List of authors referenced on Friends at the Table

The following is a list of real-world authors whose works have been referred to in an episode of Friends at the Table or who have been specifically highlighted by a cast member as a touchstone/point of inspiration for the podcast. References to authors from Media Club podcasts are not included here unless they specifically relate to the main show, although podcasts and other places where cast members have discussed the work of authors included on this list at length will be linked where appropriate.

Kevin J. Anderson

During the Road to PALISADE game of Stealing the Throne, while joking about Disney discontinuing the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Keith says he gets a cease and desist every time he tries to read one of Anderson's Jedi Academy novels.

Jane Austen

In the first episode of the Good Society Live at the Table arc, Austin and Janine discuss Austen as an inspiration for character-focused storytelling, humanizing mistakes, the tension of being caught between desire and obligation, and banter that doesn't sound like Marvel Cinematic Universe banter.

Austen's novel Persuasion is referenced during the Road to PALISADE game of Upstairs & Downstairs when discussing an aristocratic family being forced to relocate from their stately mansion to a modest (if only by comparison) and more cramped temporary lodging.

Paul Auster

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room) is brought up in response to a question about books and other influences on Bluff City.

Jeremy Bentham

During the Road to PALISADE game of Stealing the Throne, Austin discusses how the Divine Discernment resembles and differs from the concept of the panopticon in response to viewers of the live recording bringing it up in chat. While he draws an important distinction between Discernment and the way Foucault understands the panopticon (see below), Austin does briefly consider that it could be a "Bentham machine" as they float the idea (before discarding it) of Discernment having been used as a prison in the past. As envisioned by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham along with his brother Samuel, the panopticon was a concept for a prison in which a single guard can view any inmate at any time, without prisoners knowing when they are being watched. Though Bentham did not succeed in advocating for his panopticon to be built, a series of his letters theorizing it were published as Panopticon; or the Inspection-House.

Jorge Luis Borges

“

It is as though my eyesight were spherical, with the Zahir in the centre. Whatever is not the Zahir comes to me fragmentarily, as if from a great distance: the arrogant image of Clementina; physical pain. Tennyson once said that if we could understand a single flower, we should know what we are and what the world is.”

– Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Dudley Fitts), "The Zahir"

In Twilight Mirage, the Divine Memorious is named after the short story "Funes the Memorious", whose titular character is cursed with perfect memory after an accident. One of the records in the Living Library of Memorious itself makes reference to Funes the Memorious.

Sangfielle is described as "cosmic horror by way of Borges instead of Lovecraft" at the beginning of the season. Later in the season, the painting Duvall hopes to acquire is titled "Remembering the Zahir" as an homage to Borges's story "The Zahir", about an object which creates an obsession that will come to crowd out the afflicted person's experience of reality. Zevunzolia and the Wrights of the Seventh Sun may be influenced by works of Borges's such as "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", in which he traces a series of real and fictional encyclopedia references to detail the invention by a secret society of a country that never was and subsequently, an alternate world (Tlön) with its own philosophy, languages, and culture. By the end of the story, artifacts from Tlön are appearing in the real world and influencing culture such that "The world will be Tlön."

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, Borges is described as an influence throughout a bulk of Friends at the Table.

Austin has further discussed the writing of Borges, including "The Zahir" and "Tlön", on a Shelved by Genre bonus episode about the collection Labyrinths.

Bertolt Brecht

During the live game of Scene Thieves, as Janine narrates a sequence in the play in which her character throws a ceramic prop sandwich to the floor, shattering it, Austin jokes about "Brecht clapping in the grave" as the act calls attention to the artifice of the play, referencing Brecht's dramaturgical theory and practice of rejecting emotional catharsis and highlighting the unreality and constructed nature of theatrical performances.

Gwendolyn Brooks

During the Road to PALISADE game of Wagon Wheel, Austin mentions having a breakthrough on what the PALISADE-era iteration of Twilight Mirage's New Earth Hegemony naming scheme could be while reading a short poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. The poem, "We Real Cool", features a number of two-word phrases (e.g. "Strike straight", "Sing sin", "Jazz June") that struck Austin as good character names, giving him the idea that as a synthesis of the NEH possessive names and the names of Excerpts in the Divine Fleet, people descended from the NEH on Palisade might "find their names from a quote in the world", meaning the players could name characters based on either quotes from real-world things (such as naming a crew member Highway Nine, a phrase from Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run") or by implication that a phrase used as a name is a quote from something within the setting.

