The Coode Street Podcast

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by long-time friend of the podcast, Jeffrey Ford. Jeff is the winner of the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards and has published eight novels, six short story collections and more than 130 short stories. His most recent book is Shirley Jackon Award winner A Natural History of Hell. Just out is new short novel, The Twilight Pariah. He joins us to discuss his writing, genre and his first new novel in ten years, Ahab's Return, or The Last Voyage. As always we'd like to thank Jeff for making the time to join us. We'd also like to apologise, this time out, for some technical issues which affect the sound quality of this episode, especially in the first half. We think it's worth persevering with, though.  Next week: Annalee Newitz discusses Autonomous.

After a long and mostly unplanned hiatus, we're back! We travelled to Helsinki, Finland to attend WorldCon75, and then spent time travelling and not thinking about podcasting very much at all. Still, all holidays must come to an end, and so we headed back up to the Gershwin Room one more time to discuss WorldCon, the Hugo Awards, and the merits of developing a list of books for a Fantasy 101 type course (inspired by a question from Theodora Goss). As you can imagine, we talk, we disagree, there's rambling and Coode St is pretty much as it always is. We hope you enjoy the episode. See you next week!

And now for something special! During the recent WorldCon, held in Helsinki, Finland, Gary and Jonathan took to the stage to talk to WorldCon guest of honor Walter Jon Williams and Campbell Award nominee Kelly Robson to discuss Walter's career and his new novel, Quillifer. During recording we were fortunate enough to be able to give away copies of Quillifer to lucky convention attendees thanks to the generosity of Saga Press. We were a little limited by time (panels lasted exactly 45 minutes in Helsinki) but the conversation flowed and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Our special thanks to Walter Jon, to Kelly, and to the tech team at WorldCon 75 for making this possible. 

We were away! We came back! We missed you! After an unexpected four week hiatus, and with another four week hiatus coming up, Gary and Jonathan took some time to catch up with one another, discuss what they'd both been reading lately, consider the XPrize fiction projection Seat 14C, and have a chat about the best books of the year they've read so far. A lot for a chat a little under an hour, but rambling will get them there. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. We will be back next week with more!

Gary and Jonathan are back with a rambling conversation that touches on epic fantasy and its relationship to privilege, the recently announced Campbell Award ballot, Gary's theory on perspective, recent books they've read and more. They also discuss hiatuses, missed episodes and how to subscribe to the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!   Subscribe If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, use this link for iTunes.

Any time the Coode Street Podcast connects with the United Kingdom it's a special occasion. Jonathan stays up until the dead of night (often with a whisky in hand), while Gary is driven out of bed and into the arms of coffee. This week, in the face of puzzling technical difficulties, Jonathan and Gary are joined on the podcast by noted critic Paul Kincaid and award-winning writer Ken Macleod to discuss Paul's new book on the work of Iain Banks, science fiction, writing in Scotland, and much more. The aforementioned technical difficulties do mean there's echo on the line from Scotland, for which we apologise. We've tried to minimise it as much as possible, and think the conversation is worth persevering with, but are sorry the overall quality isn't a bit better. We hope you'll enjoy the episode and, as always, we should be back next week.

This week we talk with the multi-talented Theodora Goss, whose forthcoming novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, draws not only from her own doctoral research in late Victorian Gothic fiction, but from her earlier story "The Mad Scientist’s Daughter." By focusing on a group of women characters drawn from classic tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley—and bearing the familiar names of Jekyll, Hyde, Moreau, Rappaccini, and Frankenstein—Goss gives a voice to the largely invisible figures from classic works of terror. We also touch upon her recent story, “Come See the Living Dryad”—is it fantasy or not?-- as well as the reasons behind the appeal of monsters and the monstrous, and the delights of playing with genre. As always, we'd like thank Dora for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode. Note: We experienced some technical difficulties with this episode. There were issues with the audio (Dora drops out occasionally). We think the episode is interesting enough to release, but do apologise for the problems and hope you'll persevere.

This week we are joined by Nebula, Clarke, Tiptree, Campbell, and World Fantasy Award winner Geoff Ryman to discuss his important new project, 100 African Writers of SF/F, which sees Ryman traversing the African continent meeting new creators of science fiction and fantasy to discuss their careers, their work and the places they find themselves working.   We also discuss the recently announced 2017 nominations for the African Speculative Fiction Society's Nommo Award, which will be presented later this year, and a diverse range of other work.  Toward's the end of our discussion Geoff mentions Adofe Atogun's novel, Taduno's Song which we promised to list here so listeners could find it. As always, we'd like to thank Geoff for making the time to join us, and hope you enjoy the podcast. If you'd like to do some further reading in African SFF some resources are listed below. We'd also strongly recommend checking out the voters packet for the Nommo Awards, which will be released shortly. Some online resources: Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine Jalada - A pan-African writers' collective AfroSF Facebook Group DADA Books - delightful reading Chimurenga - A pan African publication of writing, art and politics African Fantasy Reading Group

This week we're joined by the delightful and provocative Kim Stanley Robinson, to discuss his new novel New York 2140, his “comedy of coping” about dealing with catastrophic climate change in the next century, as well as how his previous novel Aurora challenged one of the cherished ideas in science fiction, the literary and artistic function of exposition in fiction, the relationship of science fiction writers to “futurists” or to MFA programs in creative writing, and his own distinguished career in the context of both science fiction and contemporary environmental literature. As always, our thanks to Stan for making the time to tallk to us.  We hope you enjoy the episode and will be back next week!

That sounds a bit grandiose, doesn't it? We're back rambling, and this week we discuss some of our recent reading (Jonathan finished reading his second novel of the year!!), Gary's convention, the history of the Crawford Award, voting, and Gary's new History of Science Fiction. There's rambling, diversions, and parts of the conversation that just trrail off into the ether, as you might expect. As always, our thanks to everyone and we hope you enjoy the podast. More next week.