The Coode Street Podcast

After our longest hiatus so far, Jonathan is back from Italy and Gary is back from Readercon, and we ramble on about such questions as whether modern SF can be characterized as optimistic or pessimistic, how some stories survive as influences despite their obvious flaws, whether modern SF holds on to some of its cherished myths even when they no longer seem feasible, what we’re reading these days, and our own forthcoming public podcast at MidAmericon next month. As usual, any topic that you might find uninteresting will soon turn into another topic entirely.

Welcome to the sixth episode of The Coode Street Roundtable. The Roundtable is a monthly podcast from Coode Street Productions where panelists James Bradley, Ian Mond, and Jonathan Strahan, joined by occasional special guests, discuss a new or recently released science fiction or fantasy novel.Madeline Ashby’s Company Town This month we discuss Company Town, the fourth novel from Madeline Ashby. It’s a gripping near future thriller described by its publisher as follows: New Arcadia is a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig--making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire. Still, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline? Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability and heightens the unease of a rig turning over. All signs point to a nearly invisible serial killer, but all of the murders seem to lead right back to Hwa's front door. Company Town has never been the safest place to be--but now, the danger is personal. A brilliant, twisted mystery, as one woman must evaluate saving the people of a town that can't be saved, or saving herself. If you're keen to avoid spoilers, we recommend reading the book before listening to the episode. If you don't already have a copy, Company Town can be ordered from:amazon.comamazon.com.auamazon.co.ukWe encourage all of our listeners to leave comments here and we will do our best to respond as soon as possible.Next month The Coode Street Roundtable will return at the end of July with a discussion of Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station.

Before Coode Street goes on hiatus for a few weeks when each of us travel to various exotic realms, we address a question which Jonathan raised about new editions of work by Clifford Simak and Tom Reamy—namely, what happens to the work of older writers in a world in which the midlist has all but disappeared? How do writers “read back” in the genre—or do they need to at all? How do writers as diverse as Joe Abercrombie and Neil Gaiman come across the work of Fritz Leiber, for example, or how do writers like Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Kij Johnson encounter Lovecraft? And for readers and writers who came of age in the 1990s or later, does “reading back” mean the same thing it did for earlier generations? Then we chat a bit about our plans for Coode Street at MidAmericon in August, what we’re reading now, and what we’re looking forward to reading on the break. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode, and hope you don't miss the podcast too much! See you in late July!

This weekend Gary and Jonathan found time amongst their growing commitments to grab an hour or so and sit down over a microphone and discuss the World Fantasy Awards life achievement award, its rules, its recipients, and some people they feel might be considered for the award.  We also have announced that we will be taking an intermittent hiatus during July and August. There will be an episode this coming weekend, then a break of a month. It's possible there may be an episode during this time, but honestly, recording podcasts while on holidays in Tuscany just doesn't seem likely, does it? As always, though, we hope you enjoy this episode. More next week!

We nearly did it. We nearly stayed on topic… This week, we reminisce briefly about six years of the Coode Street Podcast (an anniversary we overlooked a few weeks ago), and then segue, after a few brief diversionary rambles, into a discussion of the books we are both looking forward to in the next six months or so, touching upon new books by Angela Slatter, John Crowley, Peter Beagle, Jeffrey Ford, Kameron Hurley, Alastair Reynolds, Ursula K. Le Guin, Christopher Priest, Yoon Ha Lee, Connie Willis, Ken MacLeod, Nisi Shawl, China Mieville, Michael Swanwick and others, along the way touching upon colonialism and culture, the role of the stand-alone novella, how contemporary writers are dealing with Lovecraft, and what anthologies to look out for. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. Next week, a new episode of the Coode Street Roundtable and a new episode of the main show.

We don't often do this, but in recognition of Harlan Ellison's 82nd birthday we thought we'd republish the episode from 2015 where Gary and Bill Shafer talked to Harlan about The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison. Although Jonathan wasn’t able to join us on this one,they got into some fascinating stories about Thomas Pynchon, Octavia Butler, Harlan’s famous house (including the “grotto”), the role of small-press publishers in the history of the field, and what it all looks like from the perspective of a legendary writer in his 81st year. Note: There's a break at the 42min mark when Gary's cat stepped on his laptop and paused the recording. A few minutes were missed, but conversation continued!!

This week writer, editor and now publisher Jack Dann, a long-time friend of the podcast, joins Jonathan and Gary to discuss his role in launching new small press publishing imprint PS Australia and his forthcoming anthology, Dreaming in the Dark. In a wide-ranging discussion, we touch on the plans for the new imprint, the state of the market for short fiction, the state of the Australian genre marketplace, and the historical role of the 'Dreaming' series of anthologies. As always, we'd like to thank Jack for being a guest on the podcast, and hope you all enjoy the episode!

