The engines of creativity are humming, the publishing lights are flickering, and an electrifying story just streamed off the line. On this launch-day episode of The Science Fiction Factory, host Mookie Spitz welcomes indie author Nathan J. Pearce, whose debut cyberpunk thriller Faith Faraday and the Cyber Samurai hits screens and shelves today!

Set in 2076 Tokyo, the book follows Faith Faraday, a daemon hunter chasing rogue AIs that masquerade as digital ghosts. Think Men in Black for machine intelligence—Blade Runner grit colliding with Gilmore Girls wit. Faith is part Batman, part Kim Possible, part existential therapy session. Pearce calls her a “self-insert with better hair and bigger guts,” and he’s on point.

Mookie and Nathan explore how to write and flourish in the indie trenches:

• The Birth of Faith: How one character obsession evolved into a full-blown cyberpunk universe over four years.
• Deception vs. Sentience: Why the Turing Test is a #fail and why true AI stories start with emotion, not code.
• Character-First Fiction: The danger of world-building yourself into distraction—and how to keep readers caring.
• Cultural Authenticity: Writing future Japan with respect, reality, and lived experience.
• Research as Worship: Three hours on neutrinos for two paragraphs, and why it’s worth it.
• The Indie Reality Check: Why self-publishing means doing everything—from cover design and blurbs to nagging for reviews and outsmarting Amazon’s black box.
• Creative Control as Currency: Why immediate freedom, not eventual fame, is the payoff for going indie—and why that’s enough (until the Netflix miniseries).
• Loving Your Own Work: How to finally drop the self-doubt and admit, out loud, “My new novel is awwwwwwwesome!"

They discuss how to fund a launch, build an audience, and make peace with algorithms that couldn’t care less about art. Their chat is raw, funny, and unfiltered about building worlds, building characters, and building as an independent creator.

Today is the day Faith Faraday comes online, and with her the future of indie sci-fi!

The Author

After photojournalism school, Nathan J. Pearce spent a year in Tokyo teaching conversational English. The people, the country, and the culture gave him a fresh perspective on his home country of the United States. Inspired by books like Shogun, Ender's Game, WOOL and Snowcrash, Nathan is eager to share his unique perspective with his readers.

The Novel

In 2076, a revolutionary AI elevates Japan as the world’s only technological mega-power. Samu, the Empress’s ‘Restorative AI’, leads a tech renaissance inventing quantum fusion, practical quantum computing, and a faster-than-light drive, promising a Japan-first colonization of the stars. That promise is broken when the colony ship explodes on launch, killing all aboard, including Hope Faraday.

Now it’s up to her twin sister Faith, a half-Danish, half-Japanese Daemon Hunter trained to detect and neutralize rogue AIs, to find out why. She infiltrates The Hollow, Japan’s research and development bunker deep inside Mt. Fuji, and she’s not coming out without answers. With her sentient AI, Grace, in her ear and her loyal utility bot, Chip, by her side, from tea ceremonies with mysterious cyber Geisha to horseback archery contests at the Empress's birthday celebration, Faith must prove herself ‘Japanese enough’ to uncover the truth.

Home: https://www.faithfaraday.com/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FXP37XVR

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The seventh episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory explores how speculative fiction actually gets made — the grind, the vision, and the madness behind the worlds we can’t stop dreaming about.

Hosted by writer, ranter, and raconteur Mookie Spitz, he sits down with Matthew Carauddo, creator of the Diamond Dragons saga — a richly illustrated six-book fantasy series blending martial arts, mysticism, and philosophy. But Matthew isn’t just an author: he’s a stunt performer, fencing instructor, voice actor, and videographer who’s spent decades creating worlds in motion — from live saber duels to psychological dragon warfare.

Together, they dive into the guts of creativity and world-building:

• The Genesis of Diamond Dragons: why Carauddo made dragons the heroes instead of human characters, and how each one embodies elemental, emotional, and spiritual power.
• Lightsabers, Fencing, and Flow: how a life spent studying motion, combat, and rhythm transformed his writing into something kinetic — fiction that moves like choreography.
• The Art of World-Building: how much is too much? Mookie questions when lore overtakes story; Matthew argues that immersion and mythology are the story.
• Psychological vs. Physical Conflict: why true heroism begins inside the mind — and how emotional warfare can hit harder than any sword fight.
• Cinema as DNA: from Terry Gilliam to George Lucas, from 12 Monkeys to Pulp Fiction, they unpack how film language shapes written fantasy — structure, pacing, and the invisible rhythm of storytelling.
• Craft Over Commerce: why creators keep losing their way when marketing execs take over art, and how to resist that gravitational pull.

