The Coode Street Podcast

Today Jonathan and Gary are joined by Nebula, World Fantasy,  and five-time Hugo Award winner Michael Swanwick to discuss the origins of some of his stories, the life and craft of the professional writer, and his extraordinary new short story collection, The Universe Box. As always, our thanks to Michael for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the conversation!  

As always, the Coode Street Motel Six bestrides continents, so after briefly comparing notes on the weather in Perth and Chicago, Gary and Jonathan get down to it and chat about the subjects of the moment.   How do you talk about books and what was the weather like? The importance of settings in fiction, especially regarding climate and weather, and the broader question of whether readers can ever fully appreciate a setting dissimilar to their own and how book reviewers might take this into account. This includes a brief discussion of translated fiction—a welcome new category in this year’s Locus Awards.   Anthologies and activism The significance of advocacy anthologies that may reflect anything from feminist SF (as in Vonda McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson’s Aurora: Beyond Equality (1976) to antiwar works to promoting the New Wave.    Books we’re looking forward to In a new segment,  we list a few books that we are looking forward to that will be published in the coming weeks.   Jonathan talks about A.G.

There are snowstorms blowing where Gary is and Jonathan can see rain falling outside in Perth's midsummer, but the Motel Six has been safely relocated and the Gershwin Room is open once again. Conversation starts off, perhaps incoherently, with dystopias and dystopian fiction, segues to Travis Baldree and the somewhat misdescribed notion of cozy fiction, and then wanders here and there before Jonathan has to head off for a family event. Nothing was resolved, but almost no conversational gambits were harmed during recording. As always, we hope you enjoy the ramble, and will be back with more before you know it!

Jonathan and Gary kick off 2026 with no guests, but with the sort of wide-ranging ramble that some listeners seem to enjoy, and that others probably gave up on years ago. We talk about some books due in the new year, especially story collections by Samantha Mills, Amal El-Mohtar and others, how story collections can contribute to an author’s career, and whether it’s necessary to read the stories in the order in which the author presented them. But we also get discuss re-reading old favorites, whether Australian or UK authors get a fair shake in the US these days, and what our listeners would like to hear about in the new year. Feel free to offer ideas, comments, and suggestions at Coodestreet (@) gmail.com.

For our year-end discussion of 2025 books, we’re joined by Locus reviewers Ian Mond and Alex Pierce, 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 ambition, and books that at least some of us think have been overlooked. Alex's list Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shroud Claire North, Slow Gods Darkly Lem, Transmentation | Transgression EJ Swift, When There Are Wolves Again Alastair Reynolds, Halcyon Years Emily Tesh, The Incandescent The Isle in the Silver Sea, Tasha Surii Ian's list Mark Danielewski, Tom’s Crossing Alex Pheby, Waterblack Isaac Fellman, Notes from a Regicide Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author Nick Mamatas, Kalivas! James's list Claire North, Slow Gods EJ Swift, When There Are Wolves Again Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel Nina Allan, A Granite Silence S

E.J. Swift's sixth novel, When There Are Wolves Again, is one of the standout science fiction novels of 2025. For the final instalment of the Coode Street Advent Calendar for 2025, Jonathan chats with Emma about what she has been reading and would recommend, the writing and publication of When There Are Wolves Again, her holiday reading, and what she has coming up next. As always, our thanks to Emma for making time to chat with us. Our thanks also to everyone who has taken part in the Advent Calendar. We hope you enjoy this and all of the other episodes.

It's December 24, the final day of Advent, and Coode Street has just two more episodes to go before our holiday break. Today, Gary and Jonathan chat with Ursula Vernon about her writing alter-ego T.Kingfisher, about what she's read lately and would recommend, her recent work like Hemlock & Silver, What Stalks the Deep and Snake-Eater, her holiday traditions, and what she's been working on and has coming out including Wolf Worm and Daggerbound. As always, our thanks to Ursula for making time to talk to us today. We hope you enjoy the episode.

