This week we welcome special guest and friend of the show, Karen Osborne! Karen is the author of The Memory War duology (Architects of Memory & Engines of Oblivion). If you enjoy a fresh take on aliens, first contact, and artificial intelligence, you should grab these books and take a deep dive into their world.

With Karen blasting toward science fiction, we shift our focus to technologies of the future and what some technologies might mean for children & parenthood. We tap dance around sinister ideas about manipulation and childhood before settling on a story about how parents can game the educational system to enter the multiverse of their dreams.

Digressions include: corporations don't love us (so we don't love them), how details build a setting, time changes hometowns, science and art both involve squishy feelings, revision is like adaptation, children: actually people, and we're keeping the dog!

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a special announcement about the future of Story Kernels!

Today’s Prompt System:

100 Prompts for Science Fiction Writers by Leslie and Jarod Anderson

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimerrer

• The Umbrella Academy (trailer)

External Links:

• Virginia Company

• America’s Company Towns, Then and Now (via Smithsonian Magazine)

• Star Trek: The Next Generation (credits)

• CompuServe

• Babylon 5 (credits)

• DON'T TOUCH THAT!: A Sci-Fi and Fantasy Parenting Anthology edited by Jaymee Goh

• Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop

• Why Google Glass Failed… And Why It's Coming Back (video)

• Cocomelon

• Into the Spider-Verse, an exploration of multiversal memes (via Tumblr)

• We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.