Science Friday - Immunocompromised and Covid, Summer SciFi Reading. June 18, 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Protect Immunocompromised People This week, California and New York, two of the states hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, announced that they were relaxing almost all coronavirus-related business restrictions. Across the country, vaccination numbers are slowly ticking up—although a troubling COVID-19 variant known as Delta is picking up as well. As things reopen, experts warn that people with compromised immune systems may not be well protected, even if they do get the vaccine.  There are many reasons someone might have a weakened immune system, including an illness, cancer treatment, or the use of immune-suppressing drugs needed for an organ transplant. But regardless of the reason, immunocompromised people may not be able to mount a strong antibody response to the vaccines.  Dr. John Mellors, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an internist at UCSF in San Francisco who is herself immunocompromised, talk with Ira about what we know about the performance of COVID-19 vaccines in immunocompromised people, and what people with weakened immune systems can do to help protect themselves against the illness.   The Best Sci-Fi Books To Read This Summer Whether you’ve had a hard time reading during the pandemic, or you zoomed through your book pile and are craving more, Science Friday’s annual list of the best summer science books is here for you.  As the world begins to open up, many of us are not quite comfortable traveling like we once did. But what a better way to escape without going too far than by immersing ourselves in some science fiction? Hit the beach—and another dimension, travel to space from the safety of your backyard, or take a hike back in time to an alternate era.  And this summer we tapped two sci-fi aficionados to help build our list. Annale Newitz, science journalist and author of Four Lost Cities, and Gretchen Treu, co-owner of A Room of One’s Own Bookstore, in Madison Wisconsin, share their superb summer selections with Ira in front of a live Zoom audience.  Get the list of the books recommended by our guests!  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Later in the hour, we kick off our summer of sci-fi with some book picks for your summertime reading. But first, across the country, vaccination numbers are slowly ticking up. That's the good news. Bad news is that some people may not be well protected, even if they do get the vaccine. These are people with compromised immune systems. It could be due to another illness or due to immune-suppressing drugs taken for other medical conditions, such as a transplant. The problem is immunocompromised people may not mount a strong antibody response to the vaccines, may not be able to fight off the disease.

Joining me now to talk about what options immunocompromised people may have to deal with are my guests. Dr. John Miller's, distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UPMC, and Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an internist at UC San Francisco. She is immunocompromised and wrote about this problem in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Thanks, Ira.

You're welcome. John, let's begin with you. Let's start with a definition. What does it actually mean to be immunocompromised? It means very broadly that one's immune system is not normal. That can have very different features depending on what component of the immune system is not normal. For example, and in the context that we're talking about, which is vaccine response, lymphocytes are key, and there are two key types of lymphocytes. B cells that make antibodies and T cells that help B cells make antibodies. And if you're deficient in either of those, you may not respond to a vaccine like somebody who has a normal immune system. Can you tell me, give me an idea of what kinds of illnesses or diseases this may be true?

So there are many types of medications that alter the lymphocytes function and numbers. For example, there are antibodies that basically wipe out B cells. Again, B cells are the precursors of the cells that make antibodies. And B-cell depletion or B-cell therapy is for diseases where antibodies are produced that are undesirable and actually cause disease. So that's one large category of physician-induced abnormalities of the immune system. There are a host of other treatments for cancer, for immunosuppression to prevent organ rejection. There are other disorders of the immune system that are a consequence of age. We could go on to a very long list of abnormalities of the immune system.

Let me go to Lindsay. Lindsay, Ryan, you are immunocompromised yourself due to a drug called retuximab. Is that correct? Yeah, it's a drug called retuximab, and it is just what John was talking about. It's a drug that wipes out your B cells. And, you know, B cells are extremely adaptive cells in that they help us produce antibodies to fight disease, to fight foreign pathogens like the coronavirus. However, if the B cells mistake parts of your own body, proteins in your own body, cells in your own body as foreign pathogens, if they misidentify the self as something dangerous, they can produce antibodies that actually attack you.

