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Discussion and digression on science fiction and fantasy with Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan.
Episodes
Sunday Sep 13, 2020
Sunday Sep 13, 2020
For the first time since way back in March when they chatted with N.K. Jemisin, Jonathan and Gary are joined by a guest.
This time the wonderful Alix E. Harrow, author of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy nominated The Ten Thousand Doors of January and the forthcoming The Once and Future Witches joins Jonathan and Gary to chat about reinventing fairy tale materials for the modern age, the recent resurgence of novels about witches, the difference between secret histories (as in her earlier novel) and alternate histories (as in the new one), using fantasy to address social and historical issues such as women’s suffrage, and her short fiction including "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies".
As always, our thanks to Alix for making time to join us, and we hope you enjoy the episode. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode of "Ten Minutes with..." and will see you back here in two weeks with another special guest!
Books mentioned include:
- The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow (due Oct 15)
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
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Wednesday Sep 09, 2020
Wednesday Sep 09, 2020
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.
Today Jonathan fires up Skype to talk to Chaz Brenchley about the strange challenges of these times, the comfort to be found reading crime and mystery novels, living and working a short walk from SETI and NASA in Silicon Valley, combining girls school novels and steampunk (and the accompanying Mrs Bailey's Recipes for Medium), taking control of his own publishing, his new short story collection and more.
Crater School
Chaz has been working on a series of English girls' boarding-school stories set on Mars. You can sample the Charter School on his website and read more on his Patreon.
Books mentioned include:
- Everything in all the Wrong Order: The Best of Chaz Brenchley by Chaz Brenchley (forthcoming 2021)
- Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
- Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe
- Dr. Siri Paiboun Series by Colin Cotterill
- Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
- The Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Series by Laurie R. King
- Slough House Series by Mick Herron
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Monday Aug 31, 2020
Monday Aug 31, 2020
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.
One of China’s most widely-honoured SF writers, Chen Qiufan (or Stanley Chan, for English speakers and as a tribute to Stanley Kubrick) joins Gary for a fascinating discussion of apocalyptic literature seen from a perspective of a culture that views the future as repeating itself rather than ending, the importance shifting patterns of growth to stress employment and sustainability, neuroscience as it might relate to meditation or Buddhism, and the uses of AI (including the language model GPT-2) in fiction as it develops its capacity for natural language.
Books mentioned include:
- Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Wastelands by Stephen King
- Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson
- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee
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Sunday Aug 30, 2020
Sunday Aug 30, 2020
For their 500th episode (if you count the shorter “10 Minutes With” episodes they’ve been doing since March), Jonathan and Gary characteristically fail to achieve any sort of clear structure for the discussion but do return to some favourite themes. While we manage to avoid reopening the old canon of worms, we do talk about what science fiction cultural literacy might look like—not in terms of specific works, but in terms of concepts and techniques, and how they might change over time. Would a reader of Gardner Dozois’s first “year’s best” anthology feel any sense of familiarity with Jonathan’s volume from 2020? And as usual, we look at the year so far, some forthcoming books to look for, and the pleasures we’ve had in chatting with new and old friends in our shorter lockdown-era podcasts.
Saturday Aug 29, 2020
Saturday Aug 29, 2020
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.
Only recently back from several months in India, Vandana Singh joins Gary to talk about what experiencing lockdown was like near Delhi and the hardships of day workers suddenly laid off and walking long distances back to their villages, the challenges to a speculative fiction writer of unexpectedly living in a 'bad science fiction novel' and some of the comforts of reading poetry, a novel set in remote Nagaland, 'magical realism' in the stories of Gogu Shyamala, and even Harry Potter.
Books mentioned include:
- Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
- When the River Sleeps by Easterine Kire
- Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But... by Gogu Shyamala
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Sunday Aug 23, 2020
Sunday Aug 23, 2020
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 novelist and critic Nina Allan talks with Gary about what the lockdown has been like on a Scottish island almost devoid of the usual seasonal tourists, the appeal of golden age crime novels, the fascinating exercise of seeing how contemporary SFF works sometimes map onto older or classic works, the reissue of her collection Stardust (with a new story added!), and her forthcoming novels.
Books mentioned include:
- Ruby by Nina Allan
- The Good Neighbors by Nina Allan (forthcoming 2021)
- The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
- Engine Summer by John Crowley
- Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
- China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh
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Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
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.
Today Jonathan fires up Skype and calls sunny New York to talk to the fabulous Nebula Award-winning author of The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander, about reading, writing and living during the pandemic, the comfort of reading somewhat grim nonfiction, and her contribution to The Book of Dragons.
You can listen to an excerpt from Brooke's story, "Where the River Turns to Concrete", right now and if you live in the US and are over 18 you can enter our sweepstakes to win one of ten copies by following this link!
Books mentioned include:
- The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
- The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
- In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
- Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner
- Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
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Monday Aug 17, 2020
Monday Aug 17, 2020
Well, this is pretty cool. The wonderful people at HarperVoyager are making ten (10) copies of The Book of Dragons available as giveaways to Coode Street readers, listeners, and to dragon lovers all across the United States. If you're in the USA, are over eighteen, you can follow this link and sign up to go into a sweepstakes draw to win one of ten copies of The Book of Dragons! To celebrate, we'll be featuring a number of Book of Dragons contributors on Ten Minutes with... and will be including links to audio samples from their stories.
https://bookofdragonssweepstakes.pgtb.me/
Over the coming two weeks we'll have new podcasts with:
- Daniel Abraham
- Brooke Bolander
- Amal El-Mohtar
- Sarah Gailey
- R. F. Kuang
and others! We also have already talked to a whole bunch of the Book of Dragons team. Check out the interviews below!
- Kelly Barnhill
- Zen Cho
- Aliette de Bodard
- Kate Elliott
- Theodora Goss
- Ellen Klages
- Scott Lynch
- Garth Nix
- Kelly Robson
- Michael Swanwick
- Jane Yolen, and
- my editor, David Pomerico!
