The Gargle - The Gargle Enters Realms Unknown...

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

After a week where our book A Passion For Passion is released, Alice takes a brief break and presents our new podcast, Realms Unknown. Please follow it wherever you enjoy podcast! Watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastSubscribe to Realms Unknown - a brand-new fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction podcast from Alice Fraser and The Bugle!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/news/realms-unknownYou fund what we do!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wealthsimple's Big Winter Bundle is our best match offer yet. Get a 2% match when you transfer over an eligible RRSP. For a $50,000 transfer, that's a $1,000 cash bonus. Enough to buy a fancy parka. A ticket to somewhere you don't need a fancy parka. Or just be responsible and top up your retirement fund. Plus, move any other eligible account and we'll give you a 1% match. Minimum $15,000 transfer.

Register by March 15th. Additional terms apply. Learn more at wealth give you a 1% match. Minimum $15,000 transfer. Register by March 15th. Additional terms apply. Learn more at wealthsimple.com slash match. Hello, garglers. After a week where I have traveled the world, launched a new book, and written the show for the tour of the book, I did not have time

to deliver a high quality gargle as I would have liked. I do have another new podcast that you can use to fill the hole. It's called Realms Unknown and if you have not heard it yet, I would love you to hear this podcast. It is right in my wheelhouse. We've episode one and two are recorded with Tom Neenan. If you listen and like it, please follow in the Realms Unknown feed and you can also watch it on YouTube that is realms unknown. The air inside the village in buzzes with life a heady blend of pipe smoke, quest admin, laughter and the clink of mugs.

Nestled in the hollow heart of a shadowy oak at the heart of Oakshadow Hollow, a farming village in a forest world at the edge of the Forbidden Quadrant, this is no ordinary tavern. The wooden beams above you shimmer faintly with cyber runes. The log-hewn walls bear the laser gun scars of battles long past, and it's here in a corner booth just beyond the reach of the flickering light that you sit. A simple farm hand in the bot farms by day, a dreamer by night, and now presented with the call to action, a reluctantly fascinated listener to Realms Unknown. Welcome to Realms Unknown, traveller. Come on in and rest the weary feet of your ears against the comfortingly solid oaken table that is a new podcast in

the Bugle family. I'm your host, your tavern, or your buxom landl that is a new podcast in the bugle family. I'm your host, your tavern, your buxom landlady with a twinkle in her eye and a mysteriously battered soul on the wall. Alice Fraser, once a week for about half of one of your human hours. I and a guest host will journey through everything in the realms of speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and more from iconic literary stuff to games to the latest TV shows. It's a dragon sized download of the genres we love in your brain every week and your guest host for this week is Tom Neenan. Hello. Hello. Hello. How are you doing?

I am well, tired. I'm very tired. Okay. If this is a fantasy genre, should you be tired or should you be exhausted from the day or something? What would be the sort of the fantasy appropriate descriptor be? You're depleted. I'm being followed by the dark mysterious shadows that sap my energy. Yes, exactly. Well, we're going to start with our first section, which is a section I'm going to call All

Decks, This is Your Captain Speaking, which is all of the headlines and the news from this week. Physical book sales have risen for the first time since the pandemic. Publishers Weekly put out their numbers, which is an unusual thing in itself because publishers are generally very coy about their numbers, but Publishers Weekly has put together a survey about all of the stuff. Fiction and specifically fantasy has gone up 35.8% in terms of its sales, which apparently is mostly driven by the Romantic subgenres explosive rise. And within that, specifically Sarah J Maas

and Rebecca Yaros. I don't know if you've heard about Sarah J Maas and the Court of Thorns and Roses or Rebecca Yaros with fourth wing. They're basically fantasy with serious banging, I guess. Is that right? So they're sort of following on from the sort of 50 shades, like people who actually want some not some euphemistic kind of dalliances, but something actually graphic and descriptive.

