The Coode Street Podcast

For our first October episode, we try out another new opening, touch upon the recent catastrophic weather in Florida and the hazards of attempting near future SF in a rapidly changing world, with Norman Spinrad’s Russian Spring as one example.

After a brief digression (what else?) on novels that extrapolate political decisions more than technological change—like the two novels that preceded the movie Dr. Strangelove, we touch upon the question of whether J.G. Ballard may catch the current zeitgeist in the same way Philp K. Dick did a generation ago.

Finally, a few more short digressions on whether awards like World Fantasy can significantly influence a book's sales or reputation, on the value of “best of” anthologies, and on what makes a good gift book for the forthcoming holiday season.

As we gear up for the inevitable year-in-review discussions, and the annual semi-hiatus between the fall and spring convention sessions (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), we return to our familiar questions of canon and influence, noting that while some books seem to drop out of the discussion within months of being published, others,like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, continue to generate responses despite controversy. 

From that, we not-quite-seamlessly segue into a discussion of Harlan Ellison and J. Michael Straczynski’s The Last Dangerous Visions and the problems in presenting stories over 50 years old together with brand-new tales, finally chatting about what makes you want to recommend a book to a friend. 

Along with way, we mention several interesting writers, including Emily Tesh, Wole Talabi, and Kate Heartfield.

In this episode we are delighted to welcome the extremely talented Emily Tesh, who managed the rare achievement of winning a World Fantasy Award for her first novella Silver in the Wood and a Hugo Award for her first novel, Some Desperate Glory.

We touch upon some works that figure in Emily’s approach to science fiction and fantasy, including Orson Scott Card's Ender’s Game and a children's SF novel from the '90s that she wishes someone would remember the title of (if you know it, let us know in the coments!), her own background in classics and how Some Desperate Glory reflects the military culture of ancient Sparta, the influence of gaming on her work, and what it’s like to be in conversation with the new space opera tradition of Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, Tamsyn Muir, and others. And, a few insights into her forthcoming novel, due out next year.

As always, our thanks to Emily for joining us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

With the Glasgow World Science Fiction Convention behind us, and with Gary back in Chicago and Jonathan back in Perth, our faithful podcasters pick up the task once again.

This week we are delighted to welcome long-time friend of the podcast, Nalo Hopkinson, who joins us to discuss her brilliant new novel, Blackheart Man, and her soon to be released short story collection, Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions. 

As always, our thanks to Nalo for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode. We'll see you in a week or two!

The Forever War, the debut novel from US writer Joe Haldeman, was first published by St Martins Press in 1974. It was shortlisted for the Locus Award, and was awarded the Hugo and Nebula Awards as Best SF Novel of the year.

It went on to become recognised as an essential classic of the science fiction field, was listed as #1 in the Gollancz Science Fiction Masterworks, and has never been out of print.

On a Saturday afternoon at the recent Glasgow World Science Fiction Convention, Jonathan and Gary and a boisterous crowd of science fiction fans welcomed John Scalzi, Gay Haldeman, and Joe Haldeman to discuss the 50th Anniversary of The Forever War and why it is so beloved.

Our thanks for Joe, Gay, and John for taking part, to the crowd for their support, and to the wonderful tech team from Glasgow 2024: A Worldcon for Our Futures for making the recording possible.

With the Glasgow WorldCon just around the corner, Gary and Jonathan turn their attention to plans for the event. In addition to panel appearances, there'll be a special live recording of The Coode Street Podcast where we are joined by Joe Haldeman, Gay Haldeman, and John Scalzi to discuss 50th anniversary of the publication of The Forever War.

Since rambling is unavoidable, there is also a brief discussion of how newer readers discover older SFF texts and writers, both in terms of short fiction and novels, anthologies like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame and Dangerous Visions series (which has been in the news because of the much-delayed publication of  The Last Dangerous Visions,) as well as single-author collections like Harlan Ellison's Greatest Hits. That somehow leads to a chat about how reputations are made and sustained, and Gary and Jonathan touch upon a number of contemporary writers—but you’ll have to listen in order to find out which ones.

We're delighted to welcome a distinguished pair of guests, the legendary Michael Swanwick and writer and critic Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, whose book-length interview Being Michael Swanwick explores Michael’s entire career, and whose debut novel Equimedian has been described as a love letter to the SF of the '70s and '80s.