And that's the nature of autoimmune disease. So you end up wiping out the B cells and you suppress disease by doing that. But by suppressing the ability of B cells to produce antibodies against yourself, you also suppress the ability of B cells. to produce antibodies against things like coronavirus. What I find amazing is that I know that you're a doctor working in an emergency room setting and a large urban center. How do you do that, knowing your immune system isn't firing on all cylinders? I think everyone who's made, who's immunocompromise and is making these decisions during

the pandemic does it on an extremely personal level and weighing a lot of different factors. So early in the pandemic, I didn't go to work. I was more immunosuppressed than I am now. The pandemic was worse. There was a lot less information about how transmission occurred, whether there was a lot of transmission from surfaces. There were personal protective equipment shortages. And there have been shifts in that. Things have improved in that. I feel very confident in the personal protective of equipment. I'm meticulous about using it. I'm blessed with lovely colleagues who will usually take the hacking patients with fevers of 102 off my hands, you know, which is not to say that I never see coronavirus patients. Coronavirus is a protean disease. And I've also seen coronavirus patients who,

you know, are people who are asymptomatic who come in with a broken leg and you swab them prior to surgery and their swab is positive. But I think some of this is a matter of, practicing risk mitigation and learning to live with that. And John, how much do we know about how well vaccines work, if at all, in people like Dr. Ryan? It's a really important question. And there's limited information. We need to do broader studies across different types of individuals with varying degrees of immunodeficiency, if one does not have B cells as a consequence of antibodies to CD20 like ratoxamab, then it's unlikely that a vaccine would produce an antibody response.

And so with those individuals, we don't expect a good antibody response. And I would say there's less than 50% chance of a response and probably much lower than that. But again, Ira, the data are limited than we put out an editorial suggesting we need to figure this out as soon as possible. And we have large studies going on to try to figure out what is the rate of vaccine response in individuals with different degrees of immunosuppression. And in fact, you are vaccinated yourself against COVID. I am vaccinated, yeah.

But with fairly limited response to the vaccine, I think it would be fair to say. I've been seeing commercials on TV for monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID. Would it be possible, is this the right kind of treatment to give immunocompromised people artificial antibodies? Absolutely. Absolutely. Noticlonal antibodies, when given early, before hospitalization, can be life-saving and can prevent hospitalization. That's very clear. Well-conducted, well-controlled clinical trials show that. And individuals who do not have antibodies because they haven't been vaccinated or have been vaccinated and haven't responded are very good candidates for getting monoclonal antibody to mitigate the disease. And in cases like Lindsay's, if I were the physician and there was an exposure and suspected COVID,

I would rapidly get a test and administer the monoclonal antibodies if the test was positive. There are even some data. IRA suggesting that if one is exposed, and immunocompromised or elderly, giving the antibody without documenting infection can prevent infection. So you're talking about giving it prophylactically before? Well, that's another thing we need to discuss.

I'm talking about giving it therapeutically and those who have infection, and I'm talking about post-exposure prophylaxis, meaning, that there was exposure, the risk of having acquired infection, and presumptively giving the antibody to prevent the infection from spreading within that individual. There's another form of prophylaxis, which we call primary prophylaxis, where we give a preventive, even though there hasn't been exposure, because of the possibility that there will be exposure. So that's primary prophylaxis versus post-exposure prophylaxis versus therapeutic use of antibodies. Do people who are immunocompromise realize the options that they have?

I think many do, but I don't think that all do. individuals who recognize that they have immunodeficiency are likely to be counsel, not always, and to be made aware of the options for early diagnosis and treatment. And I'd love to hear Lindsay's take on this, what she knows about others who are in similar situation, whether they're aware, I think they're likely to be gaps. Lindsay? I think there are definitely gaps in awareness. For me, as you said, if I had COVID symptoms, I would go immediately and get a test.

