The Coode Street Podcast

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention held in Reno, Nevada we sat down with Ian McDonald to discuss his new novel, Planesrunner.

This week saw the publication of Margaret Atwood's new book of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, which discusses her thoughts on science fiction in some detail.  We invited Ursula K. Le Guin to join us on the podcast to discuss Atwood, science fiction and her new book.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Note: As mentioned at the end of the podcast, this will be the last newly recorded episode until mid-November. The next three episodes will be interviews with Alastair Reynolds, Ian McDonald, and Kim Stanley Robinson recorded in Reno at WorldCon.

After a lot of discussion about buzz and best of the year matters, Gary and I wrench our attention away from such matters and move on to discuss the one true mission of science fiction, the matter of small presses in SF  (a little), and the new new new new new space opera.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

As a continuation of our discussion on finding the best books of the year and understanding how buzz is generated, this week Gary and I turned to our reader's comments (both here and over at my blog) about buzz;  the New Wave and women in SF, and much more.  We also repeat our call for reader's to tell us about their best books of the year, which we hope to continue to discuss in coming months.  Listener Tansy Rayner Roberts has posted her terrific 'Best of the Year so far' list, and we'd like to see yours!

This week Gary and I invited Ian Mond from The Writer and the Critic to join us to discuss recommending books and how buzz is generated around new or upcoming books each year.  We discuss the very welcome feedback we received on the subject before we began to ramble in earnest, going on to discuss currently overlooked writers like Thomas M. Disch, Michael Bishop and Zenna Henderson,  sport in science fiction and fantasy, the delicate balance between literature and science in hard SF, and many other things.  Gary and I would like to thank Ian for joining us, and I'd like to make it clear, personally, that I was only joking about Alisa and the knitting needles. Really :) Some useful links following on from the podcast: Subterranean are publishing a best of Michael Bishop, and NESFA publish the collected 'People' stories by Zenna Henderson. PS: I apologise.

It doesn't feel like it, but the end of the science fiction year is not too far away, so Gary and I thought, in response to Ian Mond's of Writer and the Critic, that we'd discuss possible award-likely texts, how books get buzz, and much more.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

After a sojourn due to Father's Day, when we ran the very well received Jo Walton episode, Gary and I are are back on deck to discuss young adult science fiction, Ian McDonald, his new novel Planesrunner, Daryl Gregory and his new collection, robots and computerised houses, and a bit of waffle on the subject of Orson Scott Card and "Hamlet's Father". As always we hope you enjoy the podcast. See you next week!

Gary and I travelled to Reno, Nevada to attend Renovation, the World Science Fiction Convention for 2011.  Over the weekend we recorded a handful of podcasts with friends, old and new, that we see to seldom. We'll be publishing these over the coming month.  The first in the series is with Jo Walton, author of Among Others and Farthing, where we discussed that novel, science fiction, her Hugo blogging and many other things. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

Last weekend Gary and I were in the slightly surreal space station environment of the Atlantis Casino in Reno, Nevada for the World Science Fiction Convention, where we recorded upcoming podcasts with Ian McDonald, Alastair Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Jo Walton. This weekend we're home and discuss the con (briefly), vow to avoid discussing awards too much, look at the work of Caitlin R. Kiernan and discuss the use of language in SF. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

It looked, for a moment, that technical difficulties would prevent us getting this final pre-WorldCon podcast out to you, but we persevered, recording this one twice.  We discussed many things, including changing concepts of the field, books that we're reading and so on.  We'll be at WorldCon and look forward to meeting as many of you there as possible. We'll also be recording, and hope to get something online from there (though it's possible we might not). Hopefully we'll see you here next week. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the podcast.