As usual, we wander a bit, discussing not only Michael's life in SF, but how stories are generated, SF and the mainstream, influential editors, what it means to have a career these days,and a number of classic writers who probably ought to be remembered more than they are.

For any listeners who have missed our longstanding tradition of almost unfettered rambling, we turn our attention this week to the questions of how and why certain novels and writers seem to hold up better than others, how younger readers can enjoy some older classics while completely tuning out others, and the difference between books that celebrate old traditions as opposed to books that seek to reinvent the field, or that are simply sui generis.

We touch upon a few novels from 50 years ago, like The Mote in God’s Eye, The Dispossessed, Dhalgren, and The Forever War, books that seem to find new readers in each generation, and writers who seem to fade away with time.

Multiple Aurealis, Ditmar, and Shirley Jackson award winner Kaaron Warren joins us for this week’s episode, along with old friend of Coode Street and fellow Locus reviewer Ian Mond, mostly to discuss Kaaron’s wonderful new novel The Underhistory, how it does or doesn’t align with traditional genre categories, and what such categories mean anyway. Ian explains his notion of literary horror, and Kaaron suggests her intriguing concept of Gothic crime fiction. As always, the talk takes off in various directions ranging from short stories vs. novels, the challenges of publishing and marketing, and the growing awareness of Australian fiction on the world stage.

You can order The Underhistory:

in the UK;

in Australia.

The distinguished Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Award winner Paolo Bacigalupi joins us this week to talk about his forthcoming historical fantasy Navola, as well as the challenges of shifting from a focus on environmental SF to epic fantasy, the liberation that comes from being able to invent a world (and partly a language) that echoes Florentine history without being bound by it, the importance of following one’s own choices and needs in writing fiction, and his own earlier classics like The Windup Girl and The Water Knife.

We run a bit longer than usual, but that’s a measure of how fascinating it is to chat with Paolo.

We’re delighted to welcome to Coode Street Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Magicians trilogy, to discuss his major new Arthurian novel The Bright Sword, which appears from Viking in July.

We touch upon earlier versions of Arthurian fiction by T.H. White, John Steinbeck, Bernard Cornwell, Nicola Griffith, and others, the balance between historical research and pure fantasy invention, the development of characters based on little or no historical evidence, and even Lev’s earlier career as a critic for Time magazine, when he helped bring fantasy literature into the mainstream.

Order it here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554241/the-bright-sword-by-lev-grossman/

For this special short episode, Jonathan and Gary are joined by an old friend, Nebula and World Fantasy winner Ellen Klages, who recently gained an entirely new kind of recognition when she appeared on the long-running TV quiz show Jeopardy and recalled the “scary ham” story, which she first improvised at a Nebula ceremony ten years ago, when called upon to fill time during a technical glitch.

We not only touch upon the venerable history of the anecdote, but upon some other midwestern family memoirs, the use of autobiographical material in fiction, and the possibility of future memoirs. As usual, Ellen is a delight.

• Reactor link to the story: https://reactormag.com/the-scary-ham/
• YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqvg8N9nc84

This episode is a wide-ranging discussion with two important guests: the brilliant Vajra Chandrasekera, whose amazing first novel The Saint of Bright Doors is currently nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards, and whose even more adventurous Rakesfall will be published in June, and our old friend, the excellent critic, reviewer and fellow podcaster (The Writer and the Critic) Ian Mond.

We touch upon some of the sources of Vajra’s fiction, the notion of science fantasy, and how his novels incorporate a wide variety of styles and themes, from almost documentary realism about the brutality of colonialism—especially in his native Sri Lanka—to mythic tales and far-future SF. It’s a pretty lively chat!

Note: We experienced some technical difficulties towards the end of the recording so it does end somewhat abruptly.  We do hope you enjoy the recording and we'll come back to some of the topics soon in another podcast.

Gary and Jonathan are joined by Tobi Ogundiran, whose novella In the Shadow of the Fall is the first of the “Guardian of the Gods,” and whose first story collection Jackal, Jackal, was published to considerable acclaim last year.

