The Coode Street Podcast

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by long time friend of the podcast, Joe Abercrombie.   We last spoke to Joe during the pandemic when he was working on The Age of Madness series. He joins us this week to discuss his brand new novel The Devils , which launches a new series and a new set of characters. As always, we'd like to thank Joe for making time to join us, and we hope you enjoy the epis...

With Peter Beagle's 86th birthday upon us, we thought we'd re-share a discussion we had with him last year about writing and story. We wish Peter a happy birthday and hope you enjoy the discussion!   Sunday Apr 14, 2024 This week we are joined by the  legendary author of The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle, who discusses his new novel I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons  (published next month by Saga Pres...

As we try to return to some sort of regular schedule, we’re delighted to welcome back Joe Monti, vice president and editorial director of Saga Press, to discuss the current state of the publishing business, the effects (if any) of the current economic stresses, and what to look forward to in the coming months (Joe is particularly optimistic about SF and space opera). Along the way we touch on the...

With apologies for an unplanned hiatus, during which Gary traveled to Florida to attend the International Conference on the Fantastic, we’re back with a discussion that touches upon awards (again, but briefly), SF writers who are also good nonfiction writers, books whose 25th anniversary is this year (including Perdido Street Station), tribute anthologies such as Jonathan’s forthcoming Revolution...

This week’s episode features a few news items, but as usual you have to listen closely to find them among our usual free-association digressions. Awards season is underway. Nominations/and or votging for the Nebulas, Locus Awards, and Hugo Awards (once again we are eligible in the Fancast category, and Jonathan in the Editor Short Form category) is underway, and just closed for the BSFA Awards. Th...

Each year, we sit down and look at the year ahead and, inevitably, end up discussing the books we are looking forward to. This year we invited long time friends of the podcast Charlie Jane Anders and Ian Mond to join us. During a lively conversation it became clear that, no matter what else is happening in the world, there's a lot of wonderful work coming out in 2025, and this only scratches the s...

For those who might have been hoping our 2025 podcasts might get a little more focused and coherent, our apologies. Following up on several discussions on social media about how to learn about overlooked but deserving novels (mostly fantasy), we speculate on the factors that help a book or author gain and keep some sort of traction. Reprint programs like the Gollancz Masterworks or Tor Essentials...

This week’s episode is mostly about books—how do you get them, where do you put them, and how to get rid of them when you need to. You’d think that questions such as the best way to shelve books would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently that’s not always the case. We also touch upon the differences between collectors, acquirers, and accumulators, and how books can radically fluctuate in valu...

For our first episode of 2025, we touch upon novels we've been reading for the new year, including Charles Stross’s 13th Laundry novel/collection A Conventional Boy and Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried, as well as the frustrations of reading books on deadlines—as opposed to wallowing in them at leisure, and some non-SF writers we like. Gary then mentions how hard it is to gain perspective on n...

For our first episode of 2025, we touch upon novels we've been reading for the new year, including Charles Stross’s 13th Laundry novel/collection A Conventional Boy and Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried, as well as the frustrations of reading books on deadlines—as opposed to wallowing in them at leisure, and some non-SF writers we like. Gary then mentions how hard it is to gain perspective on n...

This week’s episode is mostly about books—how do you get them, where do you put them, and how to get rid of them when you need to. You’d think that questions such as the best way to shelve books would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently that’s not always the case. We also touch upon the differences between collectors, acquirers, and accumulators, and how books can radically fluctuate in valu...

For our year-end review of 2024 books, we’re joined once again by fellow Locus reviewer Ian Mond and distinguished critic and novelist James Bradley. As usual, we mention a lot of authors and titles, and probably forget to mention many deserving others. But you’ll no doubt find some suggestions you hadn’t thought of, and some of our usual digressions about familiar questions of genre, literary amb...

