The Coode Street Podcast

Every three months  Locus  publishes a long list of forthcoming science fiction, fantasy, and horror books that are being published in the US and the UK. As we have been doing all year, whenever one of these ‘Forthcoming Books’ issues hits the newsstands and your email inboxes, we invite  Locus  Editor-in-Chief Liza Trombi to join us to discuss some of the books we’re excited about reading.  This...

Following on from yesterday's podcast discussion with Zen Cho about her new novel, Jonathan delivers a short audio review of Sorcerer to the Crown.  If you've read the book, or have anything you'd like to add, please leave a comment. 

This week Coode Street welcomes  Zen Cho , who received the Crawford Award earlier this year for her story collection  Spirits Abroad  and whose delightful first novel,  Sorcerer to the Crown , is published this week.  We discuss what it’s like to be a Malaysian writer living in London, the influences and background of her new Regency-romance fantasy, the heritage of colonialism, the expectations...

In keeping with yesterday's quick squib about Limekiller, here's another short piece of review/commentary, this time about Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora. With all of the conversation about Hugo Awards at the moment, I (Jonathan) am tempted to make some brief comments about books, stories and other works that I feel are nomination-worthy and that may make my own ballot next year. It is possible tha...

Between 1997 and 2003 I was a reviewer for Locus. Growing demands on my time from my work as reviews editor for the magazine and as an anthologist eventually led to me giving that up. But during my tenure I reviewed a number of books I look back on very fondly.  As a bit of an experiment, I've recorded the review I wrote in 2003 and am publishing it here. It stands as a snapshot of my writing at t...

With Gary only just returned from Spokane and the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, we sit down to discuss the success of  Sasquan , the successful site selection for Helsinki in 2017, congratulate our friends at Galactic Suburbia for their big win, and touch on some of the many and varied issues surrounding the 2015 Hugo Awards. During the podcast we: encourage you to join both  MidAmerican...

Two weeks ago we were fortunate enough to have Nina Allan and Renay as guests on the Coode Street Podcast ( Episode 244: Renay, Nina Allan & the Weight of Fannish History ). We discussed barriers to entry to fandom, inclusiveness and other issues  This week Gary and Jonathan continue that discussion in a fairly typical Coode Street ramble where we talk about inclusiveness, attending conventions, a...

This week saw the release of Nebula Award winning author  Aliette de Bodard’s   powerful and engaging fourth novel, The House of Shattered Wings.  Aliette was in Spokane, Washington for Sasquan: the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention when she made to time to sit down and discuss the novel; using the real world in world buildin; urban fantasy; combining work, family and writing; and much more wi...

In a recent interview with  Locus , Hugo and Campbell Award-winning author Ian McDonald discussed his new hard SF novel, Luna: First Moon: ‘My next books are Luna parts one and two, a duology set on a moon base – Game of Domes. In the Luna books, I’m still writing about developing economies, it’s just that this one happens to be on the moon, about 2089. It was basically Gary K. Wolfe who was respo...

This week we are joined by reviewer, critic, podcaster and one half of the Ladybusiness team, Renay, and British Science Fiction Award winning author of The Race, Nina Allan , to discuss the implications of Renay’s recent essay on Strange Horizons, ‘ Communities: Weight of History ’. In an engaging discussing we touch on what it is that makes a science fiction fan, what a fan needs to know about S...

This week we welcome very special guest Michael Swanwick, discussing his new 'Darger and Surplus' novel Chasing the Phoenix , the origins of the Darger and Surplus stories, his long-ago discussions with Fritz Leiber about whether the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories were actually horror stories, collaborating with Eilieen Gunn, William Gibson, and others, and what it was like to  work with legen...

As time slowly runs out to vote for the most controversial Hugo Awards in recent times, our intrepid commentators sit down to discuss the joy of attending a great convention like Archipelacon, some minor issues surrounding Sad Puppydom, discussion of Stories for Chip, tribute anthologies and much more.  Pig entrails are mentioned, so you have been warned.  As always we hope you enjoy the podcast....