And yes — there’s a spirited feud. When Mookie challenges Matthew on how to catch the attention of an “OMG backer” (that rare investor or champion who can catapult a creative project into orbit), Mookie says it’s about attention, audacity, and bold branding. Matthew fires back that true backers follow excellence and integrity, not algorithms. The disagreement highlights the essence of decision for indie artists circling the same truth from opposite poles.

What emerges is not just a conversation about fantasy — but about creation itself: why we build worlds, why we destroy them, and why some of us refuse to play by the rules.

The Guest

Matthew Carauddo is an American author, actor, and martial-arts choreographer best known as the creator of the Diamond Dragons fantasy saga. A veteran of over three decades in performance and stage combat, he’s a licensed fencing instructor through the Fédération Française d’Escrime and has trained hundreds of students in California. Carauddo blends his theatrical background with epic world-building, crafting Diamond Dragons as a six-book series that merges mysticism, martial discipline, and cosmic fantasy. He founded Diamond Dragons Entertainment to expand the universe across books, animation, and interactive media.

Visit Diamond Dragons

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What do you get when a dopamine-deficient bald guy, a stack of manuscript pages, and an accidental reader with a doctorate walk into a podcast?

You get this wild, heartfelt, and honest episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory—where Mookie Spitz, podcaster, ranter, and writer talks about the creation of his latest science fiction novel: Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine.

In a full-circle moment of gratitude and literary soul-searching, Mookie hands the mic to Michelle Waugh — the sharp-eyed first reader who flipped through his draft and called him out, pushed him harder, and helped bring his sprawling vision into the light. Together, they go deep.

Topics include:

• Origin story of the novel: How a 10-year-old kid obsessed with Asimov and infinity never stopped writing—even when he forgot he was a writer.
• The central idea: What if a con artist accidentally builds a machine that jumps between infinite universes, and every wish could actually come true?
• The characters: A lovable scumbag named Jonnie Fazoolie. A transgender orphaned physicist-genius with tools in her afro. A Gen Z journalist with Ivy League trauma. A four-dimensioanal MacArthur, and dinosaur executive. An alien kitty with 275 billion siblings. A mysterious cosmic woman named Alice who (spoiler alert!) is an errant Boltzmann brain begging for love...
• The cover: Drawn by his niece, featuring cats, a bathtub, poker chips, and chaos.
• The writing process: Why good books feel effortless—and why that’s a lie. The relentless, punishing craft behind those “easy to read” pages, brought to life over a year of work culminating in relentless 18-hour days for two months.
• Gender, identity & generational war: Writing women authentically. Giving trans characters dignity and power. Capturing the crackling tension between Zoomers, Boomers, and everyone spinning in between.
• The core theme: In a multiverse where anything can happen, how do we find meaning in this life, this version of ourselves?

Michelle Waugh doesn’t just ask questions — she reads from the novel, and her performance of “Alice Unchained” captures some of the mystery and madness.

Writers, readers, and anyone trying to make peace with their fractured attention span and haunted dreams will dig this episode -- One that's for anyone wondering if meaning still exists in a world of infinite versions of you. For anyone who’s ever created something and whispered, if only I could love the result as much as I love writing.

So tune in for an interview that's a cross-dimensional dive into fiction, failure, love, and redemption.

The Short Story

The Novel

https://a.co/d/bv5FBdl

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Sci-fi author Ingrid Moon and voiceover wizard Scott Allen join your host, Mookie Spitz, for an unfiltered ride through the making of audiobook for Biohunter—a post-apocalyptic sci-fi love story between a deadly alien tracker and a teenage human target. They talk shop about audiobooks, content repurposing, and self-publishing in the age of AI.

Ingrid reveals how the novel began as a pseudonymous writing challenge—complete with a mystery book cover and fake name—and ended as a full-fledged sci-fi saga complete with morally conflicted characters and actual emotional stakes (imagine Dances with Wolves meets The Most Dangerous Game, with fewer buffalo and more cloning). Mookie compares notes on the struggle of doing bad German dominatrix accents while reading his own fiction out loud. Scott shares war stories from behind the mic—including the horror of accepting a voice gig before reading the manuscript, only to find out midway that it goes full weird.

They deep-dive into audiobook production (hint: color-coded dialogue and wrestling with audio files), the psychological toll of switching voices like a caffeinated sociopath, and what it’s like to hear your own writing read back to you in someone else's voice—better than you imagined but also slightly unsettling, like hearing your dog say your name.