Well, it's sort of like Lord of the Rings meets, yeah, meets Bridgerton, maybe. I think people watched, I mean, it's always existed. You've always had sort of the Dragon Riders of Pern and stuff, but I think people watched Game of Thrones and they thought, yeah, but what women are enjoying themselves there, you know? Yes, exactly. It's like that. They're generally pretty well received. They're incredibly popular. They're smashing up book records all over the place. There's a little bit of controversy because they tend to use just sort of pan-Celtic appropriation.

So specifically, Rebecca Yaros and Sarah J. Maas have been accused of getting rich off Gaelic and Gaelic and Cumreg and just scattering in all of the names and mythology willy-nilly without actually being very accurate about it, which to my mind speaks of a sort of an American approach to European history. But people aren't pissed off enough about it to not buy the books. So there's no like victim of that situation, right? There's no individual person being ripped off. It's more just like a mythos that's being offended.

Yeah, no, as far as I can tell, it's just sort of general laziness, mainly in terms of naming things to make them sound very landish. You can't have a whimsical culture without someone ripping it off. What do you expect? They're only human. What were you wearing? Was it an ancient storytelling tradition with a lot of cool characters in it? Well, you were asked to be ripped off. In other news, Warner Brothers is planning on doing a fourth Dune movie after what I thought was the first

Dune movie turned into three Dune movies. They're going to do a fourth Dune movie, but they're not necessarily going to bring Denis Villeneuve with it, which seems really strange to me because I feel like the whole of Dune is sort of his thing, isn't it? I thought so. And my writing thinking as well, forgive me, I'm not a Junoficionado, but I do have sort of a cultural osmosis tells me those books get madder and madder, don't they? Like they get like, it feels like Denny Dillner was very good at creating like a solid world that you could believe exists. And that as they go on, there's like worm gods, and

it becomes less tethered to any kind of reality we might recognize. Is that the case? Well, even just the next book, like if you're going to do the next book, then there's like, I think there's one who turns into half a sandworm, but then falls in love with his assassin, and he's sort of half human, half sandworm, which given the scale that they've established in the first two movies seems tricky. But yeah, there's a lot of sort of body horror-ish stuff in that would have to be in the fourth movie if they're going to do it that way, that would probably be more suited to the original Lynchian version of, like, I feel like Denis Villeneuve

definitely read Dune, but I feel like David Lynch read all of the books. Yes. Yes. We're going to have a man who's just, instead of a mouth, he's got a tube that's going directly into the ass of a hamster and that's like just horrifying. Oh man, that was a great Dune. I just, it had that great, if anyone has not seen the original Dune movie that was done by David Lynch, just take the time and in memory of Lynch, go watch that because it's so batshit and beautifully insane.

I really, I think the thing that they failed most on was like the mind to mind talking, because they all just think really loudly. My brother and I once watched it incredibly jet lagged and then we spent the entire time in an English class whispering loudly to each other. I can tell what you're thinking. It comes for you. But from memory that Dune film is very gungy. It's like very like slimy and gungy and stuff in a way that like the Denis Villeneuve one is very dry, very arid as you'd expect for something from Dune.

But like he really loved the kind of the, Lynch as per usual leaned into the grossness of what June was kind of doing. Yeah, he really, really did. And then I don't know whether it was his artistic choice or whether it was slapped on later by the studio, but my brother and I just chose to believe. We just chose to believe that they thought they were psychic. And they thought they were having all of these complicated thoughts inside their heads, but they were all just actually whispering really loudly. Anyway, they weren't psychic. I think they just all think complicated thoughts that are in the book.