And if it was positive, get monoclonals as soon as possible. And I think that actually becomes a little bit more tricky and may become more tricky over time as different variants affect the efficacy of different monoclonals. But that said, I would go get monoclonals immediately. I think there are gaps. I don't think all immunocompromised people know that. I don't even think all immunocompromise people realize that they may have reduced the vaccine efficacy, which is a really dangerous thing not to know that. So I think there's huge gaps in knowledge. And part of that has been that public health messaging, you know, has had to be that these vaccines are almost 100.

percent effective in preventing hospitalization and death. And they are. And having nationwide public health messaging about, you know, the cases that are exceptions to that rule is not the most effective thing to communicate to millions and millions and millions of people. But I think it's important that there are exceptions to the rules and that doctors, family members, other people communicate to immunocompromise folks and their families that, yeah, they might not be protected by these vaccines. I'm talking with Dr. John Bellers, distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and Chief of the Division Infectious Diseases at UPMC.

And Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an internist at UCSF in San Francisco. We're going to take a short break and continue this conversation about the challenges of protecting immunocompromised people during the pandemic. Stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're talking about protecting and treating people with compromised immune systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guests, Dr. John Mellers, distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UPMC.

Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an internist at UCSF in San Francisco, she is immunocompromised and wrote about this problem in a recent issue of JAMA. What advice have you've been given for living with your medical condition during a pandemic? Is there anything else that you have figured out for yourself how to do or been told to what kinds of precautions you should be taking? I'm fairly careful, but I also have to balance it with wanting to live my life. So, you know, I take things on a case-by-case basis. And we can talk more about what's happening now that things are reopening. It becomes more complicated.

But I think the best advice I've heard is that if your vaccine may not be completely effective, you need to build a wall, a circle of vaccinated people around you, your coworkers, your close contacts, your friends, your family members. Ideally, concentric circles of vaccination, ideally their close contacts will also be vaccinated to the extent possible. And that's probably your best bet. And you did just say about the situation is in flux now. It is changing people are now getting out more. Does that change your situation? I think it does. You know, obviously we know that masking is pretty effective in preventing transmission. And if one of those people is unmasked, if the other person in the grocery store is unmasked, obviously that's a higher risk to me. I'm fortunate to live somewhere without high prevalence. But I do think I'll take into account in terms of my own practices, the fact that other people might not be wearing masks, especially in places where there's, you know, more likely to be sick people like a pharmacy. line. You know, one concern for me is now we're seeing, for instance, the Delta variant, the one that originated in India, starting to take hold in the U.S. and it seems like there's growing evidence that

that's more transmissible, maybe on the order of 40, 50%, possibly a more severe variant. And so if I'm dealing with both the mass mandate being dropped and potentially more transmissible variants taking hold. That's definitely a concern. How do you react to people who decide not to get vaccinated? It's tough. You know, ideally you want to react with quiet curiosity about the reasons, humility, a chance to have a conversation with people. And often the barriers are structural. People are afraid, you know, if they register, it will endanger their immigration status, which, you know, it shouldn't. But these sorts of things are certainly concerned. or people don't have a good relationship with health care providers or have had bad experiences with clinics.

There are definitely people who don't fall into that category who just think, you know, if they get COVID, it's not going to be severe and it's a matter of personal liberty. And that I find really tough. That I find tough because one of the really gratifying things for me as a doctor during the pandemic has been a lot of support for frontline workers. and that's been rewarding. But for me, the biggest action someone could take the most respect that they could show for the fact that I have put my life at risk to some degree by working through the pandemic

is to get vaccinated, is to reduce the chance that they're going to see me in the ER with a virus that could kill me. Let me just add one footnote. I encourage everybody to read Lindsay's article about how the pandemic and the medication she has to take have impacted her life, and that we all have a level of civic responsibility to protect our fellow citizens from a preventable disease.

John, what would you really like to know as we speak about the immune system and COVID? Is there something that you would really like to know, to know, know that you don't know, that would help you in your research and treatment? Many things every day I'd like to know, but it takes months to years to figure out. I'd like to know who responds to a vaccine, who doesn't, whether two doses of a vaccine or three doses or four doses are optimal for those who could respond. So one of the most pressing questions in my mind is who doesn't respond to a standard vaccination regimen that's designed for people who have a healthy immune system.

