The Coode Street Podcast

For Day 11 of our Advent Calendar, Jonathan calls up long-time friend of the podcast, acclaimed writer James Bradley, to discuss what he's been reading lately, his fabulous new novel Landfall , whether he revisits any favourite books or movies at this time of the year, and what he's been working on. As always, our thanks to James for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

As we approach the halfway mark of our Advent Calendar, Jonathan calls Emily Tesh , Hugo Award winning author of Some Desperate Glory and co-host of reigning Hugo Best Fancast Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones , to discuss the podcast she hosts with Rebecca Fraimow, her year in reading, her wonderful novel The Incandescent , and what she's working on now.

For Day 9 of the 2025 Advent Calendar, Jonathan and Gary called Paul McAuley to discuss the books he's been reading and would recommend, holiday traditions, what he's had out recently, and his exciting new novel, Loss Protocol , which is due out in February. As always, our thanks to Paul for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

With our provider struggling a little following the various Cloudflare issues of late, Gary and Jonathan call up Nebula and BSFA Award winner Isabel J. Kim to talk about what she's been reading, her holiday favourites, what she had out in the past year, and the upcoming publication of her debut novel Sublimation next year. As always, our thinks to Isabel for making time to talk to us today. We hop...

Today Jonathan sits down with British SF Award winner and Arthur C. Clarke Award, BFA, and Tiptree Award nominee Aliya Whiteley to talk about what she's been reading and would recommend as the holidays get underway, as well as her recent collaboration with Oliver K Langmead, and her upcoming novel The Misheard World . As always, our thanks to Aliya for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy...

Day 6 of the 2025 Coode Street Advent Calendar sees Gary and Jonathan taking a moment to catch up Hugo and Nebula Award winner Nancy Kress about what she's been reading, her most recent short story collection , and the new fantasy novel she has coming in 2026. As always, our thanks to Nancy for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

As we move towards the end of the first week of our 2025 Advent Calendar, Gary and Jonathan take a moment to sit down with Adrian Tchaikovsky to talk about what he's been working on, what he has coming out, and what holiday recommendations he might have. Adrian is the author of the brilliant Tyrant Philosophers series, which has been a highlight of the past couple of years, among many other wonder...

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’...

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’...

In amongst the hurly burly of the end of the year and putting together the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Gary and Jonathan found time to sit down with long-time friend of the podcast (and most frequent guest!) Kij Johnson .  We last spoke when Kij's most recent short story collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending was published. Since then, Kij has been busy working on writing and developing r...

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’...

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’...

The World Fantasy Convention was held in Brighton, England two weeks ago. Gary and Jonathan both attended, so we shouldn't be surprised that they were jetlagged and not making to much sense when they recorded this ramble a week ago. As always, we hope you enjoy it!

Our guest this week is the remarkable Kemi Ashing-Giwa, whose new novel The King Must Die is out in November. We talk about science fantasy—or whether genre labels mean much at all to the new generation of writers—her own influences, her well-received first novel, the space opera The Splinter in the Sky , and even her current scientific work on mass extinctions and the loss of her family home in t...

This week we have a lively conversation with the remarkable Ken Liu , whose new thriller All That We See or Seem introduces a new protagonist, the gifted hacker Julia Z, in a tale that explores the growing role of AI, the possibility of a technology of shared dreams, a variety of near-future surveillance tech, and some pretty fearful players with even more fearful schemes. A dramatic shift from hi...

In a rare shorter episode, we chat about the late and much missed Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, with whom Jonathan and Gary had strangely similar encounters some years ago, and her early career as an SF writer before her decades-long success with her Saint-Germain series of vampire novels. That leads, briefly, to considering midlist vs. niche authors, before we get into some of the odd features of America...

With Gary recently returned from Worldcon in Seattle, we chat a bit about the Hugos (mostly avoiding second-guessing the results), which leads to some discussion of the differences between Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.  Jonathan raises an intriguing question about the novella category, with its rather reductive word-length definition of the form. But what, other than length, really disti...

Twenty five years ago China Mieville 's second novel, Perdido Street Station , introduced the world to the fantastical city of Bas Lag. It went on to win the Arthur C Clarke and British Fantasy awards, and be nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Tiptree, and Locus awards among others.  Perdido Street Station was followed by two further novels set in Bas Lag, The Scar and Iron Council and...

In this week’s episode, we’re joined by two of our most exciting writers, each of whom has a new book out in August. Charlie Jane Anders’ Lessons in Magic and Disaster  offers a wonderful combination of witchcraft, academia, and generational family tensions, while Annalee Newitz’s  Automatic Noodle features a team of robots trying to establish a noodle shop in a San Francisco recovering from Calif...

We're almost embarrassed to admit it, but it’s been ten years since we last chatted with Silvia Moreno-Garcia , shortly after her first novel Signal to Noise had been published. Now she’s back, talking about an excellent new novel The Bewitching . Along the way, we touch upon several of her other novels, including the bestselling Mexican Gothic, Silver Nitrate, The Seventh Veil of Salome, The Daug...

Even though we know that some past episodes have probably spent too much time talking about awards, our latest chat begins with some thoughts on—well, awards. With Nebulas, Hugos, Shirley Jackson, Ignyte, World Fantasy, etc., there are just too many to ignore. We soon drift off into other topics. Gary is looking forward to hosting a panel discussion at the Locus Awards, and is fascinated by Kemi A...

This week we are joined by an old friend of the podcast, the distinguished Canadian novelist Guy Gavriel Kay, whose wonderful new novel Written on the Dark  is out this month. As always, we not only touch upon some details of the novel— which takes place in Kay’s own version of an alternate 15th century France, featuring a Parisian tavern poet loosely based on the historical François Villon—but on...

This week it’s just Jonathan and Gary again, in what some listeners might view as an either a classic ramble or a series of rabbit holes from which we never fully escape. We start with a discussion of some current trends such as cozy fantasy and SF, romantasy, and dark academia, noting that these had all been around for decades before getting their present labels, and briefly consider Paul Kincaid...

This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by Silvia Park to discuss her exciting debut novel, Luminous, which started life as a children's novel and connects to the Reactor/Tordotcom novelette " More Real Than Him ". We chat about artificial intellligence, writing about robots and how we use them as surrogates in fiction, different perspectives on fiction and how Luminous  might be read by US and Kor...

In celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Tachyon Publications , we invited publisher Jacob Weisman to join us in a fascinating exploration of the independent publisher whose list of authors includes classic tales from Stanley Weinbaum, A.E. Van Vogt, and even Mary Shelley, as well as major work from contemporary writers like Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillip, Michael Swanwick, Terry Bisson,...