Winner of the Ignyte and nominee for the BSFA, and Shirley Jackson awards, Tobi discusses growing up in Nigeria reading what SFF he could come across, the importance of discovering FIYAH as a place for his fiction, the relationship between Western and African storytelling traditions, managing viewpoints and voices, and his own plans for the future.

As always, our thanks to Tobi for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the podcast!

This week, we’re joined by the wonderful Nghi Vo, whose The Brides of High Hill is out this week. It’s the fifth of her ongoing “Singing Hills” sequence of novellas about the peripatetic Cleric Chih and their sharp-tongued companion hoopoe, Almost Brilliant.

We discuss how Nghi has made use of different storytelling modes throughout the series, her novels The Chosen and the Beautiful and Siren Queen, a forthcoming novella (again alluding to the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a very intriguing novel due in the fall, The City in Glass, which involves doing very interesting things with libraries. There are also, as usual, some totally irrelevant digressions involving everything from writing blurbs to The Clan of the Cave Bear.

This week Jonathan and Gary start out with something resembling a topic: the proliferation of subgenres, movements, and marketing categories in SF and fantasy: from the evolution of space opera in SF to the rise of epic fantasy (and Ballantine’s earlier term “adult fantasy”), as well as consciously developed movements such as the New Wave, cyberpunk, or Africanfuturism and new market categories such as “romantasy".

After a wide-ranging discussion of the various ways of slicing up genres, we spend some time musing about the hot market for collectible, special, limited, and subscriber editions from publishers such as the Folio Society or Subterranean Press.

Once again with no guest to give us focus, Jonathan and Gary return to rambling mode, spurred on by the observation that voting for the 2024 Hugo Awards is now open.

This leads to our ongoing discussion of what the Hugo Awards do and do not represent, why voting for your favorite works is important even if you haven’t read all the nominees, what makes a genuine SFF classic, and how the Hugo procedures and categories differ from those of the World Fantasy Awards—which are also accepting nominations from members of the 2022, 2023, and 2024 conventions.

We suggest you take a look at Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos if you're interested in a history of the Hugos, and point out that nominations for the 2024 World Fantasy Awards are now open too.

This week we are joined by the  legendary author of The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle, who discusses his new novel I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons (published next month by Saga Press & Gollancz), as well as his storied career, his pals from childhood, influential writers such as Robert Nathan and Avram Davidson, and last year’s important retrospective collection The Essential Peter S. Beagle.

As always, our thanks to Peter for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the podcast.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his groundbreaking anthology Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy, we’re joined by the terrific author and editor Jack Dann.

During our conversation, we mention his new collection Islands of Time—published almost exactly 50 years after his first book— as well as his The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Alternate History and some of his classic novels like The Memory Cathedral and The Rebel.

Mostly, though, we discuss how that classic anthology evolved, in part from his friendship with Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski, what the anthology meant in 1974, and how the nature of Jewish science fiction has evolved over the decades.

This time out, Jonathan and Gary consider the meaning of "cozy" (or "cosy") SF and fantasy, and whether cozy horror is even a thing. We trace the term back to cozy mystery novels and Brian W. Aldiss’s characterization of certain British writers of the 1950s—especially John Wyndham—as "cozy catastrophes".

Not surprisingly, this doesn’t lead to any meaningful conclusions, but we do touch upon whether the notion of cozy has to do with the fiction itself, or just the reader's experience of it. Authors mentioned include Travis Baldree, Becky Chambers, Peter S. Beagle, Martha Wells, and Terry Pratchett.

Then, with our usual lack of grace, we transition awkwardly into a discussion of the new Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits, how well Ellison’s fiction holds up, and some brief previews of forthcoming episodes.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

The 2023 World Fantasy Convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri over the weekend of October 26-29 2023. The convention was incredibly kind and generous and featured Jonathan as a guest of honour and Gary as a panelist.

During the weekend we grabbed long-time friends of the podcast Kij Johnson and Jeffrey Ford and attempted to discuss 'the art of narrative' or perhaps how you go about finding and telling a story. 

The conversation was interesting and we hope you enjoy it. Our thanks to everyone at the Kansas City convention, but special thanks to co-chair Rosemary Williams and her spouse, both of whom went far above and beyond to make sure you got to hear this recording.

See you again soon!