Octavia E. Butler

In Twilight Mirage, Dre references Butler's Xenogenesis books (also known as Lilith's Brood), referring to the way in which the gene-trading aliens called Oankali have an obsession or hunger toward the human capacity for cancer.

Miguel de Cervantes

“

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."

So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, "Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you."”

– Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (tr. John Ormsby), The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

During an episode of PALISADE in which a knightly mech appears and stabs another mech whose appearance had been likened to a castle or stone tower, Keith remarks on the quixotic image that Austin has created, referring to the famed moment in Cervantes's novel Don Quixote in which the eponymous character charges with his lance at windmills, believing them to be giants.

Keith also mentions Don Quixote during Sangfielle while playing Anamnesis, saying the Knight of Wands card in their Roll20 tarot deck makes him think of Quixote.

Robert W. Chambers

“

The gate below opened and shut, and I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign.”

– Robert W. Chambers, "The Yellow Sign"

Chambers's The King in Yellow (a collection featuring several short stories connected by the common element of a forbidden play called The King in Yellow that obsesses and perhaps dooms those who read it) was mentioned by Art as part of the "season seven reading list" that he went through in preparation for Sangfielle. One of the motifs associated with the play is a symbol known as the Yellow Sign, which may possess some occult power, much like the Shape in Sangfielle.

CLAMP

“

Alise Breka presents: Among Sharks. The story of a Nidean captain escaping from an Apostolos base with the help of the very soldier who shot him down.”

– Sylvia Clare, "The Best Mecha Anime of 2020 is a Podcast"

During the Road to PALISADE game of Last Shooting, Sylvi discusses the session's framing as an Alise Breka story (one of several Road to PALISADE games based on the cast members' responses to an interview question about PARTIZAN side stories they'd like to see) and talks about the concept as being 'what if Alise Breka was CLAMP', referring to the style & favored motifs of the collaborative group of manga creators.

James S.A. Corey

While responding to a pair of Tips at the Table questions about the potential for adaptations of Friends at the Table into other media, Austin briefly mentions The Expanse (a series jointly written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the Corey pen name) as an example when discussing the process and decisions involved in adapting a book series to TV. Notably, though Austin does not mention it and may not have known, the first Expanse novel was loosely based on a d20 Modern game Franck and Abraham were in together, which in turn repurposed ideas from a pitch for an MMO Franck had made to a Chinese company.

John Darnielle

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester are brought up in response to a question about books and other influences on Bluff City.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

In the Spring in Hieron postmortem, Austin responds to a listener question to confirm that the Rhizome in the Spring finale is drawing directly from the Deleuzoguattarian notion of the rhizome, and to some extent other post-structuralist thought. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari imagine rhizomes as non-hierarchical and latticed in organization, without a clear point of origin, as opposed to formalized and vertical 'arborescent' structures that situate knowledge and power as linear.

Philip K. Dick

During COUNTER/Weight character creation, Jack mentions that AuDy didn't think of parking as their job "in the same way that your water dispenser doesn't think of pouring out water" as a job. Art responds with a riff on the title of Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, asking, "Do water dispensers dream of aquatic sheep?"

In an episode of Sangfielle, Keith compares the shift in title between Roadside Picnic and its adaptation Stalker to the way Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was given the title Blade Runner when adapted to film. During the season's post-mortem, Austin refers to the character of Walt Dangerfield from Dick's novel Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, a man trapped on an isolated satellite who becomes a radio DJ for a world devastated by nuclear war, as an inspiration for the narrator moving from newspaper editor to DJ in the late-season episode introductions after the people of Blackwick excavate a radio antenna.

Charles Dickens

Hector Hu mentions Dickens along with William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln in a Bluff City episode introduction.

Dickens is mentioned during the Drawing Maps episode in which Austin and Jack discuss character and setting concepts related to Pickman and the Shape in preparation for Sangfielle.

Doug Dorst

During an episode of Autumn in Hieron, upon hearing a description of the undead Captain Brandish piloting the Kingdom Come, Jack compares him to Maelstrom, a character from S., a metafictional novel by Doug Dorst from a concept by J.J. Abrams. In S., a story is told within the marginalia of a library copy of the novel-within-a-novel Ship of Theseus, a gothic novel of an amnesiac on a possibly haunted boat with a cultlike crew, purportedly written by the author "V.M Straka" and published in 1949. Maelstrom is a character from this layer of the story, described by Jack when Austin doesn't initially follow their reference as "the captain of the ship of Theseus".

