opened up the possibility of participation to a far wider audience.

The idea behind the series is a somewhat quirky one, but also one that makes good sense. I started it as a way to let me engage in some “guilty pleasure reading”, as I’ve been an avid enjoyer of fantasy, science fiction, horror, weird, and other speculative genres since childhood. I do provide some “bang-for-the buck” capitalizing on some of my expertise for viewers, listeners, and participants, though! I discuss the worldbuilding, biography and motivations, and selected philosophical themes of the authors covered.

We were recording video of the sessions from the very beginning, and if you’d like you can watch or listen to all 77 of the previous sessions in this YouTube playlist in my channel. There’s also an online class that I created some time back to support and provide information about the series. I use this to provide people interested in it with updates as well.

Now, what’s so special about session 78, you might ask? Well, a lot of the authors that we cover are no longer among us. And up until now, even when covering a living author, it has not been anyone I myself personally know. This time around, that’s not the case, because session 78 is on two recent novels by a friend and colleague, who happens to live right down the road in Chicago. This time, we’ve covering James Kennedy’s Dare to Know and Bride of the Tornado!

We kick things off at Noon Central Time with a video premiere in my YouTube channel. Here’s the link for that. A premiere means that the roughly 115 minute video I’ve produced will run, and while that is going on, I’ll be there in the live chat, where viewers can ask questions, leave comments, and get responses from me. After that, at 2 PM, we will shift to a Zoom videoconferencing session for about an hour or so.

Now here’s what’s particularly special. James is joining us for both parts. I had the chance to interview him about his influences, his novels, what role philosophy plays, and a number of other subjects, and clips from that are woven into the video itself. James will also be joining us for the Zoom session as well as a special guest!

That graphic you see at the top of this is one that he produced. I like it quite a bit, so I decided to use it here! If you’d like to know more about James, you can check out his website.

So if you don’t already have something to do tomorrow, and you’d like to learn about the really weird, cool, philosophical novels this guy has written, and maybe even ask him some questions, consider yourself invited!