The Coode Street Podcast

Episode 545: Aliette de Bodard and Fireheart Tiger

Welcome to episode 3 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week the brilliant Aliette de Bodard joins us from Paris to discuss her new Fireheart Tiger, which is already gathering stellar reviews, as well as the challenges of writing a complex romance with significant political themes, how much world-building is needed for a particular story, her use of mystery plots in recent novellas like Seven of Infinities and The Tea Master and the Detective, and the importance of the city of Paris to her well-received Dominion of the Fallen trilogy.

As always, our thanks to Aliette for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode and see you next time!

Episode 541: John Clute and Science Fiction Repeating the Future

Welcome to Season 12 of the Coode Street Podcast. This year we're repeating our commitment to bring you at least twenty-six hour-long episodes where our hosts, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan, talk about science fiction and stuff with little or no coherent purpose, and occasionally interact with interesting people. There will also be additional episodes and bits and pieces, but they'll come in due time.

John Clute and Science Fiction Repeating the Future

This week we're delighted to be joined by the venerable John Clute, who talks to us from a weirdly deserted Camden Town in London, discussing the impact of World War I on the surprisingly large numbers of scientific romance writers of the 1920s and 1930s, some provocative ideas which John laid out in his 2017 Telluride talk "Those who do not understand Science Fiction are Condemned to Repeat It", including the notion of “techno-occultism,” what’s happened with space opera, generation starships, and apocalyptic literature, and what’s wrong with the idea of self-driving cars. As usual with John, there are a lot more ideas that pop up along the way.

I suspect, on reflection, some of us are more optimistic about the future of science fiction and the world than this chat suggests, but we hope you enjoy it and want to sincerely thank John for making the time to talk to us.

Episode 540: The Last Official One for 2020

Since we’re as anxious as everyone else to finally escape 2020, this one is likely to be Jonathan and Gary’s final episode of the year, unless we think of something irresistible.

We start by reminding long-time listeners (or explaining to some for the first time) where the Coode Street name comes from, then honouring major figures we’ve lost in the last couple of weeks, including Ben Bova, Richard Corben, and Phyllis Eisenstein.

Then, as usual at this time of year, we reflect on some of the important and/or overlooked books we’ve read, the continually widening diversity of the field, some of the major works from major writers that appeared in 2020, and the most pleasant surprises of the year.

We wish you the best of holidays and hope to see you in 2021 when everything will be magically all better all at once. (Hey, we’re talking about SF here!)

Episode 537: Ten Minutes with Charlie Jane Anders

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and book lovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Hugo and Nebula winner Charlie Jane Anders talks about some new books she’s been reading by Rebecca Roanhorse, Holly Black, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Darcy Little Badger, some past favourites including Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Katherine Dunne, and Ursula K. Le Guin, and her own forthcoming YA trilogy—as well as the differences between writing YA and adult fiction.

Books mentioned include:

• Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• The Folk of the Air trilogy by Holly Black
• Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Elatsoe by Darcy Little Badger
• Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963–1973 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Episode 536: Time for another list

After spending a few minutes chatting about what it’s like to live in a relatively safe but relatively sealed-off environment—something Jonathan can experience in Western Australia, but something SFF has occasionally touched upon—your intrepid hosts venture into the questions raised by Time magazine’s much-discussed list of "The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time,” with occasional reference to similar past lists in Michael Moorcock's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books and Locus magazine's All-Time Best Fantasy poll.

We discuss what’s useful about such lists, what’s silly about them, and who are they really for? Who do they include and who do they exclude, and are they really ever anything much more than something to chat about with friends? As usual, we arrive at some definitively non-definitive answers.

Episode 534: Ten Minutes with Sheila Williams

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Hugo Award-winning Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams talk about the early days of the pandemic in Manhattan, the challenges of finding time to read anything other than the 800 submissions per month she sees at the magazine, her good luck to have travelled to Ireland and the Canary Islands just before the lockdown began, her new anthology in the Twelve Tomorrows series from MIT Press, and, of course, what she’s been reading.

Books mentioned include:

• Entanglements: Tomorrow's Lovers, Families, and Friends edited by Sheila Williams
• The Wright Sister by Patty Dann
• Nine Bar Blues by Sheree Renee Thomas
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
• A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

Episode 530: Ten Minutes with Julie Phillips

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Award-winning critic and biographer Julie Phillips talks about listening to audiobooks while biking in Amsterdam, enjoying Martha Wells's Murderbot series, reviewing classic American books newly translated into Dutch, her own fondness for Willa Cather, and her current biographical work on women authors as mothers (including Doris Lessing) and her biography-in-progress of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Books mentioned include:

• James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

Episode 521: Ten Minutes with Lisa Goldstein

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

American Book Award winner Lisa Goldstein talks with Gary about her recent novel Ivory Apples, surviving California’s smoky air and a pandemic, trying to read The Decameron, the British comedian Jack Whitehall, comfort to be had from Tana French mysteries and Kage Baker time travel stories, and wrangling the characters in her novel in progress.

Books mentioned include:

• Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• The Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French
• The Company Series by Kage Baker