Responding in part to some issues raised by Niall Harrison in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Jonathan and Gary discuss the value and purpose of year’s best anthologies, whether it’s even possible to still represent such a diversified international field, and how stories we read in anthologies frame our own reading experiences and help us discover exciting new writers. Needless to say, a lot of digressions leads us into some other topics as well.

For this episode, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the distinguished novelist, editor, and scholar Jack Dann, whose new The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Alternate History: A Handbook on Craft, Art, and History has just been published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Jack discusses definitions of alternate history (as opposed to secret history or parallel universes), his own work in developing his da Vinci novel The Memory Cathedral and his more recent Shadows in the Stone, the responsibilities of the alternate history writer, some key writers and texts, and some recent trends in alternate history fiction.

In a return to classic rambling form, Jonathan and Gary begin thinking about the waning months of the year, and the inevitable recommended reading discussions.

Jonathan starts off by asking why we always seem to say it was a surprisingly good year for collections, when just about every year is a good year for collections. We also touch upon anthologies, such as Jared Shunn’s massive The Big Book of Cyberpunk, and what implicit arguments are being made by such broadly inclusive anthologies.

We also touch upon Jonathan’s brand-new The Book of Witches, the question of whether SFF is starting to mature enough that broadly diverse voices are viewed as simply part of the mainstream of the field, and some of the books we’ve been reading or anticipating, including Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill and Aliz E. Harrow’s Starling House (both will be guests on a future podcast), Tobias S. Buckell’s A Stranger in the Citadel, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood (and how historical fiction relates to SFF),The Best of Michael Swanwick, and Christopher Barzak’s Monstrous Alterations.

This week Hugo and Nebula nominee Wole Talabi joins Jonathan and Gary for a wide-ranging discussion celebrating the publication of his wonderful first novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon and his Hugo Award-nominated novelette, "A Dream of Electric Mothers".

We discuss the recent worldwide recognition of African SFF, his use of Yoruba religion and mythology in his novel, the importance of movies (especially heist movies)to his work, the nature of Africanfuturism, his attraction to SF as a professional engineer, and his future plans—including a new volume of short fiction due next spring.

After Gary enjoyed a weekend at Readercon, we’re back with another one-on-one ramble that covers topics from the proliferation of SF awards (and what they really might be for), to some recent and forthcoming books we’re excited about (including Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky, Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors, Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, and Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory), the question of whether anthologies might rightly or wrongly be seen as definitive, and the importance of supporting short fiction publications given some major changes facing the field in 2023.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

After an unplanned hiatus, we’re back with the wonderful Kij Johnson, who will be a guest of honour at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City this coming October. Small Beer will publish a new collection of Kij's work, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, to coincide with the convention.

We discuss the challenges and opportunities of teaching fiction writing in workshops versus university creative writing programs, how the workshop and the reading group have become so important to new writers since the early days of Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight’s Milford, the different problems of writing short stories, novellas, or novels, the balance between estrangement and immersion in stories, and Kij’s own current and recent work, which ranges from experimental fiction to stories that revisit older writers like Lovecraft and Kenneth Grahame.

As always, Kij is bristling with good ideas, and we could easily have gone on for another hour.

In this episode, Jonathan and Gary have a long overdue extended discussion with the wonderful Ursula Vernon (aka T. Kingfisher), whose excellent horror novel A House With Good Bones appeared in late March, and whose thoroughly original imagining of the Sleeping Beauty story Thornhedge, is forthcoming in August.

We also touch upon some of her best-known works like Nettle and Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, what she read while growing up, her career from webcomic artist to children’s author to fantasy and horror novelist, the role of humour in horror, and why even stories involving murder priests, child abductions, and gruesomely reanimated corpses are actually sweet romances.

As always, we would like to thank Ursula for making the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Returning after a brief hiatus, Coode Street welcomes the wonderful multiple award-winning Sarah Pinsker, whose new collection Lost Places has just been published by Small Beer Press, and includes the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning “Where Oaken Hearts do Gather.”

We touch upon her career as both story writer and novelist, the relationship of her music performances to her fiction, the balance between teaching and writing, the challenges for new authors entering the field, and of course the stories in her new book.

This week, Jonathan and Gary talk with Kelly Link, whose new collection White Cat, Black Dog is already showing up on bestseller lists. It's her first themed collection, with each of the seven stories linked to a particular fairy tale.