Umberto Eco

While describing the appearance of the spy Marlon Styx in a PALISADE faction game episode, Jack describes him as someone who could easily be cast in an adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, a murder mystery set in a medieval Italian monastery, with a pious and stern appearance.

Dave Eggers

In the COUNTER/Weight world generation episode, the players discuss the idea of a fully networked society with "voting being as casual and popular as Buzzfeed quizzes", which reminds Dre of Dave Eggers' The Circle.

Frantz Fanon

In the Sangfielle postmortem, Austin cites the Afro-Caribbean philosopher and Marxist Frantz Fanon as part of his reading list on subjects such as revolution and decolonialism in preparation for PALISADE.

Michel Foucault

In the Twilight Mirage postmortem, Austin discusses Michel Foucault's concept of biopolitics & biopower (an idea which Foucault introduces in the final chapter of The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction).

Austin mentions getting sidetracked thinking about Foucault while discussing time zones and the imposition of standardized clocks during the intro of an episode of Sangfielle.

“

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.”

– Michel Foucault (tr. Alan Sheridan), Discipline & Punish

During the Road to PALISADE game of Stealing the Throne, Austin discusses how the Divine Discernment resembles and differs from the concept of the panopticon in response to viewers of the live recording bringing it up in chat, emphasizing that it has not been established that people in the setting are aware and afraid of being seen by Discernment, and thus that cannot perform the same disciplinary function that Foucault illustrates through the panopticon, "that it doesn't discipline you—you discipline you."

Robert Frost

“

We are in a—how’s that poem go? We are in the woods. And there are paths. And you two are two of my rising stars. You know the poem. The stars in the woods? The paths? The inverted paths in the woods. We have some choices to make.”

– Austin Walker (as Simeon Shaw), "The Grapplers Down at Promenade Arena Pt. 3"

During Bluff City's World Wide Wrestling game, the wrestling promoter Simeon Shaw, played by Austin, tells his performers Aqua Illusion and Charlie Cupid about the situation they find themselves in by obliquely referencing Robert Frost's famed poem "The Road Not Taken", but cannot properly recall how the poem goes.

William Gibson

In the COUNTER/Weight world generation episode, Austin refers to the fact that cyberpunk author William Gibson dislikes Shadowrun for featuring magic. Later on, when transferring characters to The Sprawl, the character Molly Millions from Gibson's Sprawl trilogy is referred to as an archetypal character emblematic of the Killer, the playbook for a character who "uses bleeding edge technology to commit violence".

During a scene of the Tales from the Loop in Bluff City's second season, Austin describes an overcast wintry sky as having "taken on the character of static—not to bite William Gibson too much here". This refers to the opening sentence of Gibson's novel Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Frank Herbert

In the COUNTER/Weight world generation episode, Nick mentions Dune as an example of a science fiction story where characters have superhuman abilities akin to magic but explained through concepts such as advanced genetic technology. Art also rolls up a planet that several of the cast compare to Dune's Arrakis, and Austin reminisces about a Dune hack of Burning Wheel that they never ran together.

Junji Ito

In the first episode of Marielda, horror mangaka Junji Ito's short comic "The Enigma of Amigara Fault" is used by Janine as a touchstone for the elongated bodies of weavers being found within trees.

During a Twilight Mirage downtime episode, an intimidating smile from the Waking Cadent is described as a "10% Junji Ito grin".

The third unit of Austin's podcast Shelved by Genre discusses several of Ito's longer-form horror stories. During a recommendation section at the end of one episode, as cohost Michael Lutz mentions Marielda as a good entry point for new Friends at the Table listeners, he and Austin both crediting Janine with injecting an Ito-esque sensibility into the podcast.

Alfred Jarry

During character building for the Road to PALISADE game of Orbital, while discussing the idea of a contraband fashion magazine that's politically or physiologically dangerous to see, Austin refers to Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring to which Jack mentions Ubu, likely referring to Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi; both works had famously chaotic and controversial premiere performances that supposedly provoked riots.

Robert Jordan

Early in Sangfielle, Austin mentions learning the word "balefire" for a type of signal fire but not wanting to use it in anything because it had already been used in the popular Wheel of Time series.