On our 270th episode, we immediately distracted ourselves from our planned topic of catching up on news, awards nominations, etc., and instead rambled on about various matters of literary influence, of writing sequels or revisionist fictions based on the works of writers ranging from Arthur C. Clarke to H.P. Lovecraft, and other topics neither of us clearly remember.  We did get around to discussing the latest round of awards nominations, celebrating the Grand Mastership of C.J. Cherryh, and finally trying to figure which if any SF works seem relevant to the current U.S. presidential campaign. And with the Hugo nominations closing this month, we shamelessly shill for your vote. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. More next week!

One of the highlights of the 2015 World Fantasy Convention in November was when Gary and Jonathan got to sit down with Guest of Honor Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and io9 editor-in-chief Charlie Jane Anders to discuss their respective careers, their experiences working in science fiction and fantasy as women, and much more.This episode was recorded live on 6 November 2015 in from an enthusiastic audience and was recorded by Paul and the WFC team, and made possible by Peter Halasz. Our sincere thanks to Quinn, Charlie Jane, and everyone at WFC. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to the first of Coode Street’s seasonal hiatus episodes. This November Gary and Jonathan were in Saratoga Springs for the World Fantasy Convention. Over the weekend they recorded several conversations that will come out over the coming weeks.In this first podcast, they sit down with living legend Gene Wolfe to discuss his latest novel, A Borrowed Man. The publisher describes the book like this:A Borrowed Man: a new science fiction novel, from Gene Wolfe, the celebrated author of the Book of the New Sun series.It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.We were extremely fortunate to be joined by Hugo Award winning critic John Clute for the conversation with Gene.  We’d like to thank John and Gene for making the time to appear on the podcast during what was a very busy weekend. We’d also like to apologise for some background noise in the recording, which we’ve attempted to remove.As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. More next week!

Welcome to the final episode of the Coode Street Podcast to be recorded for 2015. This week  Gary and Jonathan are joined by award-winning writers and critics Charlie Jane Anders and Nisi Shawl in the Gershwin Room to discuss more of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year. As with last week, you'll need to listen to the episode to hear what’s recommended, but there are a good handful of familiar books and few surprises that you may want to hunt down before the year is done. We would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to listen to the podcast, for the feedback you've sent in throughout the year, and for your support of Coode Street. We'd also like to thank Charlie Jane and Nisi for making the time to appear on the podcast this week. There will be some new episodes coming up that were recorded back in November, which we hope you enjoy too, but we’re on holidays for a while, relaxing and enjoying the season. We wish all of you the happiest of holidays. See you in 2016 for another year of the Coode Street Podcast!

The year is fast running out, but with the holiday season approaching Gary and Jonathan invited award-winning writers and critics Paul Kincaid and Adam Roberts to join them in the Gershwin Room to discuss a small sampling of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year. They also discussed some of the most interesting and important trends in science fiction during 2015.What books are recommended? Well, you'll need to listen to the episode to get the full list, but there are a good handful of familiar books and few surprises that you may want to hunt down before the year is done.As Jonathan says towards the end of the episode, whether this is the final Coode Street recorded for 2015 (we do have several others recorded for you and there may be a special second best of the year episode) or not, we would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to listen to the podcast, for the feedback you've sent in throughout the year, and for your support of Coode Street. We'd also like to thank everyone who has made time to appear on the podcast during 2015. It's been a heck of a year.

With the year coming all too quickly to a close, this week we are joined by distinguished veteran editor Jim Minz, who discusses his career from his University of Wisconsin days to working for Tor Books in Wisconsin and New York, Ballantine Del Rey, and currently Baen Books in North Carolina. We touch upon the various market segments of different subgenres of SF and fantasy, the various ways in which Baen and its market may have been misunderstood, the role of women editors in SF, and various other matters related to the SF publishing industry over the past two or three decades.As always, we'd like to thank Jim for making the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the episode! 

This year isn't over yet, but we can just see the end of it over the horizon. Back in Chicago and Perth after their visit to Saratoga Springs, Gary and Jonathan sit down to deliver a classic rambling discussion of science fiction, fantasy and other stuff. They discuss the World Fantasy Awards, lifetime achievement and much more. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

And we're back with a new episode!  This week, from the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, we are joined by the genuinely iconic Pamela Sargent, author of many novels including The Shore of Women and editor of the legendary Women of Wonder anthology series, and Suzy McKee Charnas, author of the classic feminist SF series The Holdfast Chronicles and the equally classic The Vampire Tapestry, for a lively discussion of the changing role of women in SF since the 1970s and digress as usual into some fascinating byways and memories.As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!