They're like, oh, but he thinks that, but then he knows that I think that it's basically the scene in The Princess Bride where he's guessing who has the poison in the cup, but then he knows that I think that, you know, it's basically the scene in the Princess Bride where they're, where he's guessing who has the poison in the cup, but they're all doing that all of the time. Dune, great book. In other news, the return of Severance, season two of Severance is out in Australia, it's on Apple TV. I don't know where it is in your, in your realms where you're listening to it. I watched it, which is very exciting for me. It's

probably the first thing I've watched since the finale of the last season of Severance, my life being what it is now. And I was, I was worried, I was worried because it can, between one season and the next, particularly if there's like a long gap between things can lose traction, lose momentum. Uh, but just from the opening shot, I felt again, as I did with the opening shot of season one, I was like, ah, I'm in safe hands. Whoever's moving this camera knows what they're doing. It is just such a, like, even if it weren't well written, even if it weren't well acted, it is so beautiful to look at, which is sort of surprising given

that so much of it is set in faceless office buildings. Have you seen Severance at all, Tom? I have. I've been enjoying all of Apple TV's people are stressed underground TV shows, of which I think there are, well, there's only two, but so I've been enjoying Silo and I'm very much enjoying Severance as well. Yeah, I thought that episode one picked up, given that now we're in the situation where TV series have three year breaks, which is mad. I like TV, which was like 25 episodes, then basically a break for the stars to film a movie and then back again. And, you know, we never, there's never not a moment where we're not seeing

one of the cast members of Friends doing something basically was the how TV used to be. Now we have to wait for three years. But I thought it's so impressive. Like you say, it just picks up and suddenly you're back in that world. And it was and all the intrigue is still there. Yeah, I think it's really impressive. And I don't know, I'm watching another series as well called From, which is of an American TV series, again, in sort of the realm of Lost, which is we all hope that they all know where this is going.

We all hope that there is a grand plan, because I know that the habit used to be just keep people asking questions and get recommissions so that you can do more. And that was, you know, cause that's how the business model works. But I think both of those shows seem to be sort of suggesting and promising. There is a plan and there is a grander vision. And it isn't people going just late, you know,

isn't grommets laying the train track as he's going going, Oh, I hope this leads somewhere. Good. It's like I have faith in them as creators anyway. It's very exciting. Well, I sort of have faith. Weirdly, I've had faith in Ben Stiller, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say in my life. But he seems to have, he seems to have a sense of like, maybe it's from the comedy background, but he seems to have a sense of timing. So I'm hoping that he won't stretch out the mysteries too long without delivering some answers.

And I thought season one did that so well, leaving a lot of the main mysteries still open, but also giving you some really meaty satisfying like action and resolution and forward momentum. So I'm crossing all of my bits because again, because I get to watch so few things nowadays that everything is really high stakes. So I almost, you know, there's two options there. Either you like commit to something

really good or you like, you know, I'm just going to watch trash because then I won't be disappointed. If you want evidence of Ben Stiller having sort of an eye for both offbeat comedy, but also kind of dark intrigue, often sort of imagining to the cable guy, the movie The Cable Guy that he made starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick is it makes interesting watching you can see because Ben's still the director of that and you can see, like the embryonic bits of what made Severance so good, the sort of the weirdness that I think at the time people did not

respond to because they wanted Ace Ventura and what they got was sort of a weird psychological drama with Jim Car think at the time people did not respond to because they wanted Ace Ventura and what they got was sort of a weird psychological drama with Jim Carrey at the centre of it, but it's well worth checking out again, I would say. Well the other thing that may well be worth checking out again is if anyone was alive when Doom was a PC gaming experience that you could all indulge in. Somebody has now done a skin on Zoom to turn it into an experience for art snobs. Basically, it's Doom set in an art gallery. You can engage with the art, you can drink champagne,

you can have little nibbles on sticks, you can collect money and fame. It's an extraordinary thing. Tom, have you seen this? I have not. This is brand new news to me. This is so exciting. Is it something where you can choose the gallery or is it just like it tells you what gallery you are walking around and splatting? Basically, it's Doom Guy. It's called Doom the gallery experience. You have a glass of red wine in your hand and you get to look at different pieces of artwork.

