Charlie Jane Anders The City In The Middle Of The Night
03/25/19 • 46 min
The City In The Middle Of The Night explores a land where night and day, miserable and extremely hot and cold nights and days, compete with each other, while a very narrow perimeter allows a scrappy but flawed civilization to claw out an existence, more than subsistence, but less than bucolic.
This, because the planet is rotationally locked with its sun, just as our moon is rotationally locked with our planet, which is why we see only one side of the moon and have no idea what they other side looks like other than the recent Chinese lunar lander.
A mothership has left our dying planet for a generations long trip to this planet, not knowing what will be found there, and as the new residents try to creat a habitable world, the mothership revolves slowly up above, mythologized and revered.
The cold war of two cities on this planet form the loose thread of this novel. Two women, almost lovers, very close friends have a relationship which evolves, as does this “war” over the course of this book. The two protagonist are joined with a panoply of well drawn peripheral friends as each faction tries to achieve control or power over the other.
Added to this story is that of an alien life, misunderstood by some but embraced, literally and figuratively by the hero of our story.
The City In The Middle Of The Night explores a land where night and day, miserable and extremely hot and cold nights and days, compete with each other, while a very narrow perimeter allows a scrappy but flawed civilization to claw out an existence, more than subsistence, but less than bucolic.
This, because the planet is rotationally locked with its sun, just as our moon is rotationally locked with our planet, which is why we see only one side of the moon and have no idea what they other side looks like other than the recent Chinese lunar lander.
A mothership has left our dying planet for a generations long trip to this planet, not knowing what will be found there, and as the new residents try to creat a habitable world, the mothership revolves slowly up above, mythologized and revered.
The cold war of two cities on this planet form the loose thread of this novel. Two women, almost lovers, very close friends have a relationship which evolves, as does this “war” over the course of this book. The two protagonist are joined with a panoply of well drawn peripheral friends as each faction tries to achieve control or power over the other.
Added to this story is that of an alien life, misunderstood by some but embraced, literally and figuratively by the hero of our story.
Previous Episode
1Q1A Charlie Jane Anders The City In The Middle Of The Night
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Charlie Jane Anders, author of this, her new novel, The City In The Middle Of The Night. published in February by Tor. She’s the organizer of the Writers with Drinks series and was a founder of i09, a website about sci fi, science and futurism, Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Tin House and lots of anthologies. Her novel, Six Months, Three Days won a Hugo Award.
The City In The Middle Of The Night explores a land where night and day, miserable and extremely hot and cold nights and days, compete with each other, while a very narrow perimeter allows a scrappy but flawed civilization to claw out an existence, more than subsistence, but less than bucolic.
This, because the planet is rotationally locked with its sun, just as our moon is rotationally locked with our planet, which is why we see only one side of the moon and have no idea what they other side looks like other than the recent Chinese lunar lander.
A mothership has left our dying planet for a generations long trip to this planet, not knowing what will be found there, and as the new residents try to creat a habitable world, the mothership revolves slowly up above, mythologized and revered.
The cold war of two cities on this planet form the loose thread of this novel. Two women, almost lovers, very close friends have a relationship which evolves, as does this “war” over the course of this book. The two protagonist are joined with a panoply of well drawn peripheral friends as each faction tries to achieve control or power over the other.
Added to this story is that of an alien life, misunderstood by some but embraced, literally and figuratively by the hero of our story.
Next Episode
1Q1A Greek to Me Mary Norris
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader . Today our guest is Mary Norris, author of this her second book Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, published April 2 by Norton. Her first of course was Between You And Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen back in 2015, the first time she and I spoke together.
Mary began working at the New Yorker in 1978 (although we learn a lot about her life prior to that) and was a query proofreader at the magazine for 24 years.
She is best known for her pieces on pencils and punctuation and also introduced me to Blackwing 602s.
Oh—I almost forgot—Mary will be speaking and reading at the Free Library downtown on April 15th at 7:30. For more information on this you can go to our website WSB or freelibrary.org.
Greek To Me is a book that takes the form of an interior and exterior journey. Mary tells us about her childhood, her parents, her initial love of language and primarily, as it should be, Greek. As her passion and fascination with the language and the land grows, we find ourselves drawn in, not only to the travelogue aspect of this book, but to the history of a language, its vagaries and its hidden presence in our everyday lives.
Plus there is a lot of ouzo in this book and who could argue with that?
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-avid-reader-show-56036/charlie-jane-anders-the-city-in-the-middle-of-the-night-2860811"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to charlie jane anders the city in the middle of the night on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy