The PikeCast: A Book Club Podcast On Christopher Pike

The PikeCast begins their watchthrough of Netflix's The Midnight Club series by Mike Flanagan. This week is Episode 1: The Final Chapter When cancer cancels her plans for college, star student Ilonka finds a sliver of hope at Brightcliffe, a mysterious hospice for terminally ill teens.

Wait! Don't! The sharks! They– Eeeehh! The PikeCast finishes out a trilogy that we began way back in episode 16 by digging into Christopher Pike's 1995 book Remember Me 3: The Last Story. As it had been prophesized, Grady Hendrix, author of The Final Girl Support Group, My Best Friend's Exorcism, and Paperbacks from Hell, has returned, fulfilling his destiny to complete this trilogy, with a book that bears almost no resemblance to either of the books that came before it, and seems obsessed with the idea that a best-selling author could literally save humanity with their stories.

Author Hailey Piper returns The PikeCast to dig into another of Christopher Pike's adult novels, 1994's The Listeners. While touching on many of Pike's recurring themes, including ancient lizard races, The Listener finds a way to be truly terrifying, often as it draws us into a group that may or may not be a cult.

Katie Lilly, the artist behind The Haunted Outfit, joins us to "run the series" as we begin tackling the Final Friends Trilogy from Christopher Pike. It won't take long for you to figure out that, well, we weren't to crazy about it. But at least Katie, who's read all three, assures us that SOMETHING happens in the other two books.

Author Hailey Piper joins The PikeCast to deconstruct Christopher Pike's batshit crazy 1995 adult novel The Cold One. With so many characters, plot twists, horrifying revelations, gruesome murders, and of course, a healthy amount of Hindu mysticism, this book is both unlike any we've done before, and also a clear result from everything that has come before.

Christopher Pike superfan Danielle Sepulveres joins us again to discuss a novel rife with horniness, boyfriend stealing, gods and goddesses, and screenplays that are startling reminiscent of other Christopher Pike books, for 1993's The Immortal. 

The PikeCast returns to the Point Horror era of Pike with 1986's Weekend, a book that feels, in many ways, like Pike just chose to rip himself off by duplicating Slumber Party nearly entirely. We're joined by Alana Phelan, the Polyamorous Librarian to discuss the good, the decent, and the obnoxious in this, again, overstuffed book.

The PikeCast wraps up Sequel September with a sequel to one of his Christopher Pike's earliest books, 1992's Chain Letter 2: The Ancient Evil, which takes a simple revenge story/I Know What You Did Last Summer rip-off and adds, well, an Ancient Evil. In the spirit of sequel September we're again joined by a returning guest, Jenny Nulf, whose enthusiasm for this book came from way back in middle school when she stole it from the library.

Joe Lipsett, The PikeCast's first guest from way back in episode one, returns to discuss another return, that of Christopher Pike's Last Vampire Alisa Perne / Sita. The ‘Cast is thrilled that this sequel provides a far better follow-up than the last episode, and continues Sequel September in style.

The PikeCast is thrilled to welcome back author of The Final Girl Support Group, My Best Friend's Exorcism, and Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix to discuss our first book for Sequel September, Christopher Pike's 1994 book Remember Me 2: The Return, a bizarre rehash of the plot of the first book laden with a ridiculous amount of Latinx stereotypes, an astonishing seeming hatred for the disabled, and a plot that seemingly cares so little about its main characters that it first takes a short story digression that has nothing to do with the main plot yet lasts 13% of the page count, and then just removes all but one of the characters from the first half in favor of the first book's characters. Join us for the lowest rated Pike book so far!

The PikeCast welcomes Jude Doyle author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear… and Why and Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy and the Fear of Female Power to take a ride down the Road to Nowhere, Christopher Pike's 1993 novel that is a journey through a liminal world while storytelling about relationships falling apart.

The PikeCast is joined by freelance writer and Christopher Pike superfan Danielle Sepulveres to tackle the first adult novel from Christopher Pike, 1992's The Season of Passage, a book that seems to have a Pike variety pack of interests with vampires, ghosts, lizard people, and outer space. It's violent, scary, and loooong, and we enjoy it thorougly!

Filmmaker, screenwriter and podcaster Toni Cunningham returns to The PikeCast to dissect 1993's The Wicked Heart, a story of moony relationship regret, early internet chatrooms, serial killers, and suddenly Nazis. We all really enjoy the book, and do spend a good long time discussing the pros and cons of using Nazis as boogymen.

The PikeCast welcomes another Loser to the show to discuss Christopher Pike's 1990 book Witch. Jenn Adams, cohost of The Loser's Club Stephen King Podcast, and the Psychoanalysis Podcast joins us for a meandering exploration of a book that gets so much right while still suffering from some Pike bloat. We talk action, witchcraft, horror, and Stephen King.

Award winning horror film theorist and analyst turned screenwriter and co-host of the podcast This Ends at Prom, BJ Colangelo joins The PikeCast to look at Christopher Pike's 1995 novel The Lost Mind. While we all found something to enjoy within the pages, the sadly very stereotypical middle eastern descriptions take us in a deep dive to the problematic Pike section.

Author Hailey Piper joins The PikeCast to deconstruct Christopher Pike's 1996 Sci-Fi novel The Starlight Crystal. What starts out as a straight forward discussion about the book descends quickly into madness as nearly all of the Pikers lose the thread and find an inability to really discuss the book as it is. 

Filmmaker Jenn Wexler joins The PikeCast to talk about Christopher Pike's 1999 novel The Grave, its similarities and differences from earlier Pike novels, and the growth of the author. It's a confused story of zombies, genetic engineering, Jesus babies, and vampirism, and it's all VERY Pike.