You work in various exhibitions. He's got glasses. They've added glasses in the UI. You can pick up wine bottles or derves and cash, and you have to exit via the gift shop. So each piece of, you look at each piece of work, you can get a link to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, right up of that piece of work so you can learn it. It's actually an educational experience. I just think this is delightful. I feel like Doom's really grown up and started

delivering. like Doom's really grown up and started delivering. I love it. Previously, if you wanted to have like a POV experience in an art gallery, uh, remotely, the only thing I can think of is the video for Will Young's Leave Right Now, um, which is basically Will Young has an argument with you, his lover, and sort of, uh, in an art gallery and you will experience it by, uh by a first person. So it sounds like that basically.

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my butthole. That's Destined Hearts of Starlight Consequence available now at all bad bookshops. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Dragons. Dragons, the original flamethrower. Wealthsimple's Big Winter Bundle is our best match offer yet. Get a 2% match when you transfer over an eligible RRSP. For a $50,000 transfer, that's a $1,000 cash bonus. Enough to buy a fancy parka, a ticket to somewhere you don't need a fancy parka, or just be responsible and top up your retirement fund. What have you been into? What have you been reading? What have you been watching? What have you been sucking up into your brains? I am being evangelical about a little fellow that I've made friends with. He's an adorable

little fellow. Until about two years ago, no one knew who he was, but then he emerged onto the scene in a tiny little package and now he is taking the world by storm. I'm talking, of course, about Astro Bot. I have been playing Astro Bot, which is, I guess, in this run, like a sci-fi style platformer, much in the style of sort of the old school Mario and those kind of things, but it sort of adds this new fresh twist on it. It is charm personified. Astrobot is the hero we need right now. Uh, the basic plot is that him and his mates are flying in a spaceship.

Uh, suddenly they're attacked. They, all of his friends are dispersed across various platforms, various nebula, various universes, and Astrobot has to get them back. This isn't someone trying to claim back a princess as a trophy wife. This is a man trying to rebuild his community, and he is doing it to the best of his ability, and I can't help but love him for it.

Astrobot is my hero of 2024 and 2025 so so far and I absolutely adore him. It's charming, it's brilliant and yeah, it's what I would recommend to anyone who needs a bit of a pick-me-up, especially in sort of January. And this isn't an ad, this isn't a hashtag ad, this is just my heartfelt belief that Astro Bot will lift any spirit. So how good do you have to be at playing games to enjoy Astrobot? Because I always feel a sense of like quiet despair when I fail the characters by lack of skill. Yeah it is quite scary like Astrobot will burst if you fail him and will like plummet down but it's challenging but I think it's nicely staged so that you can find your way through it. Some of them are like the speed rounds and the individual tests can

be quite challenging, but I think you will just want to please Astro Bot. You'll do the grinding out of each individual level until you get every single puzzle piece and bots that you can and you'll feel pride afterwards. It's wonderful. That's all I've ever wanted is to feel pride. And I must say like, it's charm is a word that sort of follows it around. There is a very charming, beautiful, like he's a charming character and yeah, I, I, I hardly recommend it. And that brings us to a section I like to call crossing the streams, which is where

fiction crosses over into real life. And here it is the fact that book talk, the book reading community on Tik Tok that has been profoundly influential in the last couple of years in driving book sales, particularly in the romantic genre, is tearing itself apart from the inside with trying to decide whether art should be political or not. Apparently, some people say it's fiction. It's about elves f***ing. It's not political at all. And other people have strong favorites in the political arena, particularly

obviously in America. Do you think your dragon banging books should be free of politics or do you think that you should be in the middle of like an epic kind of Lingus scene on the deck of a starship and have somebody contemplating what political norms should be in place. This goes back to my, sadly, my bug there, which is if you're writing, are you writing fiction? You are creating art. The act of creating art is a political act and everything that you write is in itself political and thinking that it's apolitical is an act of politics as well. So I think that sadly it just depends basically how much you turn up the dial right, but if you