This week we have a very special episode of the Coode Street Podcast indeed. During his recent appearance as Guest of Honor at  Readercon 26  in Burlington, Massachusetts, Gary Wolfe sat down for a wide-ranging informal conversation with SF Hall of Fame inductee and SFWA Grand Master Samuel R. Delany to discuss his work, a recent collection of his early novels, and much, much more. Jonathan was su...

Over the weekend of June 25-28 Gary travelled to distant and beautiful Mariehamn in the land of the midnight sun where he was to appear as a guest of honor at Archipelacon: The Nordic SF & Fantasy Convention. In amongst time spent appearing on panels, making speeches and marveling that the sun was still up as midnight approached, Gary took time to sit down with fellow Archipelacon guest Karin Tidb...

This week, with Gary returned from  Archipelacon  in Finland, we touch once again upon the problems of translation, the  Finnish Weird , the international SF community, and such timely matters as the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the announcement of World Fantasy Life Achievement winners Ramsey Campbell and Sheri S. Tepper, new critical books in the  series from University of Illinois...

This week we are joined by Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss generation starships, how we might live in space, how space opera is becoming a subset of fantasy and his exciting new novel  Aurora  (due July 7). We are delighted to be able to present what is one of the first major discussions about this extraordinary new novel, which we think will prove to be one of...

After a brief, unplanned hiatus due to scheduling and personal issues (meaning that Gary got more involved in the Nebula weekend than he intended to), we return with a discussion that ranges from the Nebula nominees and winners this year, the encouraging sense of the health of the field during the Nebula weekend, the question of whether middle volumes in trilogies are always worth reading, the que...

Every year there are thousands of books published and any one of them could appeal to you. To help you find great new books,  Locus  publishes a list of forthcoming titles every three months.   And to help you navigate through that, each quarter we invite  Locus   Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi to join us and discuss the books that we think might be most interesting that are due out between now...

This week we pay a return visit to World Fantasy Award winning author  Elizabeth Hand , discussing her new short novel Wylding Hall, the British folk revival of the 1970s which provides the novel’s background, the use of multiple narrators (and the advantages of audio-books in differentiating them), and such diverse matters as the legacy of Arthur Machen, why there aren’t more fantasy novels about...

This week we sit down and discuss the World Fantasy Awards, the Life Achievement Award, and quite a lot more. Another old-fashioned ramble for the Coode Street Archives. We would mention that members of the 2013, 2014 and 2015 World Fantasy Conventions are eligible to vote for this year's World Fantasy Awards. A  voting form is available , and you may vote via email.  Voting closes 31 May 2015. Su...

This week we are joined by the Hugo and Nebula Award winning Paolo Bacigalupi , who is just about to publish his first science fiction novel for adults since 2009s The Windup Girl.  Picking up from where his harrowing short story "The Tamarisk Hunter" left off, T he Water Knife  is lean thriller that asks important questions about how global warming will affect us all as seas rise in some places a...

This week we return, without guests, to a topic with which we have annoyed listeners in podcasts for years—the idea of SF canon formation: who gets dropped from the canon, who gets added, and whether such things as Hugo nominations make any difference at all. The decade between 1985 and 1995 (20-30 years ago now), saw the deaths of many of the writers who helped establish much of the "classic" SF...

This week  James Bradley  and  Ian Mond  join Jonathan to discuss the five novels that have made the  final Hugo Awards ballot . The shortlisted novels are: Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)  The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)  The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)  The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (T...

This week’s very special episode is a conversation with the superb and formerly mysterious K.J. Parker, whose newest work  The Two of Swords  begins serialization this week from Orbit, and whose  Savages  is due later this summer from Subterranean Press.   We discuss the influence of writers as diverse as E.F. Benson, P.G. Wodehouse, Mercedes Lackey, and C.J. Cherryh, the reason there isn’t much o...

This has been a busy year for the Coode Street Podcast, talking to interesting guests, covering a wide-range of issues, and being syndicated by our friends at Tor.com. For a bit of change, Gary and Jonathan decided to sit down together and record an old-fashioned Coode Street Podcast, just two guys rambling about science fiction. Topics covered, or touched on, included awards (of course), politics...