We also touch upon several writers whose work has been important to Kelly, including Joanna Russ, Peter Straub, M.R, James, Fritz Leiber, Nicola Griffith, and Shirley Jackson, and even chat a bit about being an author who’s also a publisher (with Small Beer Press) and bookseller (with Book Moon), both co-owned and managed with Gavin J. Grant.

We also discuss a few other things, including her highly anticipated forthcoming novel, The Book of Love.

It’s awards season again (or maybe still), so Jonathan and Gary take a moment to remind everyone of the deadlines for nominating candidates for Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards, and to discuss briefly a proposal to add a one-time category of “Best Fantasy Novel” to the Hugos at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon.

They also chat a bit about the Best Related Work Hugo, and whether or not certain categories might be eliminated. First, however, they touch upon whether the central concerns of mainstream SF were laid down in the interwar era, as Paul Kincaid argues in a new essay. And then Niall Harrison's new collection, All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays.  Finally, we touch upon the question of how important opening paragraphs and titles are when it comes to drawing a reader into a work of fiction.

This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by World Fantasy and Newbery Award winner Kelly Barnhill, whose When Women Were Dragons was one of last year’s outstanding fantasy novels. We talk about her just-published The Crane Husband, which powerfully combines aspects of the classic fairy tale, science fiction, horror, and coming-of-age tale. We touch upon mixing genres, writing while raising a family, making up disposable fairytales, how stories involve both the forebrain and the hindbrain, and reading Terry Pratchett.

We are always casting around for inspiration. After getting ChatGPT to provide a new introduction for the podcast, Gary and Jonathan kick off a discussion about the health of the short fiction field, the scope and variety of short story collections due to be published in 2023, and share some (okay, many) thoughts on the history of short fiction collections in the science fiction field.  

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll see you again in two weeks.

This week, in our more-or-less annual discussion of the Locus Recommended Reading List, we are delighted to be joined by Locus Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi.

We talk about the purpose of the list, how it has changed over the years, how books or stories get on the list, and a few thorny questions about how to decide whether a novel is SF or fantasy if it contains substantial elements of both. In addition to mentioning some of our own favourite works of the year, we touch upon the importance of the First Novels list, which might be a harbinger of what’s to come, and how story collections and YA novels have grown in importance over the years.

As always, our thanks to Liza and we hope you enjoy the episode.

It's not been that long since they last discussed it, but this week Jonathan and Gary return to the question of space opera, new space opera, and what contemporary SF authors might make of the concept.

Is space opera the core narrative of SF, as Jonathan suggests, or only one of them? What are its essential characteristics? Has the greater diversity of SF over the last decade changed its basic form? It seems that when the term was first coined, it clearly referred to pulp adventure tales that we popular in the 1930s. But later versions have questioned the assumptions of those old chestnuts, redefining the form for each generation.

How, for example, do current writers like Arkady Martine, Charlie Jane Anders, and Emily Tesh make use of the form? We definitely don’t settle any of these questions, but we’ll probably keep trying.

To kick off 2023, Jonathan and Gary share their lists of the books that they’re looking forward to reading in 2023.

They mention a lot of forthcoming titles, ranging books from old masters like Peter S. Beagle, Howard Waldrop, Joanna Russ, Gene Wolfe, and Connie Willis to newer writers like Samit Basu, Vajra Chandrasekera, Alix E. Harrow, Emily Tesh, and Premee Mohamed, as well as essential collections from Kelly Link, E. Lily Yu, Joanna Russ, K.J. Parker, Sarah Pinsker, and others.

The team also cheerfully acknowledge that the year will undoubtedly present us with some complete surprises and that we will be reading fantastic work from authors we haven’t even heard of yet. The field seems as lively and promising as ever!

