DraxtoReads across the Metaverse was a frequent segment on the Drax Files Radio Hour podcast with bestselling authors, recorded live in the social VR space Sansar from February 2018 to March 2020.
We had Qiufan Chen on the show, author of the near-future eco thriller “Waste Tide”, talking about the differences and similarities between Chinese SciFi and the speculative fiction tradition of Western countries:
Futurist Karl Schroeder was another guest [with the help of fellow Canadian Sci-Fi author Peter Watts supplying VR], whose new Tor release “Stealing Worlds” is a sweeping exploration of how AR, IoT, Blockchain and AI may reorganize society in a profoundly interconnected way and yet leave a deeply flawed power structure in place:
A big success was the visit of Tad Williams to Linden Lab headquarters in San Francisco in June 2019. Tad is of course the author of the seminal virtual world series of novels “Otherland”. He entered the Metaverse via a scanned head, composited and applied to his avatar. Halfway through the show he chose to ditch realism and switched to a mandril avatar in suit and smart shoes …
Other guests included Tim Maughan [talking “Infinite Detail”] and celebrated YA writer Amber Lee Dodd, author of “We are Giants”, in her fox embodiment:
The list of previous guests is quite long [we made a youtube playlist here] so below just a few names/pictures of avatars/physical selves: VR researcher Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford and NYTimes bestselling authors Catherynne Valente, Liz Jensen as well as Cory Doctorow are pictured. Rising stars Ksenia Anske, CB Lee and Lara Donnelly appeared as well as Professor Richard A. Bartle, game designer and one of the foremost “philosophers” of social virtual reality.
Since we decided to end the show we have moved the bookings for 2020 over to the Second Life Book Club: so far confirmed have Ed Cox, Sergio de la Pava, Peter Watts, Jennifer Brody, Jules Rivera, Taiyo Fujii, Will Wiles, Lars Iyer, Shiromi Pinto, Amber Lee Dodd, LL McKinney, Matt Hill, Chana Porter, James Bradley, Anne Griffin, Patricia Murphy, Meg Mundell, Christopher Brown and Dweezil Zappa with more guests coming. Follow hashtag #draxtorreads on Twitter and feel free to DM me if you have a great guest for the SL Book Club panels.