The Coode Street Podcast

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through this strange time. Today Jonathan spends ten minutes with Alex Irvine , award-winning author of A Scattering of Jades, One King, One Soldier, The Narrows, and Buyout and they discuss the pleasure of re-rea...

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through this strange time. Jonathan spends time with Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson Award nominee Tamsyn Muir to discuss the comfort of reading mystery novels, the pleasures of early Georgette He...

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through this strange time. Today Gary spends ten minutes with multiple award winner Andy Duncan , touching upon vintage stand-up comedy, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, classic UFO lore, Sarah Pinsker's prescient yet h...

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through this strange time. Today Gary spends ten minutes with World Fantasy and Nebula Award-winning author Ellen Klages , who most recently added the New York Historical Society Children's Book Prize and the Ohio...

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through this strange time. Today Jonathan spends Ten Minutes with Garth Nix , who talked about Hilary Mantel, Oliver Cromwell, and more. Garth's Angel Mage is out now and The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is d...

This week, Jonathan and Gary are back together (with no guests) for the first time in several weeks, and we discuss the inevitable: the current pandemic, and the various ways in which it was and was not anticipated by past science fiction narratives—not only of worldwide plagues but of alien invasion stories and tales of isolation. But we also find time to touch upon the reading we’ve both been up...

Today Gary spends Ten Minutes with Naomi Kritzer , whose wonderful YA novel  Catfishing on CatNet  is a finalist for this year’s Andre Norton, Edgar, and Minnesota Book Awards, and whose Tor.com story “Little Free Library” is available on April 8. Books mentioned include: The Years that Matter Most How College Makes or Breaks Us by Paul Tough The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen World of the Five...

And we're doing it! One episode every day, without apology (almost)  Today Jonathan spends ten minutes with the incredible Jeffrey Ford who, despite somewhat terrible audio at his end, is wonderful company as he talks about what he's reading to get through the apocalypse and what you might.   What are you reading right now (and what do you think of it: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E....

Today Jonathan spends ten minutes talking to the fabulous Tochi Onyebuchi about reading for pleasure, writing in a time of crisis, what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, and what he's been writing.  As always, our sincere thanks to Tochi for being part of this crazy project. Books mentioned include: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexand...

Last year saw the publication of  The Ten Thousand Doors of January , the enchanting debut novel from Alix E. Harrow .  Today, in our continuing "Ten Minutes with..." series of short podcasts, Jonathan sits down with Alix to talk about the inordinate good fortune of being a writer asked to blurb the most awesome of books, what to read if you're looking for something to challenge you in these dark...

And now for something a little different. Jonathan spends ten minutes with James Bradley , author of the fabulous new novel  Ghost Species  to discuss Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy series of crime novels which starts with The Cold, Cold Ground ; Lily King's Writers & Lovers, and much more. Books mentioned in this episode include: The Sean Duffy series by Adrian McKinty Writers & Lovers by Lily King...

Today Gary Wolfe spends ten minutes with Nisi Shawl , who is currently preparing her introduction to the Library of America edition of Octavia Butler's work. They briefly touch upon Cory Doctorow as well as Nisi’s recent mini-collection from PM Press, Talk Like a Man, and the forthcoming sequel to her Nebula-nominated novel Everfair.   Books mentioned in this episode include: Fledgling by Octavia...

In the second of our all-new "Ten Minutes with..." series, Jonathan spends ten minutes (well, nearly twenty) with critic and reviewer Ian Mond talking about the book he's reading right now and the books he recommends for those with a little time on their hands (some of which he's reviewing for Locus). Books mentioned in this episode include: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Bubblegum by Adam Levi...

And now for something a little different. With all of us staying indoors, the team at Coode Street thought it might be fun to get in touch with some of our favourite people - writers, artists, and just folk we like to hang out with - and ask them what they're reading at the moment, what they recommend to read if you're currently hanging around indoors a lot, and maybe to let us know what they've b...

This week Jonathan and Gary have a lively discussion with the wonderful N.K. Jemisin , mostly about her new novel  The City We Became  (you can read the short story that inspired the novel at Tor.com), but with fascinating side discussions about living in New York and trying to capture and celebrate it in fiction; the vices and virtues of H.P. Lovecraft and his difficulties in dealing with Brookly...

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by a long time friend of the podcast, Ken Liu , to discuss his new short story collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories , approaching the end of his epic silkpunk fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, and how having good stories is more important to a society than having good institutions. Along the way, we talk about history, life, evolving art, and much...

As usual on this week’s Coode Street, Jonathan and Gary discuss what they’ve been reading lately, with a particular focus on how apocalyptic fiction has evolved over the decades, and how writers like Kim Stanley Robinson have found ways of finding some sort of hope even in the face of what increasingly seems inevitable. This being the start of awards season, they also spend some time discussing th...

In the second (or maybe third) episode in our new bi-weekly schedule, Jonathan and Gary eventually get around to the question of what books to recommend to someone new to science fiction and fantasy or someone who’s been away from the field for years or even decades. The standard answer to this a generation ago—Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke—hardly provides an intro to modern SF, and while names like...

This week, after more or less inadvertently falling into a discussion of Simon Jimenez’s new novel  The Vanished Birds  (Del Rey) and whether it will successfully gain attention from both SF and mainstream literary readers, Jonathan and Gary mention a few other forthcoming books and eventually circle in on a discussion of fandom—what it means to be a fan, different kinds of fandom, and questions o...

After last week’s episode where Jonathan and Gary discussed their favourite books from 2019, this time they talk about books they're looking forward to in 2020 (a few of which, in fairness, they’ve already seen or in Jonathan’s case even edited). It’s a pretty varied list, and probably incomplete, so feel free to suggest more titles that we might not have known about. Overall, though, 2020 is star...

It's been a long time! Jonathan and Gary are together again for the first new episode of Coode Street since October! There's a lot to catch up on, ranging from the current climate apocalypse in Australia—and the question of whether SF has done much to prepare us for this sort of thing—to major events of 2019, such as the renaming of major awards, the dramatic growth in awareness of world SF (from...

It's been quiet here at Coode Street, of late. Jonathan has been working on books and recommended reading lists, and Gary has been travelling. Just two weeks ago Gary travelled to sunny Los Angeles, California to attend the  2019 World Fantasy Convention . During the weekend Gary was busy, interviewing guest of honour Margo Lanagan, doing some panels, and seeing friends. He did take a moment to si...

It's been quiet here at Coode Street, of late. Jonathan has been working on books and recommended reading lists, and Gary has been travelling. Just two weeks ago Gary travelled to sunny Los Angeles, California to attend the 2019 World Fantasy Convention . During the weekend Gary was busy, interviewing guest of honour Margo Lanagan, doing some panels, and seeing friends. He did take a moment to sit...

We're on a roll! Two episodes in two weeks. Surely it can't last! Gary has been reading Margaret Atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel The Testaments and it's sparked off all sorts of thoughts on that old chestnut: science fiction vs. literary fiction. What are literary writers doing when they write SF? Can SF writers cross-over to the mainstream? Is this purely a generational perspective and does i...

This week, with Jonathan hard at work compiling his year’s best anthology, we revisit one of the oldest questions about science fiction—namely, what is it and how do you decide what to include or exclude from an anthology clearly labelled as science fiction? Rather than trying to offer our own definitions, we discuss the problem of definition in general. Gary argues that the many definitions of SF...