Pre-order links

Books mentioned in the podcast include:

• Blade of Dream, Daniel Abraham
• Conquest, Nina Allan
• The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport, Samit Basu
• The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
• Furious Heaven, Kate Elliott
• The Landing, Mary Gentle
• Menewood, Nicola Griffith
• Starling House, Alix E. Harrow
• The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang
• Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher
• The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei
• Translation State, Ann Leckie
• White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link (collection)
• The Blue Beautiful World, Karen Lord
• Hopeland, Ian McDonald
• No One Will Come Back For Us and Other Stories, Premee Mohamed (collection)
• The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix
• Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic, Tobi Ogundiran (collection)
• Under My Skin, K.J. Parker (collection)
• He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan
• Lost Places, Sarah Pinsker (collection)
• Machine Vendetta, Alastair Reynolds
• The Navigating Fox, Christopher Rowe
• Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories, Joanna Russ (collection)
• Him, Geoff Ryman
• New Suns 2, Nishi Shawl ed.
• Ghost Engine, Charles Stross
• Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi
• Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
• System Collapse, Martha Wells
• The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis
• The Wolfe at the Door, Gene Wolfe (collection)
• Jewel Box, E. Lily Yu (collection)

There's Christmas and then there's Krampus. Here at Coode Street, there's nothing quite like a little bit more, and as a very special holiday bonus Gary sat down with the wonderful M. Rickert to talk about what she'd been reading, what she'd recommend, and her fabulous Krampus tale, Lucky Girl, one of our favourites and perfect for a cold, winter's night.

As always, our thanks to Mary and hope you enjoy the episode.

And that's a wrap. Time to hang up the headphones and take a short break. The Coode Street Podcast is going on hiatus for the remainder of 2022 and will return early in 2023.

Just before the Gershwin Room closes for the holidays, though, Gary and Jonathan take a moment to chat about the Advent Calendar, the year just gone, and more.

Doing something like the podcast is a joy and a privilege, so Gary and Jonathan would like to thank everyone who has appeared on the podcast, everyone who has listened to it, and everyone who has supported it in any way.

We'd also like to thank everyone who has appeared on the podcast this year and everyone who has taken the time to listen. It's a privilege to do this, and we're grateful. See you next year!

And so we come to the final episode of the 2022 Coode Street Advent Calendar. Gary sits down to chat with a dear friend of the podcast, Elizabeth Hand, about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, her holiday recommendations, her own classic Christmas story, "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol", and her fabulous new novel Hokolua Road.

We'd like to thank Liz for making the time to chat with us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Way back in March 2020 we sat down with N.K. Jemisin to talk about her then-new fantasy novel, The City We Became. It was great. Then we had a whole pandemic, so we thought we'd check in to see how things are going. The holidays are literally upon us and Jonathan and Nora chat about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, and the sequel to that 2020 novel, The World We Make.

As always, our thanks to Nora. We hope you enjoy the episode.

We spoke with Tochi Onyebuchi back in 2020 as part of "Ten Minutes with...", when his award-winning novella Riot Baby was still new in the world. Since then Tochi's been busy but has still managed to deliver another incredible novel, this time Goliath.

Today Jonathan and Tochi discuss what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, his holiday reads, and what he's been working on.

As always, our thanks to Tochi. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Although Nghi Vo published her first short story all the way back in 2007, it's only been in the last five years that she's really grabbed everyone's attention, first with the 'Singing Hills' cycle of novellas, then with her stunning debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful. This year she has two books among the year's very best: 'Singing Hills' novella Into the Riverlands and her fabulous sophomore novel, Siren Queen.

Today for the Coode Street Advent Calendar Gary sits down to talk to Nghi about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, her holiday reads, and what she's got coming out.

As always, our thanks to Nghi for making the time. We hope you all enjoy the episode.

There are friends of the Podcast, and then there's family. We've been talking to the great and glorious John Clute -- writer, critic, encyclopedist, and more -- since 2010.

Whether it's been about events at the SF Encyclopedia, happenings in SF, or some other thing, he has always been warm, witty, and wise. Today Gary called John in Camden to talk about what he's been reading and what he'd recommend, while also spending some time chatting about his latest collection of essays, Sticking to the End.

As always, our thanks to John for making the time. We hope you enjoy the podcast.

Depending on where you are in the world the weather is either turning chilly or it's becoming warm and sunny, but either way, it's not long till the end of our Advent Calendar. Today Gary talks to Naseem Jamnia about what they've been reading, what they'd recommend, and their exciting new novella, The Bruising of Qilwa.

As always we'd like to thank Naseem for making the time to talk to us and hope you all enjoy the episode!

