The Coode Street Podcast

Welcome to The Coode Street Podcast, an informal weekly discussion about science fiction and fantasy featuring award-winning critics and editors Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe.  The Coode Street Podcast debuted in 2010 and has been nominated for the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Aurealis awards. This week Jonathan and Gary talk to old friend  Chris Brown,  and very special guest  William Gibson , in a discussion that ranges from William’s recent novel The Peripheral to the influences of writers as diverse as Mervyn Peake, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, and Avram Davidson and the question of what it means to write in and out of genre. We hope you find it as interesting as we all did recording it.  Coode Street, Episode 220 (1hr 17mins) The Coode Street Podcast is published by The Coode Street Press and Gary K. Wolfe, and is syndicated by Tor.com.

Jonathan returns and our heroes spend some time discussing the history and nature of short story collections in science fiction and fantasy. Warning: Contains some facts and a lot of wild speculation. Next week: William Gibson!

This week, in honor of the new Subterranean Press volume The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison, we are joined by Harlan himself, along with Subterranean publisher William Schafer. Although Jonathan wasn’t able to join us on this one, we get into some fascinating stories about Thomas Pynchon, Octavia Butler, Harlan’s famous house (including the “grotto”), the role of small-press publishers in the history of the field, and what it all looks like from the perspective of a legendary writer in his 81st year. Note: There's a break at the 42min mark when Gary's cat stepped on his laptop and paused the recording. A few minutes were missed, but conversation continued!!

This week we welcome James Morrow, one of SF’s premier satirists, whose new novel Galapagos Regained is just out, taking on Darwinism, Victorian religious attitudes, the Book of Mormon, and Morrow’s frequent themes of rationalism vs. received belief.  We also touch upon the role of a religious satirist, the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, old SF movies and TV programs, Morrow’s recent novellas Shambling Towards Hiroshima and The Madonna and the Starship, and his forthcoming collection Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow from Wesleyan University Press.

More than two years ago, at the 2012 World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Gary and Jonathan sat down with Guy Gavriel Kay to discuss his then new novel River of Stars.  A now legendary discussion followed, that quickly became mythical when technical issues resulted in that recording and several others being permanently lost. In an attempt to redress the loss of that earlier conversation, Guy agreed to join Jonathan and Gary for the discussion that follows while they were all in Washington DC for the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.   As always, we would like to thank Guy for his patience and for being part of the podcast. It is greatly appreciated. We hope you all enjoy the episode and will be back next week!

Suddenly our intrepid heroes, still mostly living on vacation time,realised that they needed to put out another episode of the podcast. Plans for a leisurely hiatus were abandoned and, somewhat the worse for New Year wear, they sat down in front of their microphones, and began to ramble.  This week's discussion starts with a look at some end of the year comments made by Locus Online short fiction reviewer Lois Tilton, which had Jonathan nodding his head in some agreement, and wandered on to his vague thoughts on genre cohesiveness (or something) and ended with thought from Gary on who will we remember this year from the Class of 1915 (or something). All in all, a typical Coode Street. Next week, finally as promised, Guy Gavriel Kay! As always we hope you enjoy the episode, and will see you next week!

The third of our short series of podcasts recorded at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC, this one features a particularly laughter-filled conversation with award-winning writers and editors, and long-time friends and collaborators, Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. While it's been long enough since the podcast was recorded that we're not sure any of it made sense, we do know it was a lot of fun to record. We hope it's a lot of fun to listen to. As always, our sincere thanks to Jack and Gardner for making the time to talk to us, and our thanks to you for listening.  We hope you're all either enjoying a well-earned holiday over the Festive Season, or finding a way to enjoy yourself if you have to work through it, and that we see you safe and well when we're back recording live in a couple weeks.  Next week: Guy Gavriel Kay.

This week the first of our series of World Fantasy Convention 2014 podcasts.  Award-winning writers Helen Marshall and Robert Shearman sit down with Gary and Jonathan to discuss writing, their careers, their new books and much more. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

For the final episode before our Christmas hiatus, Jonathan and Gary are joined by award-winning writer and critic James Bradley to discuss the best books of 2014. Any lists are going to be incomplete, but we make an attempt to talk about a lot of what we thought was worthwhile from the year just coming to a close. We also briefly mention our big new announcement about Coode St becoming a Tor.com podcast, something we are very happy about. We would like to thank James for joining us on this episode, and all of our guests throughout the year who made time to talk to us.  We'd also like to thank all of you, our listeners, for spending some time with us in 2014.  It's been a great year, and one we're proud of being able to bring to you. We hope you, your families, and all of your loved ones have safe and happy holidays and that we'll see you back here in January! Note: We will be issuing new podcasts recorded at World Fantasy Convention during our hiatus, so do tune in here next week for another new Coode St.

The Coode Street Podcast is fortunate to have a small group of guests who have appeared on the show more than once. This week we welcome back our most regular visitor, the wonderful Kij Johnson, who brings us up to date on the weather in Kansas, what she's been writing, and on re-imagining our genre's past.  It was enormous fun talking to Kij and we'd like to thank her for making time on a chilly Saturday evening to talk to us on Coode Street. We apologise for some minor technical issues. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast, and will be back next week with more! Note: This is a reissue of the original episode, which had some issues.