About this Episode
Welcome to The Stillness, a world where an apocalypse is a generational event. Where individuals with the ability to shape and control the elemental forces of the earth are exploited, oppressed, and reviled. Where, in the beginning of The Fifth Season, book one of N.K. Jemisin's award-winning The Broken Earth trilogy, the world ends for the last time.
Matt and Tony weren't familiar with author N.K. Jemisin prior to this episode. While not exactly a household name, her work has earned widespread acclaim and recognition within the sci-fi/fantasy community. With The Fifth Season, Jemisin became the first African-American author to win the Hugo award for best novel. She has also earned the distinction of being the only author to win that award for three straight years for three entries in the same series.
Though the characters, setting, and events of The Fifth Season are all larger than life, full of supernatural powers, and a deep well of lore, Jemisin draws from the fears and injustices that have been dominating conversations in America: social and racial inequality, representation, climate change and inaction, systemic racism. As all great sci-fi, The Fifth Season takes the everyday, adds a dose of the fantastic, and becomes a new lens through which to examine our own past, present and possible future. Matt and Tony dive into this, the novel's partial second person perspective, its big twists, and its world building.