John Kessel has long been a favourite of the podcast. We spoke to him in July about his major new retrospective short story collection, The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel, so it's no real surprise that he's part of our Advent Calendar.  

Today Gary had the pleasure of calling John and chatting about what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, and what he's been working on. As always, we thank John for taking the time to talk to us and hope you enjoy the episode.

With a week left to go in the Advent Calendar, Jonathan sits down with Neon Yang to discuss what they've been reading, what they've read that they'd recommend, their holiday recommendations, and their exciting debut novel, space opera The Genesis of Misery!

As always, our thanks to Neon, and we hope you enjoy the episode!

The Coode Street Advent Calendar rolls on through December and today Gary sits down with Shirley Jackson and Locus Award nominee Richard Butner to discuss what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, his holiday reads, and his wonderful new collection, The Adventurists.

As always, our thanks to Richard for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

We're halfway through December and more than halfway through our Advent Calendar. Today Gary sits down with one of the most interesting and diversely creative writers working in science fiction today, Lavie Tidhar, about his new novels Neom and Maror, his many other projects, as well as what he's been reading lately and would recommend.

As always, our thanks to Lavie for making the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Aurora award winner Sarah Tolmie chats with Gary about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, her holiday recommendations, and her fabulous new novella All the Horses of Iceland (Tordotcom), which was one of our favourite books of the year.

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

As we move closer and closer to the end of the Advent Calendar, Jonathan sits down with good friend of the podcast Christopher Rowe to discuss what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, his holiday reads, and what he's been working on, including his wonderful new novella These Prisoning Hills, which came out earlier this year.

As always, our thanks to Christopher for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the conversation.

And for the sixteenth day of the Advent Calendar, something a little special. Today Jonathan talks to the delightful C.S.E Cooney about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, her holiday recommendations, and her absolutely wonderful new novel Saint Death's Daughter and collection Dark Breakers.

As always, our thanks to Clare for making the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

The Advent Calendar rolls on  as we move through the holidays towards year's end. Today Jonathan calls up good friend of the podcast and all-round wonderful person Alix E. Harrow to talk about what she's been reading (lots!), what she'd recommend (also lots!), if she has any favourite holiday reads (yes!), and what she had out this year (the hopefully not-the-last-but-almost-certainly-the-last instalment in the Fractured Fables series, A Mirror Mended) and has coming up (a new novel!).

As always, our thanks to Alix for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Hugo and Nebula Award winner Charlie Jane Anders joins Gary for the 14th instalment of the Advent Calendar to discuss what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, her favourite holiday reads, and her fabulous new novel, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, the latest in her new Unstoppable young adult space opera series.

As always, our thanks to Charlie Jane, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

With the Coode Street Advent Calendar now in its second half, Gary sits down with the terrific Stephanie Feldman, the author of Who Will Speak for America? and  Angel of Losses, to talk about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, and her fabulous new novel, Saturnalia. 

As always, our thanks to Stephanie, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

As we get towards day 12 and the halfway mark of the Advent Calendar, Jonathan calls up Canada and talks to the always fabulous Kelly Robson about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, what she's working on, and her latest book, lesbian stoner comedy High Times in the Low Parliament , a book that you never knew you needed, but you do.

As always, our thanks to Kelly and we hope you're enjoying the Coode Street Advent Calendar!

The holidays are in full swing. Hopefully, everyone is on top of their seasonal shopping and ready to relax and have fun. But if not, we can help. Today Gary sits down with Liz Williams, the award-winning author of Comet Weather, Blackthorn Winter, and the recently released Embertide, to discuss what Liz has been reading, what she'd recommend, what she's been working on, and, maybe, some holiday reading too.

As always, our thanks to Liz. We hope you enjoy the episode.

It's fitting that the tenth day of the Advent Calendar, which is also the 600th (!!) official episode of The Coode Street Podcast, should feature a dear friend, Guy Gavriel Kay, who chats with Jonathan about what he's been reading lately, what he might recommend, his wonderful book All the Seas of the World, and even recommends a special holiday cocktail!

As always, our thanks to Guy and we hope you enjoy the conversation.

As we move through the first week of December and into day nine of the Advent Calendar series, Gary spends some time chatting with the incredible Rachel Swirsky about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, what she reads on the holidays, what work she has coming out, and her fabulous science fiction novella January Fifteenth (Tordotcom), which looks at how universal basic income might affect some of us.

