The Coode Street Podcast

When Carmen Maria Machado's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was shortlisted for the National Book Award it went to the top of everybody's "to read" piles. A smart, sensitive and thoughtful look at issues to do with sex, gender, violence and horror, it proved to be one of the very best books of 2017, and one that's sure to hold everyone's attention through 2018. This week Carmen was kind enough to join Gary and Jonathan on the podcast to discuss her work, her reading and writing life, and much more.  Our thanks to Carmen for making the time to talk to us. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.

Every year Gary and Jonathan sit down and start talking about "awards season", a short period in the science fiction year that runs from February to November where we take time out to recognise all of the excellent work published in the preceding year.   This year they're getting to the job late, having already missed the announcement of the Crawford, the BSFA, and the Stoker ballots. Still, just in the nick of time, they take a moment to discuss possible 2018 Hugo Awards nominees, or at least possible fiction nominees, along with some encouragement for listeners to read, watch, and listen widely, and then nominate what they loved.      

       This week, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we are joined by two authors whose own recent works celebrate that classic work.  John Kessel’s Pride and Prometheus will be published in February, combining characters from Shelley’s classic and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, while Theodora Goss’s The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, featuring a number of classic characters from 19th century fantastic fiction—including Frankenstein’s “daughter”--will be joined by its sequel European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman in July; both are part of her series "The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club.” We touch upon Shelley’s work, the problems of writing narratives that exist within the spaces of earlier novels, whether or not Frankenstein was really the first science fiction novel, and—briefly—on the debt we all own to Ursula K. Le Guin after her passing earlier in the week. As always, our thanks to our guests, Dora and John. We

Normal service resumes with a rambly episode after last week's chat with Jane Yolen. Having decided what they were going to discuss beforehand, Gary and Jonathan immediately head off and start discussing something else altogether! It's a ramble, it's a chat, it's very much business as usual. Topics discussed this week include novellas, Kelly Robson's "Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach", the persistence of fairy tales in modern fantasy, and the new anthology Robots v. Fairies.  The frankly dodgy Western Australian internet connection didn't quite hold out until the end, so the chat ends a little short, though complete.   As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. Next week: John Kessel and Theodora Goss are scheduled to discuss their new novels and the fascination with Frankenstein.

The Coode Street Podcast returns for 2018 with a very special opening episode. Today Gary and Jonathan sat down to talk with SFWA Grand Master, World Fantasy Award Lifetime Achievement recipient, and Nebula Award winner Jane Yolen to talk to her about her life as a storyteller, her new collection The Emerald Circus, her forthcoming Holocaust novel Mapping the Bones, and what it means to have multiple careers as an author of children’s picture books, young adult novels, historical fiction, SF and fantasy, and poetry. As always, we would like to thank Jane for taking the time to talk to us and hope you enjoy the episode. We'll be back next week with more!

In the brief hiatus between Christmas and New Year, a final episode for 2018. Jonathan and Gary take a moment to sit down in the Gershwin Room and discuss the books they're looking forward to in 2018, a range of novels, novellas, collections, and anthologies that should interest any genre reader. Of course, to find out what they recommend you'll need to listen to the episode! Normal service will resume in the second week of January, but until then sincere thanks to everyone who has appeared on the Coode Street Podcast, contributed to it in any way, and special thanks to everyone who has listened in, either live in Helsinki or to any of our regular episodes.  May the rest of the holidays treat you well, and may 2018 be a safe, happy, and healthy year for you and yours.

After our longest break ever, the Coode Street Podcast returns to regular programming with a discussion of the year in review. Gary and Jonathan discuss their favourite novels, collections, anthologies, novellas, and nonfiction books of 2017, and end up sounding pretty optimistic about the year. As always, we hope you enjoy today's episode. We'll see you next week!

This week we are joined by Chesley and World Fantasy Award-winning designer, art director, editor and publisher Irene Gallo to discuss how she came to join Tor Books back in the 1990s, her career as an art director, her role in helping to establish Tor.com, and her work as Associate Publisher at Tor.com Publishing. As always, we'd like to thank Irene for taking the time to talk to us and hope you enjoy the episode. See you in  while!

This week we’re joined by the fabulous Nnedi Okorafor, whose Akata Warrior (sequel to Akata Witch) will be published next week, and whose Binti: The Night Masquerade (concluding her award-winning Binti trilogy of novellas) is due in January. We discuss not only these books, but the ongoing excitement about the possible TV adaptation of Who Fears Death?, the forthcoming novel Remote Control, the growing awareness of African and Naijamerican SF and fantasy, her work in comics and graphic novels, her Star Wars short story, and the problems of juggling academic work with writing. Nnedi is one of the busiest writers in the field these days, and her insights, as always, are fascinating.

This week, we are joined by distinguished critics Niall Harrison, late of Strange Horizons, and Liz Bourke, whose latest collection of reviews and essays is Sleeping With Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Aqueduct), to discuss the debut novels of 2017 that we’re all excited or curious about. Here are some of the titles that come up in the discussion: Annalee Newitz, Autonomous Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter Karin Tidbeck, Amatka Robyn Bennis, The Guns Above Lara Elena Donnelly, Amberlough Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide Cat Sparks, Lotus Blue Nicky Drayden, The Prey of Gods Marek Sindelka, Aberrant Prayaag Akbar, Leila Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts Megan Hunter, The End We Start From Mohsin Hamid, Exit West Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas Sam Miller, The Art of Starving N.J. Campbell, Found Audio There's a long list of debuts with links to reviews and ordering here.  Here are specific recommendations and shout-outs from L

Annalee Newitz, who writes on the cultural impact of science and technology for Ars Technica and who founded and edited io9.com, delivers her debut novel Autonomous this month. Annalee joined Gary and Jonathan in Helsinki, Finland where they were all attending WorldCon 75, to discuss Autonomous, science fiction, and the power of being able to tell stories about how science influences the world. As always,Gary and Jonathan would like to thank Annalee for joining us, and hope you enjoy the podcast.

