The Coode Street Podcast

With  Swancon 40 , the 2015 Australian National Science Fiction Convention, in full swing Jonathan sat down with convention guest of honour John Scalzi  and Twelfth Planet Press editor/publisher Alisa Krasnostein to discuss science fiction, community, Robert Heinlein, having just finished new novel The End of All Things and more! As always, we'd like to thank John and Alisa for appearing on the po...

This week Gary* is joined by award-winning author Ken Liu and Joe Monti, Executive Editor at Saga Press, to discuss Ken's exciting debut novel  The Grace of Kings , his forthcoming collection The Paper Menagerie, and much more. As always we'd like to thank Ken and Joe for making the time to talk to us. And we hope you enjoy the podcast! The Grace of Kings  is in stores next week.* Jonathan missed...

This weekend Silvia Moreno-Garcia joins us to talk about her debut fantasy novel, Signal to Noise .    Described in an upcoming issue of Locus as “one of the most important fantasy debuts of the year”, it’s an engaging and compelling story of a woman returning to her family home in Mexico for her father’s funeral, and of a time in her teens when she discovered that the right music played just the...

This week  Deborah Biancotti ,  Margo Lanagan , and  Scott Westerfeld  join Gary and Jonathan in the Gershwin Room (aka Skype) to discuss their exciting new book project, Zeroes. Our discussion ranges from collaborating, and all of the ins and outs of collaboration, to superheroes and the origins of the new series.  Zeroes will be released in September. As always, we would like to thank Deborah, M...

This week we welcome the remarkable Kelly Link, celebrating her new collection  Get In Trouble , her recent anthology with Gavin Grant , her career in general, and what’s coming up from Small Beer Press.  We talk about the differences (if there are any) between adult and YA fiction, genre and mainstream, the possibility of a new novel, and what we did or didn’t read in school.  In addition to disc...

As the Aurealis Awards reach their twentieth anniversary, Jonathan sits down with Aurealis Awards judging co-ordinator Tehani Wessely, publisher Alisa Krasnostein, and critic Sean Wright to discuss the  Aurealis Awards , their history and the recently released  2014 Aurealis Awards shortlist . This is the first time two episodes of Coode Street have been recorded and released on the same day! Our...

We are always on the look-out for new and exciting books to read, and always want to know what we should keep an eye out for.  For years we've relied on  Locus 's quarterly Forthcoming Books issues as a guide on what to look for. One of the very earliest ideas for the Coode Street Podcast was that each month we'd sit down and discuss the newest issue of  Locus . That didn't happen, but hopefully t...

Is there a difference to writing for younger readers? Do they want or need different kinds of stories? Do they have different expectations from older readers? How do you structure a series? What makes for a rewarding reading experience and how do genre expectations relate to that?  With new young adult novels published recently,  Joe Abercrombie  (whose Half the World, second volume in the Shatter...

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...

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...

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 Shamb...

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,...

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 fictio...

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 o...

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...

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...

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by the wonderful  Genevieve Valentine  who talks intelligently, coherently and very interestingly about television, film, her latest novel  The Girls at the Kingfisher Club , writing for comics and her extended run with  Catwoman , and a lot, lot more.  Genevieve's brilliance is a little overshadowed by bumbling hosts, who were exceptionally bumbling this wee...

We went to Washington DC to celebrate the 40th World Fantasy Convention and came back to the first books and stories of 2014. As long-time listeners know, this is the time when the season turns, when work beings on summing up the year we've had, and when the old year ends and the new one begins. This episode, with brief and incoherent gift guide, is the beginning of the end of 2014. As always, we...

This past weekend the World Fantasy Convention was held in Arlington, Virginia.  As part of the festivities, the Coode Street Podcast team produced the second ever "live" Coode Street Podcast. This time the wonderful Caitlin R. Kiernan and Peter Straub joined Jonathan and Gary to discuss: The Literary Uses of FantasyPanelists: Jonathan Strahan, Gary K. Wolfe, Peter Straub, Caitlin R. Kiernan Descr...

This week Hugo Award winning author of the God's War Trilogy  Kameron Hurley  joins Gary and Jonathan to discuss her new novel  The Mirror Empire , winning the Hugo Award, social media, and writing SF/F in the 21st Century. As always, we would like to thank Kameron for joining us on the podcast, and hope you enjoy the episode. Next week: World Fantasy!

In recent weeks Coode Street has discussed the national SF scenes in the United Kimgdom, Australia and China. This week we are joined by Peter Halasz and Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Robert J Sawyer , both long-standing advocates of Canadian science fiction, to discuss what's happening in SF/F north of the US border.  We'd like to thank both Bob and Peter for joining us in what was a very...

Following on from our recent conversations about British and Australian Science Fiction, this week we invited Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award winning author and translator  Ken Liu  to join us to discuss translating fiction, his experiences with Chinese SF and his forthcoming translation of Liu Cixin's  The Three Body Problem  (which Gary officially has recommended as a Coode Street Recommen...

This week Gary and Jonathan, aware that the Festive Season and more are in front of us all, sit down with the most recent 'Forthcoming Books' issue of  Locus  and do their best to assemble a quick, on-the-fly list of books we're looking forward to from October through to May next year. As Gary and Jonathan both say on the podcast, the list has been quickly assembled and certainly misses many worth...