At the end of October Reactor published their list of The Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century, which attempted to list the best/top/favourite science fiction and fantasy books of the past 25 years.

Two weeks later Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy award-winning writer Jo Walton published a follow-on piece on Reactor, On Selecting the Top Ten Genre Books of the First Quarter of the Century, where she discussed how she went about picking her contribution, while finding a classic reader's workaround that allowed her to name a lot more than ten books.

That caught Locus reviewer Niall Harrison's attention and lead directly to us inviting Jo to join us for a delightful and really interesting conversation on the subject. While we hope you enjoy the podcast, we have to mention their were some audio difficulties. We've done the very best we can to make everything work, but we do apologise for any audio issues you experience while listening to the episode.

This week’s episode is mostly about books—how do you get them, where do you put them, and how to get rid of them when you need to. You’d think that questions such as the best way to shelve books would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently that’s not always the case. We also touch upon the differences between collectors, acquirers, and accumulators, and how books can radically fluctuate in value depending in part on the author’s reputation. But, being us, we also digress into such topics as the thrill of discovering a classic SF idea for the first time—even if it might seem old hat to veteran readers—and the beginnings of our discussion about year-end recommended reading lists, and what they really mean.

Long time friend of the podcast Joe Monti, who was recently promoted to Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Editorial Director at Saga Press, and is now officially a "Big Cheese', stops by for a wide-ranging chat about the impact of the pandemic and other events on the affordability of books; trends in recent science fiction, fantasy and horror and why science fiction may be set for something of a comeback; the influence (or lack thereof) of awards on book sales; and touches on authors ranging from Cixin Liu and N.K. Jemisin to William Gibson and Ursula K. Le Guin.

As always, Joe’s broad experience as publisher, agent, and bookseller provides some unique insights as to what’s going on and we think makes for fascinating listening as we move towards the end of the year.