World Fantasy and Ignyte winner Tochi Onyebuchi joins Gary for a brief but wide-ranging discussion that touches upon his genre-hopping 2025 novel Harmattan Season, his fascinating Internet memoir Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet, the virtues of Roberto Bolaño and Dostoevsky, and Tochi’s own work in progress. As always, our thanks to Tochi for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Today Jonathan and Gary spend some time talking to Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write together as "James S.A. Corey", about what they've been reading, what they'd recommend, their seasonal reading and viewing, and their upcoming new novel, The Faith of Beasts. We also touch upon progress on Daniel's third Kithamar novel and their ongoing project to write an entirely new novel right before your very eyes: James SA Corey writes a novel. As always, our thanks to Daniel and Ty for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

As both the Advent Calendar and the year move slowly towards a close, Gary and Jonathan chat with Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual, and the wonderful Cahokia Jazz about what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, his holiday reading traditions and his incredible novel, Nonesuch. As always, our thanks to Francis for making time to talk to us today. We hope you enjoy the episode.

For Day 20 of the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Gary and Jonathan talk to Hugo Award winning author of the Wayfarer series, Becky Chambers, about what Becky's been reading and would recommend, holiday reading and viewing traditions, publication of the Monk and Robot, and a brand new novel that should be out in 2026.. As always, our thanks to Becky for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Gary talks with World Fantasy and Nebula Award winning writer Natalia Theodoridou, whose Bluebeard-inspired Sour Cherry was one of this year’s outstanding debut novels. We touch upon reading Samantha Harvey’s Orbital and whether or not it’s SF, the brilliance of Vajra Chandrasekera, Natalia’s own first novel, his short fiction, and his current writing plans.  As always, our thanks to Natalia for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

With December and the Advent Calendar heading towards their conclusion, Gary and Jonathan chat with recently minted Hugo Award winner Ray Nayler about what he's been reading, what he's been working on, his recent novel Where the Axe is Buried and his upcoming novel, Palaces of the Crow, before talking about ghost stories and year end traditions. As always, we'd like to thank Ray for making time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the conversation.

It's Day 17 of our Advent Calendar and today Gary and Jonathan chat with Alastair Reynolds about the 25th Anniversary of Revelation Space, his new short story collections, and his latest novel, Halcyon Years. We also touch on his favourite books of the year, what he's planning, and his favourite seasonal reads. As always, our thanks to Al. We hope you enjoy today's episode.

It's been a minute since we last spoke to Kim Stanley Robinson on the podcast, back in 2020 when The Ministry for the Future was new in the world. So today, Gary and Jonathan took some time to chat with Stan as part of the Advent Calendar about what he's been doing (a lot), what he's been reading (a lot!), and what he has coming up. Our discussion touched on first major nonfiction book, 2022's The High Sierra: A Love Story, his forthcoming nonfiction book The Best Journey in the World, and the fabulous news that he's hard at work on a new novel. As always, our thanks to Stan for making time to talk to us. We hope you all enjoy the discussion.

For the 15th day of our Advent Calendar Gary chats with Nebula and five-time Hugo Award winner Michael Swanwick about what he's been reading, how he celebrates the holiday season, what he's had out in the past year and his exciting new short story collection The Universe Box. As always, we'd like to thank Michael for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

For the 14th day of Advent, Jonathan is joined by Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated writer, Wole Talabi, to discuss the books he's been reading, what he'd recommend, his brand new novella "Descent" and the Sauútiverse, and his forthcoming second novel, The Fist of Memory. As always, our thanks to Wole for taking the time to talk to us. We hope you all enjoy the chat.

For Day 13 of the Advent Calendar, Gary chats with Theodora Goss all the way from Budapest. They talk about re-reading Patricia McKillip, other favorite reading, and Dora’s excellent recent story collection Letters from an Imaginary Country, as well as her Athena Club novels and what it's like to write fantasies drawing from and commenting on other classic fantasies. As always, our thanks to Dora for making time to chat with us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

For this episode, Gary chats with the very busy and very talented Nnedi Okorafor, who has had quite a year with the publication of major new novel Death of the Author; One Way Witch, the second novella in her She Who Knows trilogy; Space Cat, a children’s book starring her own cat Periwinkle; and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025, which she co-edited with John Joseph Adams. We chat about what she’s been reading, her fondness for Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman, and what’s up for next year, including the final volume of that trilogy, set in the world of her World Fantasy winning Who Fears Death.

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.