there are certain things that you realize yeah are political. For instance I was thinking this the other day about if you were a fantasy writer of colour, and you wanted to, for instance, have a fantasy realm where unlike 99% of fantasy realms, everyone wasn't basically sort of Celtic Caucasian kind of thing. And you wanted, you know, people with darker skin or people who look more like you to occupy this world. I'd say about, you know, 90% of readers of fantasy were considered just that act as political, as a political thing. Whereas for you, that might just be like, no, I just want a fantasy realm where the main characters or the characters look more like I do.

So yeah, basically, I think every choice you make, creating even a fantasy realm with zero connection, or at least what you think is zero connection to the real world is a political choice. So lean into it guys. It makes it better. It makes it more fun if it is political. And yeah, that I'm sorry. I don't think you can escape it either way. Just so you may as well just enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, you can't pretend that, for example, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings weren't wildly political, like clarion calls to the heartland of the definition of what Englishness could possibly be. Yeah. Yeah.

Go with, yeah, we're mythmaking. Mythmaking is always political. Exactly. Let's not think too much about how basically, yeah, the good bit of Middle Earth looks like the Cotswolds and the bad bit is the hotter bit, where the people with, yeah, where the darker skinned creatures come from. Let's, you know, let's, there are choices being made

and saying they're not political is, you are showing yourself basically. You're revealing yourself in that situation. And that brings us to our genre deep dive or specifically our sub-genre submarine, where we go into one of the new emerging, fascinating little facets of speculative fiction. In this instance, in our first episode,

we're gonna talk about lit RPG and progression fantasy. Do you know what lit RPG is, Tom? I'm gonna let you steer on this one because while I can sort of get from context what it would be, I don't want to mansplain something that I don't understand. So you know how fantasy games are based on fantasy books? Yes. Yeah? And fantasy games have features like you have a deck of qualities and numbers that attach to them and you know what

your statistics are and those statistics might go up as you progress through the game. So you have games that are based on the books. You now also have books that are based on what it would be like to be a person if the character were a person in the game. were a person in the game. So the character will be drawn into a scenario where for whatever reason or whatever, however the author sets it up, they have, and are aware of their own game playing and skill acquiring process. Sometimes it's like a voice talking to them, sometimes they have a HUD, sometimes they have some internal meter. It's so fascinating as a kind of a reflection of the progress of fantasy and sci-fi genres,

the ways in which people who've been reading those books and playing those games now want to imagine what it would be like if you weren't just playing the game, but being in the game. I have a recommendation for this. If it sounds like it's up your alley or interesting, Dungeon Crawler Carl is the recommendation. Right. I'll make you a note. Yeah, please. I think you would really love it. It's funny. And Dungeon Crawler, Carl's written by Matt Dineman.

There are like 10 or 11 books you're plunging into a series. It's so reasonable. It's so chatty. It's like the tone of it is really light and fun, but it's dealing with some sort of more intense issues at moments. The premise is this guy, Carl, sort of grumpy man whose life isn't going particularly well, steps outside. Oh, I've zoomed in.

When you said the word grumpy, suddenly you zoomed in. That's because Chris Skinner, who's the producer of this podcast, sent me this camera and it's an AI camera. So we're living in the future and the AI camera has hand gestures that you can do to make it zoom or unzoom. I need to figure out what exactly hand gesture I need to do. Anyway, the point was backing up. I can make it. This is for a sci-fi fantasy podcast. The technology turning against you in the sort of third act is very on-brand.

I should have practiced this. I was just making it all up. I don't know. I don't know. We're keeping all this in, right? This is gold. I'm the worst wizard in the world. In this instance, would your character have rolled a one for understanding how the camera works?

