Episodes
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Coode Street Roundtable 6: Madeline Ashby's Company Town
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
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:
We 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.
Sunday Jun 19, 2016
Episode 279: Tom Reamy, posterity and the death of the midlist
Sunday Jun 19, 2016
Sunday Jun 19, 2016
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!
Monday Jun 13, 2016
Episode 278: Life achievement and such
Monday Jun 13, 2016
Monday Jun 13, 2016
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.
Saturday Jun 04, 2016
Coode Street Roundtable 5: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Children of Earth and Sky
Saturday Jun 04, 2016
Saturday Jun 04, 2016
Welcome to the fifth 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.
Guy Gavriel Kay’s Children of Earth and Sky
This month we discuss Children of Earth and Sky, the latest novel from Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s a rich, powerful historical fantasy described by its publisher as follows:
From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist travelling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request--and possibly to do more--and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor's wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.
The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he's been born to live. And further east, a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif--to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.
As these lives entwine, their fates--and those of many others -- will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world...
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, Children of Earth and Sky can be ordered from:
We encourage all of our listeners to leave comments here and we will do our best to respond as soon as possible.
Next monthThe Coode Street Roundtable will return at the end of June with a discussion of Madeline Ashby's Company Town.