Can we get more responders by vaccinating harder and by harder I need more frequently? So that to me is a really, really important, pressing question. Do you think we're going to be seeing vaccine booster shots down the road as we get toward the fall in wintertime? I do think that responses to vaccines will not be forever. I do think there's concerns about variance and transmission and potential for more severe disease from variants. and we may have to cover a broader range of variants than exists today in the future with boosters. So boosters could be used to boost the initial response in people who have kind of a borderline response, and a booster could be made up of a different sequence of the virus that covers the variants that are circulating and spreading around the global.

Well, we have run out of time, but I can't end without thanking both of you for your service during this pandemic. Dr. John Miller is Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UPMC. Dr. Lindsay Ryan, an internist at UCSF in San Francisco. She is immunocompromised and wrote about this problem in a recent issue of JAMA. up there on our website at ScienceFriday.com slash JAMA. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira. Thank you, Ira. Whether you've had a hard time reading during the pandemic

or you've zoomed through your to-do read list on our craving more, you're going to want to check out our annual list of the best summer science books. And this time, we're doing something a little bit different. The world is beginning to open up, right? but many of us are not quite comfortable traveling like we once did. So what better way to escape without going too far than immersing ourselves in science fiction? So you hit the beach and you hit another dimension. Travel to space from the safety of your backyard or take a hike back in time to an alternate era.

Joining me now for what we're calling sci-fri summer of sci-fi. Get it? are my two guests with some superb selections for summer reading. Annalie Newitz, Science Journalist, author of Four Lost Cities, A Secret History of the Urban Age, and Gretchen Troy, co-owner of a room of one's own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. Welcome to Science Friday. Good to have both of you back. Thanks, Ira.

Yeah, it's great to be here. Nice to have you. A quick note, we are recording this segment in front of a live Zoom audience. So if you are interested in attending a future, recording, and we've got a couple of really good ones coming up, head over to ScienceFriday.com slash live stream to sign up. Get in our next Zoom audience, science friday.com slash live stream to sign up. Anna Lee, you're a science journalist and science fiction book author. Have you been doing any writing during this pandemic? Wow. Yes, I actually have. I just, today, I'm finishing a novel that

I was working on throughout the pandemic. And it's very much an escapist book for me. I got to go to another planet with talking animals and there is no pandemic happening on this planet. Lots of other terrible things are happening, but no disease. What kind of terrible things were going on? Well, it's a, it's a book about terraforming, which means there's a lot of interesting and creepy things happening with property rights on this planet and who owns what and who gets to chart the course of civilization on this new world. So a lot of different factions, including some flying moose, as one has in the future. Of course, they're flying in the future. Gretchen, you work for an independent bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. Can you give us an idea of what people were reading

this past year? Yeah, wow. It was quite a spread of things. A lot of people were reading a lot of stuff about epidemics and plagues and everything. Like the Camus book, The Plague was very popular in the first weeks, which surprised me because I was like, no, thank you. But yeah, as kind of things progressed,

during the summer, we had a lot of people ordering the big racial theory books and anti-racist Black Lives Matter stuff. We're a very radical feminist intersectional bookstore. So that's kind of where a lot of people came to get those books. Did they ever cross over in their reading habits into science fiction as an escape mechanism? Yeah. I mean, we're known to have a pretty strong science fiction section, so a lot of people already order their sci-fi from us. But we also started doing subscriptions,

and I curate the science fiction one, and it was way more popular than I thought it would be. So every month I get to choose the best sci-fi books for people. Wow. Wow. Okay, well, Let's start doing that. Anna Lee, let me begin with you in your first book selection. Your first book pick, I understand, is We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinksker. Why choose that one? This is a really terrific new book that is beautifully written, really engaging and touching. It's really about a family. And what happens when a craze for a new technology sweeps through the United States? And this is a brain implant, which is kind of a cross between maybe a mobile device and super riddalen. And what it does is it lets people concentrate on multiple tasks and sort of switch between tasks and work much more effectively.