Gory Cory joins us as we go back to the early days for 1986's Chain Letter, and are immediately overwhelmed by far too many characters, some really nonsensical twists, and someone who must have superhuman strength to pull all this off.

The PikeCast is thrilled to be joined by author of Horrorstor, My Best Friend's Exorcism, and Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix to discuss Christopher Pike's 1989 book Remember Me, a tale of murder, the afterlife, jealousy, suicide, body switching, baby swapping, one too many sets of adults, and, of course, incest. We also learn of at least one strange family's solution to diabetic episodes. 

The ladies take over The PikeCast. Cassie and Becca are joined by Andrew from FriGay the 13th to talk about the absolute bizarreness of Spellbound, where people are birds and birds are people and someone gets shot in the face.

Writer wish fulfillment, murder, angry teenage boy rage incel energy, a preternaturally clever pre-teen girl, and possibly the worst name in the entire pike canon: Triad Taylor. 1992's Master of Murder takes The PikeCast on a wild emotional ride of shock, amusement, and disagreement, and Cassie gets her own Jeremy moment as she hates the main character more than any character ever.

Fly to Hawaii with the Pikers for a week filled with scuba instruction and death and scuba discussions and nightmares and scuba diving and betrayal and scuba subterfuge. In 1992's Bury me Deep, the gang finds a suspense (and scuba) filled story with ghosts, murder, betrayal, and boyfriend stealing. They're joined by Nico Bell, a newcomer to Pike, who can't get over her motherly instinct that someone allowed these KIDS to go to Hawaii on their own!

Christopher Pike's 1993 book The Eternal Enemy proves to be VERY divisive for The Pikers. They're joined by podcaster Patrick R. McDonough on his virgin Pike voyage to talk through this wild ride of a book that begins with more information than anyone needs to know about VCRs and ends with a robot from the future with a briefcase full of flesh.

The Pikers tackle their first pure sci-fi novel from Christopher Pike, 1986's The Tachyon Web. They're joined by frequent Cooper collaborator Ginger Bentham to dig into this early work featuring young folks flaunting all the rules and joyriding through space to get some sweet alien love.

The Pikers are joined by JJ Ranvier to discuss Christopher Pike's 1989 wacky tale of death, regret, scavenger hunts, and lizard people: Scavenger Hunt. It's a wild ride that takes us from bizarre liminal space churches, to deserts with purple lizards, to incestual ice cream eating, to true cosmic horror.

The Pikers are joined by Jennifer Ann Gordon to talk about Christopher Pike's 1990 courtroom drama/mountain climbing epic/proto-incel cautionary tale in Fall Into Darkness.

Filmmaker, screenwriter and podcaster Toni Cunningham joins Cassie, Becca, & Cooper on The Pikecast to discuss 1988's Last Act, a meandering and overstuffed murder mystery set on a literal set, and staged as a play. Cooper gets grumpy about the plot and Cassie reveals her distaste for milk and penchant for stealing pigs.

Author Nat Edwards (who masquerades as TC Parker) returns to join hosts Cassie, Becca, and Cooper on  The PikeCast to discuss Christopher Pike's 1994 novel, and the first in a series, The Last Vampire, an Interview With the Vampire for teens that doesn't forget the brutal blood and guts, as well as delving into a whole new mythology and origin for vampires. 

Randall Colburn, co-host of The Loser's Club podcast and editor at AVClub.com joins PikeCast hosts Cassie, Becca, and Cooper to talk about Christopher Pike's 1988 novel Gimme a Kiss, a saga of sexual shame and embarrassment that leads to convoluted plots, murder, pretend suicide, and made up diary entries about sex.

Cassie, Becca, & Cooper are joined by author David Sodergren and his pug sidekick Boris to discuss Christopher Pike's very first horror novel Slumber Party, released in 1985 as part of the Point Horror series.

Author Nat Edwards (who masquerades as TC Parker) joins PikeCast hosts Cassie, Becca, and Cooper to tackle the wildest and strangest (and most unpublishable today) book in Pike's canon. A book with space vampires, sexually transmitted monsterism, and a shocking amount of murdered high schoolers. Join us to talk Monster.

The PikeCast hosts Cassie, Becca, and Cooper are joined by author Jessica Guess to wrap their heads around terminally ill teenagers telling stories at the Rotterham Hospice. Every night, coincidentally at midnight, this club of teens meets and shares their stories, and one by one, they meet their ends. Come along as we talk The Midnight Club!

Join us on The PikeCast as Cassie, Becca, and Cooper spend some time with teenage suicide, abortion, and revenge! Whisper of Death presents a picture of an empty world, filled only with you, your boyfriend, and some people you know from school. And a witch (or something) who wants to torture you (for some reason). Come along as we talk Whisper of Death!

Join us on The PikeCast as Cassie, Becca, and Cooper spend some time with cheerleaders and cocaine! Released in 1991 (shortly after a show about small town highschoolers, murder, and cocaine, Twin Peaks premiered) this book paints a very unusual picture of high school life, full of perverts, wanton kinky sex, non-monogamy, casual drugs and drinking, and guns just hanging around. Yunno, like real high school. Come now, let's talk Die Softly by Christopher Pike!

Becca, Cassie, and Cooper sit down for a special preview episode of The PikeCast where they talk about how each of them discovered horror. Cassie and Cooper detail the nostalgia they have for Christopher Pike and Becca is shocked, being a Pike newbie, at some of the things they recall.