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by long-time friend of the podcast, Jeffrey Ford. Jeff is the winner of the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards and has published eight novels, six short story collections and more than 130 short stories. His most recent book is Shirley Jackon Award winner A Natural History of Hell. Just out is new short novel, The Twilight Pariah. He joins us to discuss his writing, genre and his first new novel in ten years, Ahab's Return, or The Last Voyage. As always we'd like to thank Jeff for making the time to join us. We'd also like to apologise, this time out, for some technical issues which affect the sound quality of this episode, especially in the first half. We think it's worth persevering with, though.  Next week: Annalee Newitz discusses Autonomous.

After a long and mostly unplanned hiatus, we're back! We travelled to Helsinki, Finland to attend WorldCon75, and then spent time travelling and not thinking about podcasting very much at all. Still, all holidays must come to an end, and so we headed back up to the Gershwin Room one more time to discuss WorldCon, the Hugo Awards, and the merits of developing a list of books for a Fantasy 101 type course (inspired by a question from Theodora Goss). As you can imagine, we talk, we disagree, there's rambling and Coode St is pretty much as it always is. We hope you enjoy the episode. See you next week!

And now for something special! During the recent WorldCon, held in Helsinki, Finland, Gary and Jonathan took to the stage to talk to WorldCon guest of honor Walter Jon Williams and Campbell Award nominee Kelly Robson to discuss Walter's career and his new novel, Quillifer. During recording we were fortunate enough to be able to give away copies of Quillifer to lucky convention attendees thanks to the generosity of Saga Press. We were a little limited by time (panels lasted exactly 45 minutes in Helsinki) but the conversation flowed and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Our special thanks to Walter Jon, to Kelly, and to the tech team at WorldCon 75 for making this possible. 

We were away! We came back! We missed you! After an unexpected four week hiatus, and with another four week hiatus coming up, Gary and Jonathan took some time to catch up with one another, discuss what they'd both been reading lately, consider the XPrize fiction projection Seat 14C, and have a chat about the best books of the year they've read so far. A lot for a chat a little under an hour, but rambling will get them there. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. We will be back next week with more!

Gary and Jonathan are back with a rambling conversation that touches on epic fantasy and its relationship to privilege, the recently announced Campbell Award ballot, Gary's theory on perspective, recent books they've read and more. They also discuss hiatuses, missed episodes and how to subscribe to the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!   Subscribe If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, use this link for iTunes.

Any time the Coode Street Podcast connects with the United Kingdom it's a special occasion. Jonathan stays up until the dead of night (often with a whisky in hand), while Gary is driven out of bed and into the arms of coffee. This week, in the face of puzzling technical difficulties, Jonathan and Gary are joined on the podcast by noted critic Paul Kincaid and award-winning writer Ken Macleod to discuss Paul's new book on the work of Iain Banks, science fiction, writing in Scotland, and much more. The aforementioned technical difficulties do mean there's echo on the line from Scotland, for which we apologise. We've tried to minimise it as much as possible, and think the conversation is worth persevering with, but are sorry the overall quality isn't a bit better. We hope you'll enjoy the episode and, as always, we should be back next week.

This week we talk with the multi-talented Theodora Goss, whose forthcoming novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, draws not only from her own doctoral research in late Victorian Gothic fiction, but from her earlier story "The Mad Scientist’s Daughter." By focusing on a group of women characters drawn from classic tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley—and bearing the familiar names of Jekyll, Hyde, Moreau, Rappaccini, and Frankenstein—Goss gives a voice to the largely invisible figures from classic works of terror. We also touch upon her recent story, “Come See the Living Dryad”—is it fantasy or not?-- as well as the reasons behind the appeal of monsters and the monstrous, and the delights of playing with genre. As always, we'd like thank Dora for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode. Note: We experienced some technical difficulties with this episode. There were issues with the audio (Dora drops out occasionally). We think t

This week we are joined by Nebula, Clarke, Tiptree, Campbell, and World Fantasy Award winner Geoff Ryman to discuss his important new project, 100 African Writers of SF/F, which sees Ryman traversing the African continent meeting new creators of science fiction and fantasy to discuss their careers, their work and the places they find themselves working.   We also discuss the recently announced 2017 nominations for the African Speculative Fiction Society's Nommo Award, which will be presented later this year, and a diverse range of other work.  Toward's the end of our discussion Geoff mentions Adofe Atogun's novel, Taduno's Song which we promised to list here so listeners could find it. As always, we'd like to thank Geoff for making the time to join us, and hope you enjoy the podcast. If you'd like to do some further reading in African SFF some resources are listed below. We'd also strongly recommend checking out the voters packet for the Nommo Awards, which will be released shortly. Some online resources

This week we're joined by the delightful and provocative Kim Stanley Robinson, to discuss his new novel New York 2140, his “comedy of coping” about dealing with catastrophic climate change in the next century, as well as how his previous novel Aurora challenged one of the cherished ideas in science fiction, the literary and artistic function of exposition in fiction, the relationship of science fiction writers to “futurists” or to MFA programs in creative writing, and his own distinguished career in the context of both science fiction and contemporary environmental literature. As always, our thanks to Stan for making the time to tallk to us.  We hope you enjoy the episode and will be back next week!