And what happens is this brain implant is widely adopted. It really changes how people can do schoolwork. Because of Sarah Pinsker's incredibly excellent eye for representing family life, we only see these changes as they affect this one family where one mother and one child decide to get the implant and the other mother and the other child decide not to. And we see how their relationships change. We see how this technology affects personal relationships. And then we also see in the background a bigger movement unfolding around having the company that's made it held accountable for what some of the unintended side effects are. So this may be science fiction, but you're dealing with real

issues here, aren't you? It's real issues. It's very believable. It feels like it's something that could happen next year. And it's just her writing is just very inviting. Like if you like stories about family life, this is really a great book for you. It's a nice way to kind of segue from fiction into a little bit of science fiction. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We are talking about our summer book list with Annalie Newitz, science journalist and author of Four Lost Cities, a secret history of the urban age,

and Gretchen Troy, co-owner of a room of one's own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. Okay, Gretchen, your first book is really a classic sci-fi pick, vanished birds. Tell us about that. Yeah, this is a book that came out. It actually came out just before the pandemic, I think, and came out in paperback recently. So it's a really interesting take on how technology shapes culture. And it has this sort of, it goes back and forth between times and between different characters. There's a rotating cast of characters. And it just does this really classic sci-fi thing where it looks at the impact of one technology.

and how it reverberates throughout all of civilization and how individual choices affect how that technology gets adopted and also the many inequalities within a culture that technology creates, whether that's intended or not. It had just like, it was a little sad in points and a little slow in points, but it had a really thoughtful take on personhood and culture and technology and choice. So I just hope more people read it. I thought it was a fascinating book. Sounds like, as we used to call it, a very heavy, heavy book, something that's really thoughtful.

It was, yeah. If you're into world building, then this is a pick for you. Totally. Yeah. Annalise, speaking of the social effects of technology, you've chosen a book with similar themes. It's Ben Rosenbaum's The Unraveling. Sounds like a new series coming up somewhere at Showtime or something like that. Yeah, Benjamin Rosenbaum's novel is a very far future look at humanity. And so people have scattered to the stars tens of thousands of years ago. They've developed into this incredible high technology where they can terraform planets. They literally scoop out the insides of planets and live inside them because that's a better use of space. And they also have the ability to network their brains together so that you can have. actually have one person who lives inside of like five bodies at once. So you can be doing one thing in one body and something else in another body and sleeping in another body. And even though the culture is super advanced, people still somehow manage to figure out a way to invent

social roles around gender, except in this world, they don't have male and female anymore. They have two genders called veil and state. And veils and states have, have very different roles in society. And our main character, Fifth, is a state who breaks the rules by falling in love with a veil. And it actually winds up, it's very romantic, it's very sexy, but sexy in a wholesome way. And their love winds up sparking a whole movement among young people on this planet who start creating fanfic about them, about how their romance works. works and it leads to this revolution. And I don't want to give too many spoilers, but it's just delightful and it's very whimsical, but it's also dealing with very weighty issues around

how we try to restrain people by putting labels on them. So it doesn't matter what planet or what culture you're in. There's some love angle going on. There's always got to be love. All you need is love, right? Okay, so, you know, I'm surprised neither of you have talked about a science fiction book that's a dystopian. We've talked in years past about so many dystopian futures, but you're saying this is sort of a hopeful future. You know, I think that Benjamin Rosenbaum's book is, it's both. You know, it has elements of utopian future. It has, you know, people have, you know, live for hundreds of years and they go through space. But it's also very dystopian because they have these rich. and social roles that they really are chafing against. So I think for me, what I really like in

science fiction is when we get both, when it feels realistically good and bad. We have to take a break, but when we come back, more of the best science fiction books you're going to want to read this summer, plus recommendations from our listeners after this. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Continuing with Sci-Fi summer of Sci-Fi, our annual list of the best books to read this summer. This time, it's all science fiction. With my guest, sci-fi aficionados, and only knew it, science journalist and author of Four Lost Cities, a secret history of the urban age. Gretchen Troy, co-owner of a room of one's own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. Let's talk about Gretchen. Let me think off the top of the head. What if Apple and Google

