Sense8 is a new Netflix original series from J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, and the Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix. It’s the story of eight strangers from around the world who develop a psychic link that allows them to pool their knowledge and abilities. Science fiction editor John Joseph Adams has been left cold by other Wachowski projects, but he found Sense8 deeply moving.

“I got very caught up in a lot of the different emotional scenes in the show,” Adams says in Episode 157 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “Watching it with my wife, we were both just on the verge of tears multiple times.”

Many critics share his enthusiasm, but many others have panned the show. Science fiction author Tobias Buckell thinks some of this ambivalence may stem from the show’s diverse, international cast, which may alienate critics accustomed to a steady diet of straight white male leads.

“I think in some cases probably some critics are going to just not see a way into it,” he says. “And so you’re going to have a lot of subconscious bias reacting to say, ‘This is really great, but I feel uncomfortable with it for some reason, so I’m going to find something to pick at.'”

Author Sam J. Miller agrees that the show’s diversity will be inspiring to some and off-putting to others.

“The thing that made it so amazing and so special and so powerful is the thing that tons of people are going to hate about it, which is it’s super, super queer,” he says. “And I don’t mean just that there’s gay sex in it and queer characters. I felt like—in terms of narrative, in terms of the dialogue—this is coming from a really queer place.”

Buckell also feels that, while Sense8 should be applauded for its diverse cast, its characters are sometimes stereotypical. He hopes other science fiction shows will go even further in depicting diverse, nuanced characters.

“I want this to succeed so that we can see more great stuff like this,” he says.

Listen to our complete interview with John Joseph Adams, Tobias Buckell, and Sam J. Miller in Episode 157 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Tobias Buckell on worldbuilding:

“I particularly enjoyed when the two characters called each other using the phone, to verify that it was real. So many movies, so much TV, does not even accept the fact that cell phones exist, and they write around to avoid it. But of course the first thing you’d do is figure out each other’s number and have someone else call it, to make sure that this wasn’t a hallucination. It’s really enjoyable to see them thinking through the worldbuilding like that. It’s kind of a crazy idea, these people are all telepathic and connected to each other across the world. … But I love when you take that nugget, you say, ‘What if?’ and you expand out in all these different ways. That’s what really good science fiction and fantasy is.”

Sam J. Miller on queer themes:

“In a mainstream drama, there would be this push for [Nomi] to forgive her mother and accept her mother’s love, even on terms that are offensive and problematic and deny her true identity. And the fact that this show doesn’t do that—and the show supports her in making her own decisions about what her family is—is really radical. This is the most queer I’ve ever seen something intended for mainstream consumption be. I’ve never seen, in a mainstream piece of cinema or television, a character talk about the transformative, transcendent, spiritual power of giving somebody a blowjob. As a gay man, that’s one of those things that’s an aspect of your experience that you don’t see in mainstream narrative.”

David Barr Kirtley on Theodore Sturgeon:

“There was a story on io9 with the headline ‘Sense8 is the Philip K. Dick Adaptation We Always Wanted,’ but I thought this was the Theodore Sturgeon adaptation we always wanted. … Sturgeon was always writing about love and empathy, and he wrote story after story about a group of individuals who merge and form some sort of collective that’s greater than the sum of its parts. … He was also one of the first science fiction writers to have gay characters in his stories and portray them sympathetically. … When he first submitted [one of those stories], the editor rejected it, then he called up all the other science fiction editors and urged them to reject it too. … So that gives you an idea of what things used to be like in science fiction, and how far things have come.”

John Joseph Adams on empathy:

“That’s what we always hope for in fiction, right? We hope to understand people better by experiencing these narratives through different points of view, and so I hope that something like this will maybe help some people who have misguided points of view about queer people, or other races and that sort of thing. That’s a lot to ask of any piece of entertainment, but hopefully it can maybe chip away—at least a little bit—at some of those biases that people have, even if they don’t know that they have them. Because I think with characters as great as the ones they have on this show, I think something like this does have a shot at maybe changing some people’s minds, because they’re so well-drawn and they feel so real that you’d almost have to be a monster not to empathize with these characters and what they’re going through.”