James Joyce

In the opening episode of Autumn in Hieron, as Austin starts by introducing the 'love letter' mechanic, Keith jokes "Is this gonna get all James Joyce?", referring to the notoriously explicit letters written by Joyce to his wife Nora Barnacle.

Franz Kafka

In Winter in Hieron, the New Archives are described as "a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare".

A scene of the protagonist Josef K. leading two men through town at the end of The Trial is referenced in Spring in Hieron.

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, Kafka is described as an influence throughout Friends at the Table.

Stephen King

During the game of Dialect in Road to PARTIZAN, Austin tries to remember the name of King's book The Shining and its titular concept, while thinking about names for a similar idea, and Janine lists off his other books IT and Christine in the process of getting there.

During Sangfielle's game of The Ground Itself, King is referenced when the players discuss the idea of a group of young people getting together to recognize and fight a curse that the older generation cannot discuss. Keith also twice references King's book Duma Key when discussing examples of mystical or cursed paintings.

During a scene of Tales from the Loop in Bluff City's second season, as Austin discusses euphemisms for how travel between realities via the Tunnel Project can go wrong, Jack references King's science fiction short story "The Jaunt", in which a technology allowing for teleportation has become ubiquitous in spite of a severe drawback—going through the Jaunt while awake causes unbearable mental trauma, as despite seeming instantaneous, "it's eternity in there".

During the Road to PALISADE game of Last Shooting, while discussing her idea of the work of Alise Breka, Sylvi says that she's a "genre writer" who "puts out a lot of shit [...] she's Stephen King and CLAMP, at the same time". Later in the season, while playing Orbital, Keith narrates his character, stunned after receiving a vision, having a mundane thought rather than fully processing the weight of what he's experienced, which Jack describes as "such a Stephen King maneuver".

Ryoko Kui

During the "Sliced" minigame in their first live session of Stewpot, in which a player cooks a meal with monster parts, Keith remarks on ending up with a "bucket of produce" after drawing their random ingredients, to which Austin responds, "Produce can be monsters; I've read Dungeon Meshi." Much like "Sliced", Ryoko Kui's manga Dungeon Meshi (also known as Delicious in Dungeon) features fantasy adventurers cooking meals made with monster parts, including ones from dangerous plant monsters.

Victor LaValle

LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom (a reworking of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of a black protagonist) was mentioned by Art as part of the "season seven reading list" that he went through in preparation for Sangfielle. Austin previously discussed this novella at length on an episode of Waypoints.

John le Carré

In PARTIZAN, Austin describes Broker Treequote, an auditor from the Scrivener's Guild, as being not of the James Bond model of spy but the type of British secret agent who appears in John le Carré's works: middle-aged, receding hairline, horn-rimmed glasses.

In PALISADE, as Jack describes the unremarkable appearance and demeanor of Riah Connadine, the new BIS commander on Palisade, Austin likens the character to George Smiley, a character who appears in a number of novels by John le Carré, to which Jack agrees. Smiley is a British intelligence officer with "the Circus" who is described as having an inconspicuous and ordinary appearance and demeanor. Gary Oldman, one of three actors Jack references in their description of Connadine's appearance, played Smiley in the 2011 film adaptation of le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a later episode, echoing his description of Broker Treequote several years prior, Austin calls Connadine a super-spy "in the George Smiley, you know, the Tinker Tailor model of super-spy, not the James Bond model."

Jack also later describes the Circus as a big inspiration for the Paint Shop, and refers to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as a good book about a spy organization that has been infiltrated when Exanceaster March suggests that there is a spy in the BIS' ranks.

Ursula K. Le Guin

“

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.”

– Ursula K. Le Guin, 2014 National Book Awards speech

Le Guin was an inspiration for some of the questions of utopianism in Twilight Mirage, with Austin tweeting one interview quote about decentering conflict in storytelling from her beforehand (while TM was still being referred to as 'Season 6') and quoting her National Book Awards speech during its premiere episode.

It is possible, though perhaps coincidental, that the planet & society Kesh in COUNTER/Weight were named after the Kesh people from Le Guin's book Always Coming Home. The Kesh in the novel are a post-post-apocalyptic society in far-future California with a low population density who reject industrial manufacturing and other aspects of contemporary society. COUNTER/Weight's Kesh is a planet with tens of thousands of inhabitants and 19th century-level technology, a result of the interference of the Rapid Evening actively preventing the development of more complex technology.