Then it gets existential. AI narration, KDP’s soulless “Read Now With a Robot” button, and the philosophical death spiral of bots making content for other bots. Can real emotion survive a whispering LLM? Do the robots stutter convincingly yet? Does anyone really read anymore, or are we all just huffing 10-minute audio chunks while reheating lasagna?

It’s a heartfelt, hilarious, and occasionally unhinged conversation about storytelling, collaboration, and fighting for human creativity in the face of algorithmic mediocrity. Perfect for writers, listeners, aspiring voice actors, and anyone terrified that their next favorite novel might be written—and narrated—by Skynet. Spoiler: Ingrid and Scott are still human. For now. And Mookie remains bald. Surprise!

The Author

Ingrid Moon is an author, editor, and science teacher. She currently has four science fiction novels, three audiobooks, and three science reference books for worldbuilding, with more on the way. Ingrid is a Southern California native who can't surf because she spent most of her youth navigating mountains and watching sci-fi television, all of which inspired her writing career.

Her Resources

book website: https://bit.ly/biohunter

author website: https://ingridmoon.com

Sign Up for Newsletter: https://bit.ly/moon-news

The Voice Talent

https://scottallenvoice.com/

Ingrid On the Pod

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2549048/episodes/18084835

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Your sci-fi obsessed host Mookie Spitz sits down with science educator, technologist, and multi-genre author Ingrid Moon to dissect writing and self-publishing — and why it’s so damn hard to do it well.

They start with Ingrid’s journey from tech marketing to science classrooms to building reference books for sci-fi authors who don’t know enough science. Astrofiction, Biofiction, Robofiction — yes, those are real, and they’ll save your story from embarrassing “space magic"...

Then it’s all in on the struggles:

• The agony of finishing a book when your brain craves endless worldbuilding.
• The harsh truth that most “new ideas” are stale genre tropes — and why that might actually be a good thing.
• How finding a close-knit writers’ group is the secret weapon to stay sane and keep your plot from face-planting.

Mookie rants about trying to hack attention in a world drowning in content. He describes how his first 500-page illustrated Santa Claus epic baffled readers who couldn’t tell if it was for kids or deranged adults. Then he reveals why his latest sci-fi novel, Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine finally nailed it:

• A raw, savage take on the mess that is 2025, crammed into tight three-line blocks that read like Twitter poetry on meth.
• A bad guy that’s literally a Boltzmann brain floating at the edge of a dying universe — obsessed with a loser she can’t have.
• A narrative style chopped into tweet-sized punches that force every line to matter — and rewrite your brain on how to read).

They tear into why many indie authors fail at story — chasing intricate lore instead of broken people trying to survive. Why character arcs matter more than your perfectly mapped kingdoms. Why even if your idea is another alien invasion or Mars colonization, it’s your twist, your voice, your messed-up characters that breathe life into tired tropes.

Also on deck:

• How to edit your work so it stops sucking, and why line editing is more brutal (and necessary) than you think.
• The tension between satisfying genre fans who crave familiar beats vs pushing the story into new places.
• Why finished is always better than perfect, and why marketing your book is a separate beast that no one warns you about.

If you’ve ever wanted to write (or just watch two writers spiral into their own creative hangups), you’ll feel right at home.

The Guest

Ingrid Moon is an author, editor, and science teacher. She currently has four science fiction novels, three audiobooks, and three science reference books for worldbuilding, with more on the way. Ingrid is a Southern California native who can't surf because she spent most of her youth navigating mountains and watching sci-fi television, all of which inspired her writing career.

Her Resources

author website: https://ingridmoon.com

editor website: https://ingridmoon.com/authors

goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5035674.Ingrid_Moon

amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ingrid-Moon/author/B0CKKMRL88

instagram: @ingridmoonauthor

facebook (author business): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553084507674

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Step back inside The Science Fiction Factory, where host Mookie Spitz joins fellow indie author Greg Sorber as they transform vivid imagination into great storytelling. Recorded fresh off LA Comic Con 2025, this episode dives into what it means to build worlds, fight algorithms, and write science fiction without a corporate mothership.

Greg opens up about the making of his Mechhaven saga—a gritty space opera he describes as “Transformers meets Braveheart”—where 200 sentient robots struggle for peace, freedom, and identity on a faraway planet after galactic war. Mookie and Greg dissect the high-stakes life of indie authors: grinding out manuscripts nightly between day gigs, pitching from booths in underground artist alleys, and competing with algorithms and apathy for reader attention.