took over the U.S. and went to war with each other? That's basically the premise of one of your picks in Firebreak, is it not? Something like that going on? It is. I tried to find one for the really, like, techy, cyberpunkky kind of reader. I've seen this book billed as the anarchist feminist answer to Ready Player 1, and I think that's super accurate. It has like a really fast pace. It's really like engaging and fun, and you get really sucked in. It's sort of like you're watching Tron in some moments. But it's also, again, dealing with weighty issues. I would consider it a squarely dystopian setting in some respects. Like corporations have taken over the country,

and there's two evil megacorps working against each other, and the main character is basically a Twitch streamer who gets unwittingly involved in finding out some sinister underbelly stuff that's been going on. And it becomes a very revolutionary story. I think most dystopian books have some element of how we're going to work against the system that's so oppressive. Right, right.

Yeah, I've read a lot of those kinds of science fiction books. Annalie, up next we have your pick Black Sun by Rebecca Ronehorse. Is that correct? Yes. I am so excited about this book. If you are interested in some really great swashbuckling escapism, this is a terrific pick for this summer. And so Black Sun is set in a world that is not our own.

but it strongly resembles the cultures around the Gulf of Mexico about 1,200 years ago. So we have a group that are very much like the Maya. We have a group that are a lot like the ancient Puebloans and a group that's a lot like the ancient Mississippians. And of course, there's also giant flying crows that people ride on top of to go into war. There is a swashbuckling pirate character who's fleeing from her past and helping a young man to, get to a city that he may be able to change the fate of at some point. But like I said, you know, the characters are delightful. It's a really fun adventure. But for me, the true delight is seeing Rhone Horse build these cities up that we've read about in our history books and seeing

them full of people and people gambling and, you know, doing science and, you know, sailing the oceans using advanced, you know, seafaring technology. So it's just a super delightful, fun book. Wow, something for everybody. And you know, you have to read it. I think you started doing it right where you need that announcer saying, in a world where something. I thought you were going there when you said that.

You know, that is kind of my mode. In a world of ancient technology and giant flying crows. Now you got it. There you got it. Well, I mean, and does it show that they're technologically sophisticated folks in pre-colonial era also? Yeah, I mean, that's one of Rhone Horse's big interests. And she deals with this in a lot of her work is showing that, you know, indigenous history is full of incredibly sophisticated civilizations where they have astronomy and they have, you know, boat technology that's very advanced. And it's very international and cosmopolitan. And so that's, like I said, another. real thrill for anyone who is familiar with the true history of Earth, not of this fantasy world, is that it really reflects modern understandings of indigenous culture a thousand years ago. Wow, I want to read that one.

You should. It's so good. Gretchen, one of the themes of science fiction we actually really haven't touched on yet is climate change. And your pick, Master of Poisons, correct? That's right. It's about environmental stewardship from an indigenous perspective. Tell us about that. It's set on this, in this world where there's a lot of climate change that's encroaching upon the cities that people are living in.

There are a lot of oppressive characteristics of the cities. And one of the main characters is connecting with her ancestral traditions, learning how to be a griot and stay out of trouble with the sort of religious cult that has taken on a lot of magical and social power. And the story is really about reaching back. to the roots of cultures who have historically lived in harmony with the land and taken stewardship of the land very seriously and finding ways to not only combat the climate change that's threatening their culture, but also to combat the oppressive forces that are keeping everyone

down and trying to find a more egalitarian way. And what I really love about this book is that it gives the main character a chance not to just say, we should go back to the old ways and be traditionalist, but says you are empowered by this. You have this knowledge of how we did this, but it doesn't mean that's how we have to do it. You are smart and capable. You know our methods, and you can create change. And change is something totally new. And also, it's just like such an immersive, unusual story. The prose is very different from what you often see in fantasy. It has an almost lyric quality. That sounds really cool. Let's go to Linda from Silver Spring, has a question about, of all things, aliens. Hi, Linda. Hello, thank you. I've just been

reading in the press lately that the government may or may not be studying UFOs, and so I've been wondering, are there any recent books about visitors to our planet? Gretchen or Annali, anything for our listener, for Linda, about aliens here, anything you might recommend? There's a really great novel by Carol Imschwiller called The Mount, like as in horse mount, which is one of my favorite first contact stories. And it's about an alien invasion on Earth. And we're invaded by little teeny, tiny, kind of squishy aliens. But they manage to take over. And they turn human beings into their horses, basically, because they're so teeny.