At the end of October Reactor published their list of The Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century, which attempted to list the best/top/favourite science fiction and fantasy books of the past 25 years. Two weeks later Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy award-winning writer Jo Walton published a follow-on piece on Reactor, On Selecting the Top Ten Genre Books of the First Quarter of...

Long time friend of the podcast Joe Monti, who was recently promoted to Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Editorial Director at Saga Press, and is now officially a "Big Cheese', stops by for a wide-ranging chat about the impact of the pandemic and other events on the affordability of books; trends in recent science fiction, fantasy and horror and why science fiction may be set for something...

  In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic The Dispossessed, we sit down for a chat with award-winning biographer and writer Julie Phillips, author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon and The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Body Problem. Julie is currently at work on the authorized biography of Le...

For our first October episode, we try out another new opening, touch upon the recent catastrophic weather in Florida and the hazards of attempting near future SF in a rapidly changing world, with Norman Spinrad’s Russian Spring as one example. After a brief digression (what else?) on novels that extrapolate political decisions more than technological change—like the two novels that preceded the mo...

As we gear up for the inevitable year-in-review discussions, and the annual semi-hiatus between the fall and spring convention sessions (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), we return to our familiar questions of canon and influence, noting that while some books seem to drop out of the discussion within months of being published, others,like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, continue to generate r...

In this episode we are delighted to welcome the extremely talented Emily Tesh , who managed the rare achievement of winning a World Fantasy Award for her first novella Silver in the Wood and a Hugo Award for her first novel, Some Desperate Glory. We touch upon some works that figure in Emily’s approach to science fiction and fantasy, including Orson Scott Card's Ender’s Game and a children's SF no...

With the Glasgow World Science Fiction Convention behind us, and with Gary back in Chicago and Jonathan back in Perth, our faithful podcasters pick up the task once again. This week we are delighted to welcome long-time friend of the podcast, Nalo Hopkinson, who joins us to discuss her brilliant new novel, Blackheart Man , and her soon to be released short story collection, Jamaica Ginger and Othe...

The Forever War, the debut novel from US writer Joe Haldeman, was first published by St Martins Press in 1974. It was shortlisted for the Locus Award, and was awarded the Hugo and Nebula Awards as Best SF Novel of the year. It went on to become recognised as an essential classic of the science fiction field, was listed as #1 in the Gollancz Science Fiction Masterworks, and has never been out of pr...

With the Glasgow WorldCon just around the corner, Gary and Jonathan turn their attention to plans for the event. In addition to panel appearances, there'll be a special live recording of The Coode Street Podcast where we are joined by Joe Haldeman, Gay Haldeman, and John Scalzi to discuss 50th anniversary of the publication of The Forever War. Since rambling is unavoidable, there is also a brief d...

We're delighted to welcome a distinguished pair of guests, the legendary Michael Swanwick and writer and critic Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, whose book-length interview Being Michael Swanwick explores Michael’s entire career, and whose debut novel Equimedian has been described as a love letter to the SF of the '70s and '80s. As usual, we wander a bit, discussing not only Michael's life in SF, but how stori...

For any listeners who have missed our longstanding tradition of almost unfettered rambling, we turn our attention this week to the questions of how and why certain novels and writers seem to hold up better than others, how younger readers can enjoy some older classics while completely tuning out others, and the difference between books that celebrate old traditions as opposed to books that seek to...

Multiple Aurealis, Ditmar, and Shirley Jackson award winner Kaaron Warren joins us for this week’s episode, along with old friend of Coode Street and fellow Locus reviewer Ian Mond, mostly to discuss Kaaron’s wonderful new novel The Underhistory , how it does or doesn’t align with traditional genre categories, and what such categories mean anyway. Ian explains his notion of literary horror, and Ka...

The distinguished Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Award winner Paolo Bacigalupi joins us this week to talk about his forthcoming historical fantasy Navola , as well as the challenges of shifting from a focus on environmental SF to epic fantasy, the liberation that comes from being able to invent a world (and partly a language) that echoes Florentine history without being bound by it, the im...