Together they explore:

• Why “a rising tide floats all indie boats” in the sci-fi underground.
• The trade-off between artistic control and traditional gatekeeping.
• How AI, fandom, and world-building are reshaping the future of storytelling.
• The real cost—financial and emotional—of chasing your own mythos.

From nostalgic Star Wars awakenings to deep talk on trauma, AI, and literary obsession, The Science Fiction Factory celebrates every dreamer soldering their imagination into the infinite verse. “It’s not just about robots or rockets,” says Greg. “It’s about creators who refuse to wait for permission to build their own worlds.”

Greg Sorber

"I’m a lifelong fan of science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. Some of my earliest memories are of Land of the Lost, Speed Racer, and The Six Million Dollar Man. Seeing Star Wars in the theater for the first time in 1977 was a life-changing experience. An avid reader from an early age, I’ve always loved books that engaged my imagination. Reading The Hobbit in 7th grade English class and writing a short story that same year set me down the path of becoming a writer. I live in Riverside, California with my family and two dogs."

greg@gregerationx.com

www.gregerationx.com

https://amzn.to/4gWS2DL

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We can't get enough science fiction! But why...?

Science fiction isn’t just a genre, but the way we see the world and ourselves. Great science fiction is where philosophy meets spectacle, where we project our fears, fantasies, and future selves into strange new worlds to see reflections of our possibilities.

After talking to die-hard fans, veteran writers, and creators across the sci-fi spectrum, I started noticing patterns — emotional, intellectual, even spiritual. Beneath the laser battles and alien languages, the same obsessions kept resurfacing. So I made a list — ten deep reasons we love science fiction, can't get enough, why great sci-fi keeps shaping everything from our politics to our childhood dreams.

Here's my attempt to decode why sci-fi matters more than ever, and why we love it so much:

1. Contacting Aliens — Sci-fi satisfies our primal curiosity: what’s out there, and how will we meet our first extraterrestrials? From Childhood’s End to Contact, the alien is both mirror and mystery.
2. Playing God — The power to create and destroy worlds. From Frankenstein to Ex Machina, sci-fi lets us tinker with life and watch the fallout.
3. Playing Politics — The safest place to hide dangerous ideas. Star Trek, Handmaid’s Tale, and District 9 use fantasy to talk politics, morality, and ideology.
4. Fetishizing Technology — We don’t just use tech; we worship it. From Metropolis to Iron Man to Tron: Ares, technology becomes both muse and mirror — sleek, sexy, and slightly sinister.
5. Joining The Tribe — Sci-fi fandom is a culture, not a hobby. Comic-Con, Worldcon, and Disney’s Star Wars lands show how outsiders find belonging in shared weirdness.
6. Becoming Creators — The dream fulfilled: Lucas, Favreau, and Filoni grew up geeking out — then built universes of their own. Sci-fi is recursive creation.
7. Feeling Nostalgic — Every fan remembers their first time — E.T., Star Wars, that dog-eared Asimov paperback. Sci-fi reconnects us to the childhood awe we lost.
8. Letting It Loose — No genre explodes bigger. Whether it’s The Expanse or Avengers: Endgame, sci-fi lets us annihilate galaxies to vent our fears.
9. Predicting the Future — The speculative engine. From Black Mirror to Minority Report, sci-fi imagines what happens if we keep doing what we’re doing — or stop.
10. Building Worlds — The ultimate sandbox. From Alien to Dune to The Matrix, sci-fi creates believable worlds that make us believe this one could be rewritten.
11. Laughing Our Asses Off (Bonus) -- From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to The Fifth Element, great sci-fi doesn’t just imagine — it mocks. Because sometimes the only sane response to infinity is to laugh.

What do you think? Mookie can't wait to hear from you -- and welcome you onto the podcast to share your own opinions as a sci-fi writer, artist, producer, or raving fan!

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What makes science fiction great?

Step onto the shop floor where imagination meets machinery. The Science Fiction Factory is where writers, artists, filmmakers, and dreamers reveal how the genre gets made—story by story, world by world, effect by effect.

Join your host Mookie Spitz to talk about the craft and chaos behind your favorite futures: from character arcs to cosmic engines, from special effects to planetary-scale ideas. Think of the show as a behind-the-scenes pass to the creative assembly line that keeps science fiction alive and thriving.

Whether you're a creator, a fan, a marketer, or just someone who gets a rush from the smell of rocket fuel and ink, you’ll find your tribe here.

Get ready for The Science Fiction Factory—where we build enthralling realities, one episode at a time.

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