Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin. Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB. Texts include: The Thousand and One Nights Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels The Travels of Marco Polo Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass The stories of Franz Kafka James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin
Fiction and the Fantastic
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Podcast Overview
Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin. Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB. Texts include: The Thousand and One Nights Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels The Travels of Marco Polo Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass The stories of Franz Kafka James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin
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Publishing Since
1/3/2025
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Recent Episodes
December 18, 2025
A Taxonomy of the Fantastic
Though the last twelve episodes have taken Marina Warner and her interlocutors through many worlds and texts, no series could ever encompass the full scope of fantastic literature. This episode, recorded live at Swedenborg House, is an attempt to fill the gaps, or fail heroically. Marina and Adam Thirlwell are joined by Edwin Frank, editorial director of the New York Review Books and author of ‘Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel’. Together they assess existing canons and definitions, redefine and rediscover categories and exceptions, and consider the pleasures and uses of the fantastic. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrff In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Read more in the LRB: Colin Burrow: Fiction and the Age of Lies https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n04/colin-burrow/fiction-and-the-age-of-lies Marina Warner on fairytale: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n21/marina-warner/that-which-is-spoken Jonathan Lethem on Stanisław Lem and Science Fiction: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n03/jonathan-lethem/my-year-of-reading-lemmishly A.D. Nuttall on the rhetoric of the fantastic: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/a.d.-nuttall/really-fantastic
November 17, 2025
Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin
When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese translations. The huge and loyal readership among children and older readers that she built during her lifetime has only grown since her death, as has recognition of her work as ‘serious’ literature. Chafing against her confinement in genre fiction, she liberated sci-fi, fantasy and YA literature from the condescension to which they had long been subjected. In 2016, she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetime by the Library of America. For the final regular episode of Fiction and the Fantastic (though there will be one more special episode) Marina and Chloe read ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘The Dispossessed’: works of exceptional imaginative power and intellectual range, passionate idealism and keen-eyed observation. Is Le Guin’s status in both literary and ‘genre’ canons a testament to the force and clear-sightedness of her radical – even prophetic – political vision? And what does it mean for the fantastic if we accept her self-characterisation as a ‘realist of a larger reality’? Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrff In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Further reading and listening from the LRB: Colin Burrow on Ursula K. Le Guin: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/colin-burrow/it-s-not-jung-s-it-s-mine A collection of writing on science fiction from the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/collections/in-hyperspace Amia Srinivasan on Le Guin’s experiments with pronouns: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita Colin Burrow discusses Le Guin with Thomas Jones on the LRB Podcast: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/magical-authority Next episode: A taxonomy of fantastic literature with Marina, Adam Thirlwell and Edwin Frank.
October 19, 2025
J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter
J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter were friends and co-conspirators in their witness to the postwar world and the liberation movements of the 1960s. Both were scathing in their antipathy towards the polite novels of manners and empire that still dominated English readers’ appreciation and expectations. Pioneers in the liminal spaces between literary and ‘genre’ fiction, and science fiction in particular, both of them are haunted by the visions of Swift, Shelley, Kafka and Borges. Ballard’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ and ’The Passion of New Eve‘, considered together here along with Ballard’s short story ’The Drowned Giant‘, are vivid, fearless, still shocking novels of ideas – if ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ can be described as a novel at all. Marina and Chloe discuss that question as they consider Ballard’s catalogue of contemporary violence and pop culture transgression. Then they turn to Carter’s own gleeful transgressions, born out of the ferment of 1970s cultural theory, which she explores and interrogates with inimitable style. But do the excesses of these works still speak to the present, and does their lack of restraint risk collapsing the whole category of the fantastic? Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrff In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Further reading in the LRB: Susannah Clapp on Angela Carter: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n05/susannah-clapp/diary Edmund Gordon on J.G. Ballard: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n10/edmund-gordon/his-galactic-centrifuge Watch ‘If God is a snail...’, a film about Carter’s food writing for the LRB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxqr5O2JFvE Listen to Edmund Gordon discuss Ballard on the LRB Podcast: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/on-j.g.-ballard Next episode: Ursula K. Le Guin.
14 total episodes available
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