Yeah, yeah. A one for understanding how the camera works? Yeah, yeah. A one for practicing the technology. Yeah. I just never expected to need to use the function, but I knew there was a hand gesture and now I know what it is and I'm trying not to make it. Backing up, our hero is Carl. He wakes up at four o'clock in the morning and goes out to get his cat,

his girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut. And as he steps out into the cold, cold, cold night in his bare feet and boxer shorts, every single building on earth collapses into the core of the world. And the only people who happen to be outside at the time are alive and they're on the outside and then they get given the choice through a loud voice that comes in somewhere in their brain that they give them the choice to enter the dungeon.

Nice. Or they can stay outside and they won't be hurt, but they also won't be helped. And there's not there's no infrastructure on the surface of the planet. So they'll be in a bit of trouble. But, you know, he goes in to one of these doorways that appears and takes him into the centre of the earth. And in the process of entering the dungeon, Princess Donut the Cat also becomes a sentient player and they have to figure out their way through these games and levels towards the center of the Earth. And then there's people watching on other planets and they have to figure out what happened to their planet and how they're going to go on from here. And it's really funny and really silly and like solidly good.

I would recommend it for people who have never heard of LitRPG. It's a really good crossover book. It's a really good entry point to the genre. If you're not like, if you're not a massive gamer, it will also make total sense to you. It's really, really fun. I feel like- Dungeon Caller Carl, Nat Dineman. The audio book is very good of it as well.

That it feels like it's going mainstream that whole the sort of meta narrative that we have, if you look at things, I guess, even from like the Lego movie to Barbie, people are slowly getting more and more used to that idea about sort of the stories within stories and things that people are telling, where we sort of you enter the fictional world, and then maybe you also have access to the outer world as well. My friend of mine, I think it's public knowledge is writing The Sims movie. And while she hasn't divulged what

happens in The Sims movie, you sort of feel like there are two versions. One is it's completely within The Sims world, or the other is, like you say, there are people and. One is it's completely within the Sims world or the other is like you say there are people and they're aware of being controlled by some external force that maybe they can they go on to communicate with or something. But it feels like that kind of storytelling is becoming more mainstream. Yeah, yeah I mean it's it's certainly a really fun and interesting thing for someone who is as pickled in genre as I am to see all these incredible new subgenres emerging in the world. And part of it I think is to do with, you know, fan fiction and people's

desire to kind of really hyper specialize their own interests and like follow their own algorithmic path, but also determine that to some extent for themselves rather than having it spoon-fed them. So that is our sub-genre submarine into lit RPG and progression fantasy. party anymore with this ominous beeping and throbbing machine. Strap it to a table or your chest and hold the room in the palm of your hand as you expound on your latest poetic work or plan to take over the world. Stop being the guy with the guitar. Start being the guy with Devon's discount doomsday device. Half price until the end of dry January, at which point it will come into contact with water and God knows what will happen next. Half a glass of water.

Ominous. And I'm on tour in the UK. I look up the dates on alisfrazer.com if you want to come. It's a passion for passion, the show, which is based on a passion for passion, the book, which is also available online. If you write my name and a passion for passion, it'll probably come up. That's how the internet works. I know that I'm a guest and thus I obviously am'm but I am so excited for this. I am the design, everything has got me very kind of yeah it's right up my street and I will be there. I'm very

excited for this tour and I can't wait to hear it. It's gonna be very good. Oh thank you so much. I've had a few people say I'm not really into romance novels well I still enjoy the show and I yes, this show is for people who love romance and also for people who have no idea why people love romance. That's everyone. It's for everyone. The show is for everyone. It's not for everyone. I'm not for everyone. I'm an acquired taste, Tom. But that, but it's a, yeah, it's a broad acquired taste if that's a thing, if that isn't a contradiction in terms. Free-flowing, top-of-your-head improvised fantasy novels

