This week, after more or less inadvertently falling into a discussion of Simon Jimenez’s new novel The Vanished Birds (Del Rey) and whether it will successfully gain attention from both SF and mainstream literary readers, Jonathan and Gary mention a few other forthcoming books and eventually circle in on a discussion of fandom—what it means to be a fan, different kinds of fandom, and questions of what happens when you stop being a fan of a particular series or author, what major works you may have missed or over-looked despite considering yourself a fan of the author, and why some fans drift away in the face of too much sameness, while others remain fans because of that sameness.  Characteristically, we fail to adequately answer any of these questions, but at least we raise them. 

Next episode

We are officially moving from a weekly schedule to a two-weekly schedule, so look for the next episode on the weekend of Febuary 8th, wherever good podcasts are sold.

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After last week’s episode where Jonathan and Gary discussed their favourite books from 2019, this time they talk about books they're looking forward to in 2020 (a few of which, in fairness, they’ve already seen or in Jonathan’s case even edited).

It’s a pretty varied list, and probably incomplete, so feel free to suggest more titles that we might not have known about. Overall, though, 2020 is starting off as a pretty promising year.

Gary's list

• Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
• William Gibson, Agency
• M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
• N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became
• Hao Jingfang, Vagabonds
• Nancy Kress, Eleventh Gate and Sea Change
• Yoon Ha Lee, Phoenix Extravagant
• Ken Liu, The Veiled Throne
• Paul J. McCauley, War of the Maps
• Tamsin Muir, Harrow the Ninth
• Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby
• K.M. Szpara, Docile
• Lavie Tidhar, By Force Alone
• Jo Walton, Or What You Will
• Gene Wolfe, Interlibrary Loan
• Alexander Irvine, Anthropocene Rag
• Greg Egan, Dispersion
• Jeffrey Ford, Out of Body
• The Best of Elizabeth Bear
• Ken Liu, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
• The Best of Jeffrey Ford
• Jonathan Strahan (ed.), Made to Order: Robots and Revolution
• Jonathan Strahan (ed.), The Book of Dragons

Jonathan's list

• Agency, William Gibson (Viking)
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara (Chatto & Windus)
• The City We Became, NK Jemisin (Orbit)
• Burn, Patrick Ness (Walker)
• Utopia Avenue, David Mitchell (Sceptre)
• Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus/Tor)
• Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang (Saga)
• The Angel of the Crows, Katherine Addison (Tor)
• Unconquerable Sun, Kate Elliott (Orbit)
• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
• Or What You Will, Jo Walton (Tor)
• The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin/Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins)
• Ghost Species, James Bradley (Penguin)
• Comet Weather, Liz Williams (Newcon)

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It's been a long time! Jonathan and Gary are together again for the first new episode of Coode Street since October!

There's a lot to catch up on, ranging from the current climate apocalypse in Australia—and the question of whether SF has done much to prepare us for this sort of thing—to major events of 2019, such as the renaming of major awards, the dramatic growth in awareness of world SF (from Asia in particular, with important recent anthologies of Chinese, Korean, and South Asian fiction), the explosion in the market for novellas and the question of whether short fiction can be similarly profitable for writers after years of getting it for free on the web, and our own lists of major books and likely award nominees from 2019. 

Our expectation and hope is that the Coode Street Podcast will return to a more or less regular schedule during the coming year, complete with brilliant guests and our own half-baked ideas and theories.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

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