Episodes
Sunday Feb 26, 2017
Episode 300: Kij Johnson Exploring Old Worlds
Sunday Feb 26, 2017
Sunday Feb 26, 2017
This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning writer Kij Johnson to discuss her Nebula Award nominated novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe and her forthcoming novel The River Bank, how it's possible to re-imagine the worlds of classic fiction in bold and useful ways, recording audiobooks and how reading aloud changes what you write, and much more.
As always, we'd like to thank Kij for making the time to join us, and hope you enjoy the episode. We'd also note that this is our 300th episode. So our sincere thanks to you, our listeners, for sticking with us!
Sunday Feb 19, 2017
REPOST: Coode Street Roundtable 4: Paul McAuley's Into Everywhere
Sunday Feb 19, 2017
Sunday Feb 19, 2017
Repost
With awards season upon us, we thought it might be worthwhile to re-release our spoiler heavy roundtable discussions for last year. The fourth 2017 awards-eligible book we discussed was Paul McAuley's Into Everywhere.
Welcome to the fourth 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.
Paul McAuley's Into Everywhere
This month Coode Street co-host Gary Wolfe joins us to discuss Into Everwhere, the latest novel from Paul McAuley. It’s smart, engaging hard SF adventure described by its publisher as follows:
The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have come to help, gave humanity access to worlds littered with ruins and scraps of technology left by long-dead client races. But although people have found new uses for alien technology, that technology may have found its own uses for people.
The dissolute scion of a powerful merchant family, and a woman living in seclusion with only her dog and her demons for company, have become infected by a copies of a powerful chunk of alien code. Driven to discover what it wants from them, they become caught up in a conflict between a policeman allied to the Jackaroo and the laminated brain of a scientific wizard, and a mystery that spans light years and centuries. Humanity is about to discover why the Jackaroo came to help us, and how that help is shaping the end of human history.
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, Into Everywhere 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.
Correction
During the podcast Jonathan incorrectly says Paul McAuley's next novel, Austral, is due in late 2016. It's actually due in late 2017. Our apologies for any confusion this may have caused.
Tuesday Feb 14, 2017
REPOST: Coode Street Roundtable 3: Patricia A. McKillip's Kingfisher
Tuesday Feb 14, 2017
Tuesday Feb 14, 2017
Repost
With awards season upon us, we thought it might be worthwhile to re-release our spoiler heavy roundtable discussions for last year. The first 2017 awards-eligible book we discussed was Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky.
Welcome to the third 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.
Patricia A. McKillip’s Kingfisher
This month Tiptree Award winning writer Nike Sulway and Coode Street co-host Gary K. Wolfe join Jonathan and Ian to discuss Kingfisher, the latest novel from World Fantasy Award and Mythopoeic Award winner Patricia A. McKillip. It’s a lyrical, funny, and sometimes challenging novel about family and destiny described by its publisher as follows:
In the new fantasy from the award-winning author of the Riddle-Master Trilogy, a young man comes of age amid family secrets and revelations, and transformative magic.
Hidden away from the world by his mother, the powerful sorceress Heloise Oliver, Pierce has grown up working in her restaurant in Desolation Point. One day, unexpectedly, strangers pass through town on the way to the legendary capital city. “Look for us,” they tell Pierce, “if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden’s court.”
Lured by a future far away from the bleak northern coast, Pierce makes his choice. Heloise, bereft and furious, tells her son the truth: about his father, a knight in King Arden’s court; about an older brother he never knew existed; about his father’s destructive love for King Arden’s queen, and Heloise’s decision to raise her younger son alone.
As Pierce journeys to Severluna, his path twists and turns through other lives and mysteries: an inn where ancient rites are celebrated, though no one will speak of them; a legendary local chef whose delicacies leave diners slowly withering from hunger; his mysterious wife, who steals Pierce’s heart; a young woman whose need to escape is even greater than Pierce’s; and finally, in Severluna, King Arden's youngest son, who is urged by strange and lovely forces to sacrifice his father’s kingdom.
Things are changing in that kingdom. Oldmagic is on the rise. The immensely powerful artifact of an ancient god has come to light, and the king is gathering his knights to quest for this profound mystery, which may restore the kingdom to its former glory—or destroy it...
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, Kingfisher 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 April with a discussion of Paul McAuley's Into Everywhere (his second Jackaroo novel).
Monday Feb 13, 2017
REPOST: Episode 299: Liza Groen Trombi and the Locus Year in Review
Monday Feb 13, 2017
Monday Feb 13, 2017
For our 299th episode, we are joined once again by Locus editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi for our annual discussion of the Locus Magazine recommended reading list, covering the history of how the list evolved, who participates in compiling it, what its purpose is, and what our own thoughts are about the titles included this year in the book categories of the list(included the newly reinstated Horror Novel category). We also pay a brief tribute to our old friend and former Locus columnist Ed Bryant, who passed away earlier this week.
Links for this episode:
- Locus Recommended Reading List
- Locus Poll and Survey (vote here!)
Our thanks for Liza for making the time to join us. As always we hope you enjoy the episode. See you next week!
Sunday Feb 12, 2017
Episode 299: Liza Groen Trombi and the Locus Year in Review
Sunday Feb 12, 2017
Sunday Feb 12, 2017
For our 299th episode, we are joined once again by Locus editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi for our annual discussion of the Locus Magazine recommended reading list, covering the history of how the list evolved, who participates in compiling it, what its purpose is, and what our own thoughts are about the titles included this year in the book categories of the list(included the newly reinstated Horror Novel category). We also pay a brief tribute to our old friend and former Locus columnist Ed Bryant, who passed away earlier this week.
Links for this episode:
- Locus Recommended Reading List
- Locus Poll and Survey (vote here!)
Our thanks for Liza for making the time to join us. As always we hope you enjoy the episode. See you next week!
Thursday Feb 09, 2017
REPOST: Coode Street Roundtable 2: Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky
Thursday Feb 09, 2017
Thursday Feb 09, 2017
Repost
With awards season upon us, we thought it might be worthwhile to re-release our spoiler heavy roundtable discussions for last year. The first 2017 awards-eligible book we discussed was Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky.
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Welcome to the second 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.
Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky
This month Coode Street co-host Gary Wolfe joins us to discuss All the Birds in the Sky, the second novel from Hugo Award winning author Charlie Jane Anders. It's a warm, humane, funny, and genuinely engaging novel described by its publisher as follows:
From the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning novel about the end of the world--and the beginning of our future...
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during middle school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.
But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.
We discuss the novel in detail, including how the story develops and ends. 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, All the Birds in the 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 month
Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Episode 298: Lisa Yaszek, Kathleen Ann Goonan and Sisters of Tomorrow
Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Saturday Feb 04, 2017
This week we are joined in our luxurious Coode Street studio by Lisa Yaszek, co-editor (with Patrick B. Sharp) of Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, and our old friend Kathleen Ann Goonan, whose essay “Challenging the Narrative, Or, Women Take Back Science Fiction” serves as a provocative afterword to the anthology.
We discuss how and why women were largely written out of early histories of science fiction, their contributions as writers, editors, journalists, poets, and artists during the pulp era, and how the situation has evolved from the pulp era to the present, and how American women SF writers might be represented in Lisa’s forthcoming Library of America anthology.
As always, our thanks to our guests for making the time to join us. And see you next week!