The second season of Austin's podcast Shelved by Genre discusses Le Guin's fantasy series The Books of Earthsea. Austin briefly discusses his prior history with her work in the first episode of the season, saying that he had read some but not all of Earthsea previously and that he tended to be more of a fan of her science fiction writing.

Ann Leckie

During the Road to PARTIZAN's game of For the Queen, Austin mentions that he has been reading Leckie's Imperial Radch series and says it is good at having tense scenes before fights. Austin also recommends PARTIZAN for fans of the series during the Sports are Just Numerology bonus episode.

During a PALISADE faction game episode, Jack suggests "let's do Breq and Seivarden" while narrating a moment in a chase scene between Candles Penumbra and Margate Lock, referring to a key scene between the characters in Ancillary Justice, the first book in the Imperial Radch series.

H.P. Lovecraft

Sangfielle is described as "cosmic horror by way of Borges instead of Lovecraft" at the beginning of the season. Keith also describes the Junk Mage class in Heart as coming "out of nowhere" with Lovecraft-style cosmic horror aspects in a number of its major abilities, which he often had to reflavor to fit with Lyke and Sangfielle.

George R.R. Martin

Austin mentions Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series during a bit about the game Deadly Premonition in an episode of Autumn in Hieron.

Arkady Martine

Austin recommends PARTIZAN for fans of Martine's A Memory Called Empire in the Sports are Just Numerology bonus episode. He later refers to the use of a poetic cipher (featured in SBBR's infiltration of a Stel Nideo facility in Orzen) as the season's "big shout out" to the series.

Karl Marx

“

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.”

– Karl Marx (tr. Samuel Moore & Edward Aveling), Capital Vol. I

In the COUNTER/Weight postmortem, Austin responds to the question "Was Marx’s analysis of capital as dead labor an inspiration for Rigour?" by saying, "It's fundamental."

Austin also brings up Marx's writings during an episode of Twilight Mirage, discussing the idea of full communism as a future state of society that people aren't ready to emerge directly into after living under capitalism, likely referring to Marx's discussion of phases of communist society in Critique of the Gotha Programme.

In an episode of PALISADE, Austin references Marx when he talks about the importance of having a figurehead with strong rhetorical power to lead a movement. He initially uses Marx as an example of someone who is good at theory but less good at embodying that theory in order to popularize it, and then quickly corrects himself: "That's not true. Marx did a good job. Shoutouts to Marx."

Gregory Mcdonald

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, when a question is asked about books and other influences on Bluff City, Keith somewhat jokingly mentions "the novelization of the movie Fletch" (which was an adaptation of a book by Mcdonald) as a callback to an earlier discussion of the film.

Herman Melville

Melville's novel Moby-Dick is mentioned during the Drawing Maps episode in which Austin and Jack discuss character and setting concepts related to Pickman and the Shape in preparation for Sangfielle.

Austin also alludes to Moby-Dick during the Road to PALISADE, while playing as the whaler Narmine Te'ketch in Lancer. Having previously described the AI assistant in his whaling mech The Captain's as a Microsoft Clippy-esque cartoon whale, Austin describes the whale as turning white and growing sharp teeth to resemble Moby Dick when Narmine inserts a contraband data disk.

China Miéville

During the Road to PALISADE game of Lancer, while discussing ways in which a Pact-aligned character might come to act for revolution, Jack refers to a passage from China Miéville's October: The Story of the Russian Revolution in which cavalry guards stood without attacking, allowing revolutionaries to crawl beneath their horses and enter the palace.

Mike Mignola

Mignola's Hellboy and Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham were mentioned by Art as part of the "season seven reading list" that he went through in preparation for Sangfielle.

Alan Moore

Art mentioned starting some Alan Moore comics based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft in preparation for Sangfielle but bouncing off them.

Kaoru Mori

The Road to PALISADE game of Upstairs & Downstairs adapts Janine's PARTIZAN spinoff idea of "a story about Kesh housekeepers in the vein of Kaoru Mori's Emma: A Victorian Romance" from the cast's 2020 Crunchyroll interview.

