The Coode Street Podcast

This week we welcome the remarkable Kelly Link, celebrating her new collection Get In Trouble, her recent anthology with Gavin Grant , her career in general, and what’s coming up from Small Beer Press.  We talk about the differences (if there are any) between adult and YA fiction, genre and mainstream, the possibility of a new novel, and what we did or didn’t read in school.  In addition to discussing Kelly’s own fiction and her rapidly growing reputation between Stranger Things Happen and Get in Trouble, we touch upon other books and authors from T.H. White’s The Once and Future Kingto Peter Straub’s “Hunger: An Introduction,” from Ray Bradbury to Shirley Jackson.  And Kelly, who loves ghost stories, raises the very good question of why we return to the same stories again and again, even long after we know what’s going to happen.  Listen, and see if any of us come up with a good answer for that. 

As the Aurealis Awards reach their twentieth anniversary, Jonathan sits down with Aurealis Awards judging co-ordinator Tehani Wessely, publisher Alisa Krasnostein, and critic Sean Wright to discuss the Aurealis Awards, their history and the recently released 2014 Aurealis Awards shortlist. This is the first time two episodes of Coode Street have been recorded and released on the same day! Our thanks to Alisa, Tehani and Sean for making the time to be available to record the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

We are always on the look-out for new and exciting books to read, and always want to know what we should keep an eye out for.  For years we've relied on Locus's quarterly Forthcoming Books issues as a guide on what to look for. One of the very earliest ideas for the Coode Street Podcast was that each month we'd sit down and discuss the newest issue of Locus. That didn't happen, but hopefully this is the start of a new series where, once every three months, we sit down with Locus Editor-in-Chief Liza Trombi to discuss what's new and exciting, and what we all should be looking for in the month's ahead. Our thanks to Liza for making time to record the podcast. The March issue of Locus will be on sale shortly.  We hope to get a list of titles from the episode up here soon. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. More next week. 

Is there a difference to writing for younger readers? Do they want or need different kinds of stories? Do they have different expectations from older readers? How do you structure a series? What makes for a rewarding reading experience and how do genre expectations relate to that?  With new young adult novels published recently, Joe Abercrombie (whose Half the World, second volume in the Shattered Sea series, is just out) and Sean Williams (whose second Twinmaker novel, Crash, came out late last year) sit down with Jonathan to discuss this and more during a fascinating conversation recorded during the Perth Writer's Festival. As always, our thanks to Joe and Sean, and we hope you enjoy the podcast. More next week!

Welcome to The Coode Street Podcast, an informal weekly discussion about science fiction and fantasy featuring award-winning critics and editors Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe.  The Coode Street Podcast debuted in 2010 and has been nominated for the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Aurealis awards. This week Jonathan and Gary talk to old friend  Chris Brown,  and very special guest  William Gibson , in a discussion that ranges from William’s recent novel The Peripheral to the influences of writers as diverse as Mervyn Peake, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, and Avram Davidson and the question of what it means to write in and out of genre. We hope you find it as interesting as we all did recording it.  Coode Street, Episode 220 (1hr 17mins) The Coode Street Podcast is published by The Coode Street Press and Gary K. Wolfe, and is syndicated by Tor.com.

Jonathan returns and our heroes spend some time discussing the history and nature of short story collections in science fiction and fantasy. Warning: Contains some facts and a lot of wild speculation. Next week: William Gibson!

This week, in honor of the new Subterranean Press volume The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison, we are joined by Harlan himself, along with Subterranean publisher William Schafer. Although Jonathan wasn’t able to join us on this one, we get 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 we welcome James Morrow, one of SF’s premier satirists, whose new novel Galapagos Regained is just out, taking on Darwinism, Victorian religious attitudes, the Book of Mormon, and Morrow’s frequent themes of rationalism vs. received belief.  We also touch upon the role of a religious satirist, the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, old SF movies and TV programs, Morrow’s recent novellas Shambling Towards Hiroshima and The Madonna and the Starship, and his forthcoming collection Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow from Wesleyan University Press.

More than two years ago, at the 2012 World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Gary and Jonathan sat down with Guy Gavriel Kay to discuss his then new novel River of Stars.  A now legendary discussion followed, that quickly became mythical when technical issues resulted in that recording and several others being permanently lost. In an attempt to redress the loss of that earlier conversation, Guy agreed to join Jonathan and Gary for the discussion that follows while they were all in Washington DC for the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.   As always, we would like to thank Guy for his patience and for being part of the podcast. It is greatly appreciated. We hope you all enjoy the episode and will be back next week!

Suddenly our intrepid heroes, still mostly living on vacation time,realised that they needed to put out another episode of the podcast. Plans for a leisurely hiatus were abandoned and, somewhat the worse for New Year wear, they sat down in front of their microphones, and began to ramble.  This week's discussion starts with a look at some end of the year comments made by Locus Online short fiction reviewer Lois Tilton, which had Jonathan nodding his head in some agreement, and wandered on to his vague thoughts on genre cohesiveness (or something) and ended with thought from Gary on who will we remember this year from the Class of 1915 (or something). All in all, a typical Coode Street. Next week, finally as promised, Guy Gavriel Kay! As always we hope you enjoy the episode, and will see you next week!