coming from a stream of consciousness near you. Unplanned, unstructured, and literally just the first thing that comes out of my mouth, an unplanned fantasy novel in which there's a wizard, I guess, and sure, he lives on a beach, and maybe there's also a big falcon. If you want this kind of structured narrative in which things just basically happen one after the other and consequence doesn't lead to action, then I can recommend my free-flowing

top-of-my-head romance fiction fantasy novel, coming out of my mouth wherever I can be found. I mean, I've got to take issue with that. Wizards can't live on a beach. It doesn't work, does it? A wizard on a beach isn't... The sand interferes with the sort of dignity. I think sand and dignity can't coexist, really. That's why Australia is such an egalitarian nation, because we all have to be on the beach at some point. It's why Jesus told you He was on the beach after He'd been on the beach, so you didn't see Him on the beach.

He was like, oh, by the way, those footprints were mine, but you didn't see me because He knows deep down the dignity would have been gone. I just thought that was because the Bible couldn't afford to film on the beach, so they just did the thing with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can see where they've cut corners with like a bit of like, oh, that happened off screen kind of stuff. It's smart.

It's smart. I have a friend who writes on a very famous dragon show. Uh, I won't, I won't name it because that would be breaching confidentiality, but think of the famous dragon show and it's that one. And she said like a significant proportion of her job is just figuring out how to not have dragons because they cost like $100,000 a minute. So it's a lot of like, my Lord, there was a dragon yonder. You just missed it. Wealthsimple's Big Winter Bundle is our best match offer yet. Get a 2% match when you transfer over an eligible RRSP.

For a $50,000 transfer, that's a $1,000 cash bonus. Enough to buy a fancy parka. A ticket to somewhere you don't need a fancy parka. Or just be responsible and top up your retirement fund. Plus, move any other eligible account and we'll give you a 1% match. Minimum $15,000 transfer. Register by March 15th. Additional terms apply. Learn more at Wealthsimple.com slash match. That brings me to the section I'd like to call, convince me to read this book. We are asking you to send us an email to realms unknown at the bugle podcast.com

with a voice note about a book that you think is funny or strange or that I might not have read and convince me to read it. If you read it, if I read it, I'll put it up on this bookshelf behind me. But we start with a voice note from someone who I know particularly well, because he's my twin brother, fellow fantasy nerd, Henry Fraser. My sci-fi slash fantasy recommendation is the old fire trilogy by C.S. Friedman, it's sort of sci-fi and sort of fantasy. So it's set on a planet that has been colonized by earthlings. We know there's a backstory there, which is kind of misty at the beginning and you gradually come to understand. Humans have come to this planet but encounter on this planet

a strange force where people's fears, wishes and dreams come into being and prey upon them and feed upon them. So the energy on this planet that's responsible for that is called the fae. So the system of magic on that planet revolves around the face. It's really cool. She goes quite deep into it and kind of, you know, it's got that real appeal for a nerd who wants deep magic in the fantasy. This Friedman Celia Friedman's woman, but she writes the main protagonist male characters. It has that like, I can't remember his 80s or 90s.

It's got that hilarious 80s 90s fantasy naming vibe where the main characters are called Damien and Gerald, and they like address each other as like, come on Damien, come on Gerald. How would you possibly say that? I loved it. It's interesting to have male characters written by a woman. It's interesting to have male characters written by a woman. It's interesting how the whole premise that like your beliefs come true and that the whole world works around who believes what and why. And their gradual world building is awesome. The story could be a little more exciting, but it's made up for by the world building. And just the sheer like pure fantasy nerdiness of this is a very hard to beat.