They like to ride on our shoulders. And they start breeding people. and they have like the Seattle breed and different kinds of breeds of people. And the main character, it's very fairy tale-like. And the main character is one of these mounts, and he's starting to learn about the history of Earth and what it used to be like. And it's just, it's very beautiful. And it's very intense.

And I highly recommend it because it's really off the beaten path of your typical alien invasion story. Let's talk on a sub-genre. of sci-fi. And of course, that's the horror story. Annalie, you have a book pick here that you describe as being like the movie Get Out. Tell us about that. Yeah, it's like Get Out or maybe like Lovecraft Country. This is a novella called Ring Shout by P. Jelly Clark. It just won the Nebula for Best Novella. And that's because it's just fantastically funny and exciting, but also it's based in real historical events. The author is a history professor.

This is a pen name for a history professor. And it's about the rise of the second clan in Georgia in 1922. And because this is a fantasy story, our main characters are monster hunters. And it's a group of incredibly awesome, badass women. One is a gala magic woman. One is a chalk-toss scientist. One of them is a Marxist revolutionary. And they're on the path of these demons called Ku Kluxes who control the minds of white people using the brand new technology of movies.

And they're using the movie Birth of a Nation to brainwash white people into becoming demons themselves. And so it's both a very accurate representation of this dark historical period. and also this fantastical kind of almost zany satire of how media can control us and how, you know, something like a movie can actually cause real rifts and really dark, violent episodes. So just highly recommend it. Like I said, if you liked Get Out or if you like Lovecraft Country, it's just, it's really fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, throwing everything into the pot on that one. Speaking of horror, Gretchen, I know that you have. have a pick that's called, we have always been here, a horror, but in space. Wow. Yeah, I just finished it actually. I would consider a little more thriller than horror, but it's, it's this fascinating book about a woman who's a psychologist, and she is really well versed in this type of psychology that in the future allows her to see people's tiny facial tics and just the way that they hold their bodies, their body language, and determine things. about their psyche from that.

And she's stuck on this ship that's going to investigate a planet to see if we're going to go colonize that planet. And like things are unraveling. There's androids on the ship who she connects with much better than she does her fellow humans. The humans don't really trust her because she likes the android so much. It has this very claustrophobic feel. It reminded me a lot of the movie Alien in a lot of ways, in good ways.

And in the end, it also kind of has some temporal dynamics and a lot of interesting thought on artificial intelligence as you learn more about what's going on and why so many people are having these psychotic breaks and episodes and also what's going on with the Androids who are not what they seem. Wow. Fact is almost stranger than fiction these days with Androids. Let's go to Steve from Sacramento who has a question about a book award this year. Hi, Steve.

So I was wondering, what do you think should win the Hugo Award for Best Novel? and best series. Yeah, the Hugo is the top prize, Annalie, right? Yeah, it's one of the big prizes. The Hugo and the Nebula are the two big science fiction and fantasy prizes. I think it's always just fun to try to read all the novels, you know, because they're usually, you know, with a few exceptions, they're usually all quite excellent.

And so it's worth just checking them out to see what people are excited about. The Hugo Awards are nominated by fans. So it's anyone who is a reader. So it's not a fancy group of judges who decide it's by fan vote. So your fellow fans are picking out. I like that. Yeah. I like, yeah.

Vox Populi, as we used to say. Hannah from Portland recommends a classic sci-fi author. Hannah, hi. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, actually, it's Hannah's dad. A little shy, huh? That's okay. Yeah, I'm afraid.

