The Coode Street Podcast

All round good guy Scott Edelman was at the recent World Fantasy Convention, and took Gary and Jonathan out for lunch and a chat. That chat became the latest episode of Eating the Fantastic, Scott's terrific podcast. If you're interested, you can hear the episode here.

And just liked that, our end of year hiatus is over and the Coode Street Podcast is back! Gary and Jonathan return from their annual break and kick off a brand new year with discussions of recent news events in science fiction, how our thoughts about books and ideas change over time, 50th anniversaries, the delightfully happy news that Gary got married(!!!), and the sad news about the passing of several friends of the podcast, including Howard Waldrop, Terry Bisson, and Rick Bowes. As it always is at the start of a new year, it's great to be back and we're filled with optimism for the year ahead. We hope to get at least our scheduled 26 episodes out this year, to do some special episodes, and to travel to Scotland for the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. For now, though, we hope you enjoy the new episode!

For the 2023 instalment of the Very Coode Street Gift Guide, we invited some old friends to share their recommendations of books read in 2023:  Alix E. Harrow (whose very worthy Starling House was a favorite, officially excluded from discussion because of her participation in the episode), award-winning Locus reviewer Ian Mond, and distinguished novelist James Bradley, whose nonfiction Deep Water: The World in the Ocean will be out next year.   The books mentioned during the podcast are listed below.   James Bradley recommended: The Deluge, Stephen Markley Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link Translation State, Ann Leckie Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh Alix E. Harrow recommended: Menewood, Nicola Griffith The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan The Magician's Daughter, H.G. Parry Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett Ian Mond recommended: Conquest, Nina Allan Terrace Stories, Hilary Leicht

The end of the year may be fast approaching, but this episode isn’t quite our usual year-in-review discussion (which will come up later), or our books-we’re-looking-forward-to episode. Instead, we spend some time musing about books we maybe should be looking forward to, if we only knew about them. This raises the question of forthcoming novels that contain substantial fantasy or speculative elements, but that are marketed almost entirely as general or “literary” fiction. The examples Gary cites are The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard and Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice. (Of course, some of our favorites like Kelly Link also get this “mainstream” treatment, as with The Book of Love.) This is turn raises the question of how we find out about new novels from the margins of the field, how we choose what we read when discovering an exciting new writer may mean forgoing a new novel by a favorite, and how to find a balance.

With plans for are promised chat with Elizabeth Hand and Alix E. Harrow on temporary hold, Jonathan and Gary share some pleasant memories of the World Fantasy Convention, muse about whether the nature of conventions has changed in the wake of the pandemic, and speculate about next year’s events in Glasgow, Niagara Falls, and elsewhere. They then touch upon some books they're looking forward to in 2024, including novels by Kelly Link, Nisi Shawl, Peter S. Beagle, and Paolo Bacigalupi, and some titles they’d recommend from 2023, including novels by Ian McDonald, Nina Allan, Geoff Ryman, Christopher Priest, Francis Spufford, Wole Talabi, and Nicola Griffith, as well as a few story collections, anthologies, and nonfiction books. By the end, it almost all comes into some sort of focus.

The 2023 World Fantasy Convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri over the weekend of October 26-29 2023. The convention was incredibly kind and generous and featured Jonathan as a guest of honour and Gary as a panelist. During the weekend we grabbed long-time friends of the podcast Kij Johnson and Jeffrey Ford and attempted to discuss 'the art of narrative' or perhaps how you go about finding and telling a story.  The conversation was interesting and we hope you enjoy it. Our thanks to everyone at the Kansas City convention, but special thanks to co-chair Rosemary Williams and her spouse, both of whom went far above and beyond to make sure you got to hear this recording. See you again soon!

Responding in part to some issues raised by Niall Harrison in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Jonathan and Gary discuss the value and purpose of year’s best anthologies, whether it’s even possible to still represent such a diversified international field, and how stories we read in anthologies frame our own reading experiences and help us discover exciting new writers. Needless to say, a lot of digressions leads us into some other topics as well.

For this episode, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the distinguished novelist, editor, and scholar Jack Dann, whose new The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Alternate History: A Handbook on Craft, Art, and History has just been published by Bloomsbury Academic. Jack discusses definitions of alternate history (as opposed to secret history or parallel universes), his own work in developing his da Vinci novel The Memory Cathedral and his more recent Shadows in the Stone, the responsibilities of the alternate history writer, some key writers and texts, and some recent trends in alternate history fiction.

In a return to classic rambling form, Jonathan and Gary begin thinking about the waning months of the year, and the inevitable recommended reading discussions. Jonathan starts off by asking why we always seem to say it was a surprisingly good year for collections, when just about every year is a good year for collections. We also touch upon anthologies, such as Jared Shunn’s massive The Big Book of Cyberpunk, and what implicit arguments are being made by such broadly inclusive anthologies. We also touch upon Jonathan’s brand-new The Book of Witches, the question of whether SFF is starting to mature enough that broadly diverse voices are viewed as simply part of the mainstream of the field, and some of the books we’ve been reading or anticipating, including Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill and Aliz E. Harrow’s Starling House (both will be guests on a future podcast), Tobias S. Buckell’s A Stranger in the Citadel, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood (and how historical fiction relates to SFF),The Best of Michael

This week Hugo and Nebula nominee Wole Talabi joins Jonathan and Gary for a wide-ranging discussion celebrating the publication of his wonderful first novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon and his Hugo Award-nominated novelette, "A Dream of Electric Mothers". We discuss the recent worldwide recognition of African SFF, his use of Yoruba religion and mythology in his novel, the importance of movies (especially heist movies)to his work, the nature of Africanfuturism, his attraction to SF as a professional engineer, and his future plans—including a new volume of short fiction due next spring.