So that's my recommendation. Now that is a great, that is a great convince me to read this book. Obviously we've stacked the deck by having it be my twin brother who knows my taste to a tee. I also have to admit to slightly cheating on this one because he sent me this voice note at 3pm this afternoon and I've already read the first quarter of this book in response. I immediately bought it and started reading it. So I've got to say, it's a great recommendation. Tom, are you convinced

to read the book? It sounded great. It doesn't sound exactly my genre. But first of all, I mean, let's address the elephant in the room. That wasn't your twin brother. That was you with your voice pitch shift down, I think. Is that the... That's what I'm suspecting. No, but it was very convincing. Like I say, it doesn't sound exactly like my genre, but it sounds fun. I do like the slightly horror elements of it. I think that that would really appeal to me. The nightmare-ish stuff would be that sounds really cool. Yeah, I'm going to say that's convinced me. It's going on the list. I'm going to order it from a reputable bookseller.

Yeah. I really, really like the idea of, I mean, fundamentally, like you have the interpersonal stuff of like people's own fears affecting them, but also like you've got religions warring for the belief of people because the more people believe, the more power they have and like that is so cool. And also, you know, in the way that all of these things are reflecting on, on the world as it is now where basically if you're controlling the narrative, you control the vote and so, and so on and so forth. So I think this is, um, yeah, as I said, I've read about a quarter of the first book, but I'm into it.

I'm really into it. Can I ask as well, having not seen the book, I basically, I really want to dive into something if it's like 900 pages and there are seven in the series. Is it one where it's like you're diving into a big old world? Yes, I think so. I think there's at least three or four books already out. So I don't know if they're at the end there yet. I'll have to ask Henry, but thank you to Henry Fraser for generally being a good brother and also for that recommendation. All right, everyone, I've got your missions for the week. If you want to be nerd cool, look up the Doom

Gallery experience. If you want to be part of the Zeitgeist, go dive into Severance. If you haven't watched season one, watch season one. If you have watched season one, watch season one again. It'll prepare you for season two. I guarantee you've forgotten some of the twists and turns. If you want to be doing what everyone else is doing, read Rebecca Yaros's Fourth Wing or A Court of Thorns and Roses because everyone else is and you'll know what they're reading on the train and you can raise your eyebrow at them in a slightly suggestive manner because I guarantee you they'll be reading a sex scene. And that brings us to the end of episode one of Realms Unknown. Please, we are banging this into shape. We're figuring out what this podcast is.

Next week, we're going to do a bit more of a classic episode where we go back into the past and look at our favorite science fiction and fantasy in history. So if you have any suggestions for us, what you want to see in this podcast, email us at realmsunknown at the buglepodcast.com. Tom Ninan, have you got anything to plug? Oh, I've got a new thing to plug. Over Christmas, as well as my work as a writer, I am a painter and illustrator as well, which I've really enjoyed. And it was really thrilling. I am a painter and illustrator as well, which I've been really enjoyed. And it was really thrilling. I did a print of one of my paintings, which was a smoking Cyberman kind of thing. And which was based on an original image and the man who

played the Cyberman now is in possession of a picture of himself smoking. I really enjoyed creating art, especially at a time when art is being generated by AI and all those things, actual physical art, but then I turn into prints and I sell at hopefully a reasonable price. So tomneenanart.bigcartel.com is somewhere where I'm sort of hopefully over the course of the year going to be selling more stuff and generating more stuff and taking requests and commissions and stuff like that. So visit that if you want to have a look, there's some things that

are available and just get in contact. And that's really nice because, because yeah, isn't art nice when it's made by humans is all I'd say. So hopefully see you there. This is a Bugle podcast at Alice Fraser Production. Your editor and your executive producer is Chris Skidow. Join us again next week where we will enter some more Realms Unknown. Wealthsimple's Big Winter Bundle is our best match offer yet. Get a 2% match when you transfer over an eligible RRSP. For a $50,000 transfer, that's a $1,000 cash bonus.

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what you need to know about navigating modern romance. I'm podcaster and author Elizabeth Day. And I'm Mel Schilling, relationship coach. Every week, we aim to give you the skills you need to show up as yourself on the apps and in real life. Join us for frank expert advice, brilliant guests and practical exercises that will leave you feeling empowered to make the changes you need to meet the person that is worthy of you. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.