So we just listened to Philip Pullman's series, his dark materials. And I was just curious about you folks have read this, you know, what you think about this interesting mesh of particle physics and fantasy that he pulls together in this series. Good question. Now, with particle physics is hard to know where the fantasy and the science ends, right? Yeah. There's a lot of really amazing stuff that's been written that kind of lives on that border. And some of it's really fun, like I'm thinking of of Gideon the 9th and Harold the 9th, like lesbian necromancers in space. There's necromancy, but there's also like spaceships.

And it's really hard to tell what's going on because you, the reader, don't have the context for what all went down. But yeah, Pullman is interesting. Those books really shaped me as a teenager. Annalie, any comment? I would agree with Gretchen that I think one of the big areas that's growing right now in genre are these crossovers where you'll get like a fantasy horror story or a science fiction fantasy story. I think it makes the stories feel more awe-inspiring because you kind of remember

how much that science is really about exploring the unknown. And it's not about what we do know. It's about what we're trying to know. And so I think fantasy can help you evoke that feeling. I'm Ira Plato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We are talking. about our summer book list with Annalie Newitz, science journalist and author of Four Lost Cities, a secret history of the urban age, and Gretchen Troy, co-owner of a room of one's own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. I think we have time for just another question or two. Annalie, give me your last pick. Last up on your list is the all-consuming world, and it's got cyborgs in it. Yes, this is Cassandra Kha's first novel. It's coming in September, so it's a little bit of a cheat.

here. Cassandra Caugh is a video game designer. So she spends all her time surrounded by tech, and she's written an incredible novel about cyborg clone lesbians doing crimes in space, and they've gotten together for one last job. It has a very fast and a furious feeling to it, but it's also very beautifully written. It's about how this group of scrappy criminals is going up against some of the toughest AIs in the galaxy. And, you know, you kind of come to this story for the action, but stay for like a really amazing meditation on consciousness. And what happens to your consciousness when it can be uploaded or downloaded or edited

or your memories changed or you could be merged with another mind? So it's really delightful. And like I said, it's really beautiful too. So it's kind of a great mashup of cool stuff. Nice, nice. And Gretchen, last up for you is the ninth medal. What is the ninth medal? This is a book by Benjamin Percy, who if you've never heard him,

has the coolest voice I've ever heard. But it's about a meteor that hits a small northern Minnesota town. And it turns out that it's carrying a ninth Nobel Medal. Currently, there's eight noble medals, and this is the ninth. And so as people kind of start to dig it up and figure out what's going on, this omnibetal is what it's called in the book. It's very powerful. It can be used to power a lot of electricity and energy. It can also be used as a weapon. And so this is sort of a book that's sort of billed as a modern gold rush because this tiny, sleepy little Minnesota town becomes suddenly the epicenter of

all kinds of interests and a family that lives there becomes only. almost like the mob kings of northern Minnesota, a lot of small town politics and characters kind of vying for figuring out what they want out of this substance and how this technology changes their lives. It also has a really interesting thing where some of the people that were near the meteor when it got blasted to Earth, they take on these superpowers. And it's all about like, what are we going to do with those? Are they going to become our living weapons?

Is there a way that we can infuse this into other people who has control of that technology and where is it going to go? So it's all about how technology influences social structures in a lot of ways. And I like the idea that you have another medal coming to Minnesota's Iron Range. Yeah. Of all the places it was going to land. Well, we have run out of time. I'd like to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much for having it. Anna Lee Newitt, science journalist, author of Four Lost Cities, a secret history of the urban age, and Gretchen Troy, co-owner of a room of one's own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. Go out and visit that bookstore. Thank you both again. If you'd like to join us next time, we're already preparing for our next live Zoom event.

We want to hear from all of you gardeners. Tell us about your summer vegetable garden. Are your melons mealy and flavorless? Do your tomatoes crack before they ripen? Are your pea pods pooping out? Lettuce help you. Yeah, I said it. Send us your questions about your vegetable garden.

Gardening experts will join us to talk about the science of tending to your homegrown produce. That's on the SciFri Vox Pop app, wherever you get your apps. And to join us for a live taping of that segment, just go to ScienceFriiday.com slash live stream. That's ScienceFriiday.com slash live stream to see. sign up. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.