After Gary enjoyed a weekend at Readercon, we’re back with another one-on-one ramble that covers topics from the proliferation of SF awards (and what they really might be for), to some recent and forthcoming books we’re excited about (including Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky, Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors, Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, and Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory), the question of whether anthologies might rightly or wrongly be seen as definitive, and the importance of supporting short fiction publications given some major changes facing the field in 2023. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

After an unplanned hiatus, we’re back with the wonderful Kij Johnson, who will be a guest of honour at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City this coming October. Small Beer will publish a new collection of Kij's work, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, to coincide with the convention. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of teaching fiction writing in workshops versus university creative writing programs, how the workshop and the reading group have become so important to new writers since the early days of Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight’s Milford, the different problems of writing short stories, novellas, or novels, the balance between estrangement and immersion in stories, and Kij’s own current and recent work, which ranges from experimental fiction to stories that revisit older writers like Lovecraft and Kenneth Grahame. As always, Kij is bristling with good ideas, and we could easily have gone on for another hour.

In this episode, Jonathan and Gary have a long overdue extended discussion with the wonderful Ursula Vernon (aka T. Kingfisher), whose excellent horror novel A House With Good Bones appeared in late March, and whose thoroughly original imagining of the Sleeping Beauty story Thornhedge, is forthcoming in August. We also touch upon some of her best-known works like Nettle and Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, what she read while growing up, her career from webcomic artist to children’s author to fantasy and horror novelist, the role of humour in horror, and why even stories involving murder priests, child abductions, and gruesomely reanimated corpses are actually sweet romances. As always, we would like to thank Ursula for making the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Returning after a brief hiatus, Coode Street welcomes the wonderful multiple award-winning Sarah Pinsker, whose new collection Lost Places has just been published by Small Beer Press, and includes the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning “Where Oaken Hearts do Gather.” We touch upon her career as both story writer and novelist, the relationship of her music performances to her fiction, the balance between teaching and writing, the challenges for new authors entering the field, and of course the stories in her new book.

This week, Jonathan and Gary talk with Kelly Link, whose new collection White Cat, Black Dog is already showing up on bestseller lists. It's her first themed collection, with each of the seven stories linked to a particular fairy tale. We also touch upon several writers whose work has been important to Kelly, including Joanna Russ, Peter Straub, M.R, James, Fritz Leiber, Nicola Griffith, and Shirley Jackson, and even chat a bit about being an author who’s also a publisher (with Small Beer Press) and bookseller (with Book Moon), both co-owned and managed with Gavin J. Grant. We also discuss a few other things, including her highly anticipated forthcoming novel, The Book of Love.

It’s awards season again (or maybe still), so Jonathan and Gary take a moment to remind everyone of the deadlines for nominating candidates for Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards, and to discuss briefly a proposal to add a one-time category of “Best Fantasy Novel” to the Hugos at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon. They also chat a bit about the Best Related Work Hugo, and whether or not certain categories might be eliminated. First, however, they touch upon whether the central concerns of mainstream SF were laid down in the interwar era, as Paul Kincaid argues in a new essay. And then Niall Harrison's new collection, All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays.  Finally, we touch upon the question of how important opening paragraphs and titles are when it comes to drawing a reader into a work of fiction.

This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by World Fantasy and Newbery Award winner Kelly Barnhill, whose When Women Were Dragons was one of last year’s outstanding fantasy novels. We talk about her just-published The Crane Husband, which powerfully combines aspects of the classic fairy tale, science fiction, horror, and coming-of-age tale. We touch upon mixing genres, writing while raising a family, making up disposable fairytales, how stories involve both the forebrain and the hindbrain, and reading Terry Pratchett.

We are always casting around for inspiration. After getting ChatGPT to provide a new introduction for the podcast, Gary and Jonathan kick off a discussion about the health of the short fiction field, the scope and variety of short story collections due to be published in 2023, and share some (okay, many) thoughts on the history of short fiction collections in the science fiction field.   As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll see you again in two weeks.  

This week, in our more-or-less annual discussion of the Locus Recommended Reading List, we are delighted to be joined by Locus Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi. We talk about the purpose of the list, how it has changed over the years, how books or stories get on the list, and a few thorny questions about how to decide whether a novel is SF or fantasy if it contains substantial elements of both. In addition to mentioning some of our own favourite works of the year, we touch upon the importance of the First Novels list, which might be a harbinger of what’s to come, and how story collections and YA novels have grown in importance over the years. As always, our thanks to Liza and we hope you enjoy the episode.

It's not been that long since they last discussed it, but this week Jonathan and Gary return to the question of space opera, new space opera, and what contemporary SF authors might make of the concept. Is space opera the core narrative of SF, as Jonathan suggests, or only one of them? What are its essential characteristics? Has the greater diversity of SF over the last decade changed its basic form? It seems that when the term was first coined, it clearly referred to pulp adventure tales that we popular in the 1930s. But later versions have questioned the assumptions of those old chestnuts, redefining the form for each generation. How, for example, do current writers like Arkady Martine, Charlie Jane Anders, and Emily Tesh make use of the form? We definitely don’t settle any of these questions, but we’ll probably keep trying.