Haruki Murakami

In the Bluff City season one postmortem, a number of Haruki Murakami works (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, "The Elephant Vanishes", and A Wild Sheep Chase) are brought up in response to a question about books and other influences on Bluff City. Austin describes Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in particular as "influential for everything I've done as a GM", and notes the Polyphony episodes of Twilight Mirage as a particular example.

Nostradamus

“

At forty-five degrees the sky will burn,
Fire to approach the great new city:
In an instant a great scattered flame will leap up,
When one will want to demand proof of the Normans.”

– Nostradamus (tr. Edgar Leoni), Nostradamus and his Prophecies

While discussing the Dim Liturgy's use of ancient predictions by Crystal Palace in a PALISADE faction episode, Art compares the text they're working from to the supposedly prophetic writings of Nostradamus, prompting Austin to pull up and read some random selections of his work to get a sense for it.

Mervyn Peake

During the first faction episode of PALISADE, Jack lists several points of inspiration for the Paint Shop, a mountaintop castle and strategic point on Palisade, including Castle Gormenghast, the titular location of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

The Witch in Glass, a character from PARTIZAN and PALISADE, may be connected with Piatt's poem "The Witch in the Glass". Though the character could have been named before they learned of the poem, Austin mentions being reminded of it "for Friends at the Table reasons" when quoting Piatt's poem on an episode of Shelved by Genre.

Nicholas Pileggi

During a scene of Tales from the Loop in Bluff City's second season, Keith and Austin riff about Agent Clark and Agent Bailey of The Concern arguing over their favorite Martin Scorsese movies, deciding that Clark's favorite is Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Bailey's is Casino. Keith jokes that Clark prefers the book of Casino to the film. Casino was based on Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book Casino: Life and Honor in Las Vegas. Pileggi also wrote Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, which was similarly adapted into Scorsese's earlier film Goodfellas, and cowrote both screenplays with Scorsese.

Edgar Allan Poe

“

Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.”

– Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"

During the Road to PALISADE game of Upstairs & Downstairs, Austin references the house crumbling in on itself in the climax of Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", which fulfills its title in both senses – the fall of the familial legacy and the structure itself – with the mansion collapsing into a lake along with the death of the final living members of the family.

Terry Pratchett

In an episode of Autumn in Hieron, while discussing how Lem's musical pattern magic may change depending on the environment it is being performed in, Jack contrasts it to Pratchett's more absurd style of fantasy, saying "It still sounds like a violin [...] this isn't like a Terry Pratchett thing where all of a sudden you're on a airplane." Later in the same season, Austin compares a story Nick tells about a previous D&D campaign he ran to Pratchett, to which Nick agrees, "all of my fantasy stuff is basically just really just Discworld."

Thomas Pynchon

The name of Tristero from Autumn in Hieron was chosen by Austin as a self-described "unintentional/unconscious" allusion to Thomas Pynchon's novella The Crying of Lot 49. In Pynchon's story, the protagonist finds herself unraveling a possible conspiracy around the existence of Tristero (also spelled Trystero), a centuries-old underground postal service and secret society.

Pynchon and The Crying of Lot 49 are also mentioned as influential during the Bluff City season one postmortem.

Arundhati Roy

Jack designated novelist Arundhati Roy as their facecast for the PALISADE character Iklins Slinger.

Matt Ruff

Ruff's Lovecraft Country and its TV adaptation were mentioned by Art as part of the "season seven reading list" that he went through in preparation for Sangfielle.

William Shakespeare

When discussing the title and dramatic question of the play the characters will be performing as part of their game of Scene Thieves, Jack refers to Shakespeare using the device of a play-within-a-play (such as Hamlet's The Murder of Gonzago) to reflect the dramatic question of the broader story.

Hector Hu mentions Shakespeare along with Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln in a Bluff City episode introduction. Janine, when discussing her take on Action Movie World's playbook of The Thespian as Mason Lowry, refers to "the prototypical actor who’s really antsy because he hasn’t played Hamlet yet". During the Bluff City season one postmortem, the cast jokes about being better than Shakespeare for having "a show within a show within a show within a show" with Aliens in the Outfield.

Austin compares the role of the Perennial Wave in PARTIZAN to "the way in which magic is used in certain fairy tales or in Shakespeare". While making an analogy about Future later in the season, Austin refers to Hamlet's ability to monologue/soliloquize about grief as an example to discuss fiction being able to clarify real emotions.

