The Coode Street Podcast

Episode 643: All Time Top 5s

Somewhat hesitantly, Jonathan and Gary return to the mics, sans guests, and somehow get into a discussion of various SFF listicles—partly because of Gary’s recent contribution to fivebooks.com of a list of five novels about science fiction. Why are such lists so appealing and so ubiquitous these days, and who are they for?

By the time we're done, Jonathan begins musing on a possible list of the top five most disappointing SF novels of all time. You'll have to tune in to see what’s at the top of that list—and get ready to argue!

Episode 642: Premee Mohamed and The Butcher of the Forest

This week Nebula and World Fantasy award winner, Premee Mohamed, joins Gary and Jonathan from somewhere in the wilds of Canada to discuss writing, reading, building a career, and her fabulous new novella, The Butcher of the Forest. We also discuss the projects Premee has planned for the rest of the year, including forthcoming new novel  The Siege of Burning Grass, which you can pre-order now.

As always, we'd like to thank Premee for making time to join us, and hope you enjoy the episode.

Episode 641: Kelly Link and the love of books

For our second episode of 2024, we’re joined by the inimitable Kelly Link, whose forthcoming first novel The Book of Love is already receiving stellar advance reviews (including one from Gary in Locus). Kelly explains how the novel evolved, it connections to various genres from romance to supernatural horror, the importance of valuable encouragement from friends such as Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, the challenges of shifting from short fiction to a long novel, managing multiple narrative viewpoints, and maintaining the balance between the interiority of the characters and the large-scale history and spectacle of the fantasy elements. She also updates us a bit on Small Beer Press and her own plans for future work.

As always, our thanks to Kelly. We hope you enjoy the podcast!

Eating the Fantastic: Episode 217: Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan

All round good guy Scott Edelman was at the recent World Fantasy Convention, and took Gary and Jonathan out for lunch and a chat. That chat became the latest episode of Eating the Fantastic, Scott's terrific podcast.

If you're interested, you can hear the episode here.

Episode 640: A new year begins. Shenanigans ensue?

And just liked that, our end of year hiatus is over and the Coode Street Podcast is back! Gary and Jonathan return from their annual break and kick off a brand new year with discussions of recent news events in science fiction, how our thoughts about books and ideas change over time, 50th anniversaries, the delightfully happy news that Gary got married(!!!), and the sad news about the passing of several friends of the podcast, including Howard Waldrop, Terry Bisson, and Rick Bowes.

As it always is at the start of a new year, it's great to be back and we're filled with optimism for the year ahead. We hope to get at least our scheduled 26 episodes out this year, to do some special episodes, and to travel to Scotland for the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.

For now, though, we hope you enjoy the new episode!

Episode 639: A Very Coode Street Gift Guide Roundtable 2023

For the 2023 instalment of the Very Coode Street Gift Guide, we invited some old friends to share their recommendations of books read in 2023:  Alix E. Harrow (whose very worthy Starling House was a favorite, officially excluded from discussion because of her participation in the episode), award-winning Locus reviewer Ian Mond, and distinguished novelist James Bradley, whose nonfiction Deep Water: The World in the Ocean will be out next year.  

The books mentioned during the podcast are listed below.

 

James Bradley recommended:

• The Deluge, Stephen Markley
• Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link
• Translation State, Ann Leckie
• Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh

Alix E. Harrow recommended:

• Menewood, Nicola Griffith
• The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi
• He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan
• The Magician's Daughter, H.G. Parry
• Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett

Ian Mond recommended:

• Conquest, Nina Allan
• Terrace Stories, Hilary Leichter
• In Ascension, Martin MacInnes
• Him, Geoff Ryman
• I am Homeless if this Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore

Gary recommended:

• Mr. Breakfast, Jonathan Carroll
• The Essential Peter S. Beagle (2 vols.), Peter S. Beagle
• Airside, Christopher Priest
• Lost Places,Sarah Pinsker (and also Monstrous Alterations, Christopher Barzak; Jewel Box, E. Lily Yu; & The Privilege of a Happy Ending, Kij Johnson)

Jonathan recommended:

• The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix
• Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi
• The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
• The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill
• Hopeland, Ian McDonald

As always, our thanks to Alix, James, and Ian for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the podcast and that the guide is of some help at this time of the year.

Episode 638: Books that were off our radar

The end of the year may be fast approaching, but this episode isn’t quite our usual year-in-review discussion (which will come up later), or our books-we’re-looking-forward-to episode. Instead, we spend some time musing about books we maybe should be looking forward to, if we only knew about them.

This raises the question of forthcoming novels that contain substantial fantasy or speculative elements, but that are marketed almost entirely as general or “literary” fiction. The examples Gary cites are The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard and Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice. (Of course, some of our favorites like Kelly Link also get this “mainstream” treatment, as with The Book of Love.)

This is turn raises the question of how we find out about new novels from the margins of the field, how we choose what we read when discovering an exciting new writer may mean forgoing a new novel by a favorite, and how to find a balance.

Episode 637: A Quick One, While We Wait

With plans for are promised chat with Elizabeth Hand and Alix E. Harrow on temporary hold, Jonathan and Gary share some pleasant memories of the World Fantasy Convention, muse about whether the nature of conventions has changed in the wake of the pandemic, and speculate about next year’s events in Glasgow, Niagara Falls, and elsewhere.

They then touch upon some books they're looking forward to in 2024, including novels by Kelly Link, Nisi Shawl, Peter S. Beagle, and Paolo Bacigalupi, and some titles they’d recommend from 2023, including novels by Ian McDonald, Nina Allan, Geoff Ryman, Christopher Priest, Francis Spufford, Wole Talabi, and Nicola Griffith, as well as a few story collections, anthologies, and nonfiction books. By the end, it almost all comes into some sort of focus.