This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome John Chu, author of The Subtle Art of Folding Space.

About The Subtle Art of Folding Space: Ellie’s universe?and this one?is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it’s supposed to.

Daniel, Ellie’s cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks?one that keeps Ellie’s comatose mother alive while also creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of this universe. It’s not a good day.

If she can confront her mother’s legacy and overcome her family’s generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister…but digging into her family’s past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.

About John Chu: John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com among other venues. His translations have been published or is forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF and other venues. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, won the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere.” and won the Best Novelette Nebula for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” His novel, The Subtle Art of Folding Space will be published by Tor in April, 2026.

This week’s picks:

• John: Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
• Tracy: Japanese Curry Blocks
• Patrick: The 13th Warrior

Links:

• John Chu’s Newsletter
• Tracy Townsend on BluSky
• Patrick Hester on Instagram
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2026 Patrick Hester

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