During talk at the top of a PALISADE episode, Austin refers to a line from Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet says "I have an ill-divining soul!" Later in the same episode, Jack alludes to Juliet's words "O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick." The last episode released on the main podcast feed prior to the debut of PALISADE was a bonus Media Club discussion of Romeo + Juliet, the play's 1996 film adaptation. Later in the season, Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 is used as the text of a poem that Routine Rennari is trying to wrap his head around during a faction game episode.

John Steinbeck

Canopy Row in Marielda is a nod to John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

R.L. Stine

In an episode of Twilight Mirage, Art asks, "What's the name of that author who does those books?" and Keith suggests Goosebumps author R.L. Stine. He was not the one Art was thinking of.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Strugatsky brothers' book Roadside Picnic is mentioned several times as a touchstone near the beginning of Sangfielle.

Jean Teillet

In the Sangfielle postmortem, Austin mentions reading about indigeneity, revolution, and the Métis people in preparation for PALISADE. He later specifically refers to having read Teillet's The North-West is Our Mother, a history of the Métis nation, on an episode of Shelved by Genre.

Chuck Tingle

After seeing an emotional connection between Gig and an alien horse with a prehensile mane during an episode of Twilight Mirage, Art asks, "What's the name of that author who does those books?" and then clarifies that he means "the Amazon guy", at which point several others figure out he's thinking of Chuck Tingle, known for writing erotica about romantic encounters with fantasy creatures such as unicorns, as well as anthropomorphized objects or concepts. After Austin declares that they're not naming the horse after Chuck Tingle, Keith jokes about naming it Duck Pringle, before deciding to simply name it Duck.

J.R.R. Tolkien

During Autumn in Hieron worldbuilding, it was established that pre-Erasure Hieron once resembled Tolkien-style traditional fantasy. Tolkien continues to show up as a reference for fantasy tropes which the podcast tries to complicate, subvert, or move through in search of what parts are salvageable. Players also discuss pipeweed and joke about getting sued by the Tolkien estate for saying "hobbit".

Jeff VanderMeer

During an episode of Twilight Mirage, Austin mentions that VanderMeer's book Annihilation has been an influence both on The Wound from that season as well as The Buoy and the strata and laminae in Winter in Hieron.

Annihilation is mentioned again as a touchstone in the first episode of Sangfielle. A move that Duvall takes later on in the season is called Annihilation, presumably as a reference to the book and/or its film adaptation.

C.V. Wedgwood

While responding to a Tips at the Table question about whether media they're reading or watching affects their play, Austin mentions that he has been reading C.V. Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War in as research for the as-yet-unnamed PARTIZAN.

Oscar Wilde

While brainstorming ideas for mystical or cursed paintings in Sangfielle, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is mentioned as something Austin doesn't want to replicate. Dorian Gray does, nevertheless, return later as a point of comparison for one of several miscellaneous exhibits in a gallery Duvall visits in Sapodilla while looking for information on his chosen painting.

Gene Wolfe

“

I pressed past the merychip's head, seized the ankle of the wagoneer who had struck her, and pulled him from his seat. By that time all the gate was ringing with bawling and swearing, and the cries of the injured, and the bellowings of frightened animals; and if the stranger continued his tale I could not hear it.”

– Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

While playing A Visit to San Sibilia, Austin twice refers to Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, first mentioning its use of "alcalde" as a term for a magistrate (Book of the New Sun frequently uses terms that are archaic or obscure in modern English, ostensibly as means of "translating" concepts from its far-future setting that have not been invented yet) and later referring to the final scene of The Shadow of the Torturer, which takes place amidst the chaos of a crowd passing through the gates of a massive wall, as a comparison for a commotion outside the walls of Concentus. Austin would later critically discuss Book of the New Sun on the podcast Shelved By Genre.

Dave Wolverton

In the COUNTER/Weight world generation episode, Keith mentions a book (Wolverton's Jedi Apprentice: The Rising Force) he read as a child from a prequel series to the Star Wars prequel films, in which Obi-Wan Kenobi is kicked out of the Jedi academy and effectively exiled because no one wanted him as an apprentice, as a point of inspiration for his own character, who he wanted to have been kicked out of a university for psionics.

Timothy Zahn

During the Road to PALISADE game of Stealing the Throne, while discussing the discontinuation of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Dre jokes that Disney won't even let them touch a book by Timothy Zahn, an author known for his extensive work in the EU.