Episodes
Saturday Feb 27, 2016
Coode Street Roundtable 2: Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky
Saturday Feb 27, 2016
Saturday Feb 27, 2016
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
Friday Feb 26, 2016
Episode 269: Creating the Fantasy Canon
Friday Feb 26, 2016
Friday Feb 26, 2016
Last year, at the World Fantasy Convention held in Saratoga Springs, a panel was presented on 'Creating the Fantasy Canon'. The panel description was:
There are some books we all agree on as fundamental to the genre, but can we agree on a canon of twenty stories? Our panelists will discuss which twenty books are essential reading for understanding the genre and how this list has changed over time.
Sunday Feb 21, 2016
Episode 268: Peter Straub and Interior Darkness
Sunday Feb 21, 2016
Sunday Feb 21, 2016
This week we are joined by World Fantasy Award Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and long-time friend of the podcast Peter Straub, to discuss his brand new short story collection Interior Darkness, writing, genre, music, and much, much more.
Sunday Feb 07, 2016
Episode 267: Neil Clarke and Short Fiction
Sunday Feb 07, 2016
Sunday Feb 07, 2016
This week we are joined by multiple award-winning editor and publisher Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld magazine, discussing his provocative October 2015 editorial concerning the state of short fiction venues in SF, the question of whether so many venues dilutes the quality of fiction in the field or simply broadens its base, and how conditions today compare with the SF world of the 1980s as described by Mike Ashley in his magisterial history Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990, which both Jonathan and Gary are currently reading.