The third of our short series of podcasts recorded at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC, this one features a particularly laughter-filled conversation with award-winning writers and editors, and long-time friends and collaborators, Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. While it's been long enough since the podcast was recorded that we're not sure any of it made sense, we do know it was a lot of fun to record. We hope it's a lot of fun to listen to. As always, our sincere thanks to Jack and Gardner for making the time to talk to us, and our thanks to you for listening.  We hope you're all either enjoying a well-earned holiday over the Festive Season, or finding a way to enjoy yourself if you have to work through it, and that we see you safe and well when we're back recording live in a couple weeks.  Next week: Guy Gavriel Kay.

This week the first of our series of World Fantasy Convention 2014 podcasts.  Award-winning writers Helen Marshall and Robert Shearman sit down with Gary and Jonathan to discuss writing, their careers, their new books and much more. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

For the final episode before our Christmas hiatus, Jonathan and Gary are joined by award-winning writer and critic James Bradley to discuss the best books of 2014. Any lists are going to be incomplete, but we make an attempt to talk about a lot of what we thought was worthwhile from the year just coming to a close. We also briefly mention our big new announcement about Coode St becoming a Tor.com podcast, something we are very happy about. We would like to thank James for joining us on this episode, and all of our guests throughout the year who made time to talk to us.  We'd also like to thank all of you, our listeners, for spending some time with us in 2014.  It's been a great year, and one we're proud of being able to bring to you. We hope you, your families, and all of your loved ones have safe and happy holidays and that we'll see you back here in January! Note: We will be issuing new podcasts recorded at World Fantasy Convention during our hiatus, so do tune in here next week for another new Coode St.

The Coode Street Podcast is fortunate to have a small group of guests who have appeared on the show more than once. This week we welcome back our most regular visitor, the wonderful Kij Johnson, who brings us up to date on the weather in Kansas, what she's been writing, and on re-imagining our genre's past.  It was enormous fun talking to Kij and we'd like to thank her for making time on a chilly Saturday evening to talk to us on Coode Street. We apologise for some minor technical issues. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast, and will be back next week with more! Note: This is a reissue of the original episode, which had some issues.

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by the wonderful Genevieve Valentine who talks intelligently, coherently and very interestingly about television, film, her latest novel The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, writing for comics and her extended run with Catwoman, and a lot, lot more.  Genevieve's brilliance is a little overshadowed by bumbling hosts, who were exceptionally bumbling this weekend, and by perfidious technology (for which our apologies to both you and to Genevieve). Nonetheless, we think there's a lot worth listening to and hope you will persevere.  Our sincere thanks to Genevieve for making the time to record the podcast, and to all of you for listening. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

We went to Washington DC to celebrate the 40th World Fantasy Convention and came back to the first books and stories of 2014. As long-time listeners know, this is the time when the season turns, when work beings on summing up the year we've had, and when the old year ends and the new one begins. This episode, with brief and incoherent gift guide, is the beginning of the end of 2014. As always, we hope you will forgive the rambling and enjoy the episode. See you next week!

This past weekend the World Fantasy Convention was held in Arlington, Virginia.  As part of the festivities, the Coode Street Podcast team produced the second ever "live" Coode Street Podcast. This time the wonderful Caitlin R. Kiernan and Peter Straub joined Jonathan and Gary to discuss: The Literary Uses of FantasyPanelists: Jonathan Strahan, Gary K. Wolfe, Peter Straub, Caitlin R. Kiernan Description: The Coode Street Podcast discusses the literary uses of fantasy with Peter Straub and other special guests.  Why do writers clearly capable of realistic, character-driven stories choose to introduce fantastic elements, some of them extreme, into their stories?  What does the fantasy enable them to do that the more realistic narrative doesn’t? The podcast went very well, and we're happy that it's now ready for you. We would like to sincerely thank Caitlin and Peter for making the time available to be part of the podcast again, and the team at WFC2014 for helping us organise and record the episode. It was deepl

This week Hugo Award winning author of the God's War Trilogy Kameron Hurley joins Gary and Jonathan to discuss her new novel The Mirror Empire, winning the Hugo Award, social media, and writing SF/F in the 21st Century. As always, we would like to thank Kameron for joining us on the podcast, and hope you enjoy the episode. Next week: World Fantasy!

In recent weeks Coode Street has discussed the national SF scenes in the United Kimgdom, Australia and China. This week we are joined by Peter Halasz and Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Robert J Sawyer, both long-standing advocates of Canadian science fiction, to discuss what's happening in SF/F north of the US border.  We'd like to thank both Bob and Peter for joining us in what was a very spirited and energetic discussion. Next week: Kameron Hurley!  Till then, we hope you enjoy the episode.

Following on from our recent conversations about British and Australian Science Fiction, this week we invited Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award winning author and translator Ken Liu to join us to discuss translating fiction, his experiences with Chinese SF and his forthcoming translation of Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem (which Gary officially has recommended as a Coode Street Recommended Book). We'd like to thank Ken for joining us in what proved to be an extremely interesting conversation. Next week: Canada! Till then, we hope you enjoy the episode.