As always, our thanks to Rachel for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

For the eighth day of the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Jonathan called Tamsyn Muir, author of the New York Time Bestselling 'Locked Tomb' series, to talk about her somewhat unexpected novel Nona the Ninth, what she's been reading lately, what she'd recommend, and her thoughts on holiday reads.

As always, we would like to thank Tamsyn for taking the time to chat with us and hope you enjoy the episode.

Earlier this year we talked to the fabulous Kate Heartfield about her novel, The Embroidered Book. Now, for day seven of the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Gary chats with Kate about what she's been reading, what she'd recommend, and her favourite holiday reads. 

As always, our thanks to Kate. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Day six of the Coode Street Advent Calendar sees Jonathan chatting with the incredible Sequoia Nagamatsu about what he's been reading, what he'd recommend, what he might recommend for the holidays, and his fabulous debut novel, How High We Go in the Dark.

As always, our thanks to Sequoia and we hope you enjoy the conversation.

The Coode Street Advent Calendar rolls into the fifth day, and this time Gary takes a little time to chat with the wonderful Sam J. Miller about his new novella, Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy, and his short story collection, Boys, Beasts & Men. There's also, no doubt, some holiday chat with books and such being recommended.

As always, our thanks to Sam and we hope you enjoy the episode!

For the fourth instalment of the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Jonathan called New Orleans to talk to exciting debut author Alex Jennings about how he was still envious about not having made it to the World Fantasy Convention there. The conversation also touched on what Alex had been reading, what they have coming out, and their fabulous first novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, which Alex describes as "a Blaxploitation Pippi Longstocking adventure"!!!

As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

The third day of the Coode Street Advent Calendar sees Gary talking to long-time podcast favourite Aliette de Bodard about their year in reading and writing, their new novella,  Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances, and the first ever Xuya universe novel,  The Red Scholar’s Wake. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

For the second day of the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Jonathan sits down to chat with the delightful Kelly Barnhill, whose novels When Women Were Dragons and The Ogress and the Orphans came out this year. Both are highly recommended. Enjoy!

The end of the year is fast approaching, and this year the Coode Street Podcast is doing something a little different. We've invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they're reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’ve got coming out in the year ahead. It’s a Coode Street Advent Calendar if that’s your thing, or just a run-up to December 24 for book lovers.

Today's guest is the wonderful Nicola Griffith, the multiple award-winning author of Ammonite, Slow River, Hild, and many more. Her brilliant queer recasting of the Arthurian story, Spear, was published earlier this year.

With the end of the year almost upon us, Coode Street was looking for a way to celebrate the books we read and loved during 2022. We also wanted to help you find something great to read for yourself or for someone close to you. And so the 2022 Coode Street Advent Calendar was born! Here are twenty-eight books that we loved and that we think you might love too. Space operas and epic fantasies, horror stories and comedies. Six-hundred page immersive tomes and light-footed short story collections.  A little bit of everything! To make this more than just a list, though, we're going to do something else. Every day between now and December 25 we're chatting with the wonderful creators of these books and asking them about what they've been reading, what holiday story they'd recommend, their own books for this year, and the ones they might have coming in 2023.

• Kelly Barnhill and When Women Were Dragons & The Ogress and the Orphans
• Richard Buttner and The Adventurists
• C.S.E Cooney and Saint Death's Daughter
• Aliette de Bodard and Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances & The Red Scholar's Wake
• Stephanie Feldman and Saturnalia
• Nicola Griffith and Spear
• Elizabeth Hand and Hokuloa Road
• Alix E. Harrow and A Mirror Mended
• Kate Heartfield and The Embroidered Book
• N.K. Jemisin and The World We Make
• Alex Jennings and The Ballad of Perilous Graves
• Guy Gavriel Kay and All the Seas of the World
• Paul McAuley and Beyond the Burn Line
• Sam J. Miller and Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy & Boys, Beasts & Men
• Tamsyn Muir and Nona the Ninth
• Sequoia Nagamatsu and How High We Go in the Dark
• Tochi Onyebuchi and Goliath
• M. Rickert and Lucky Girl: How I Became a Horror Writer
• Kelly Robson and High Times in the Low Parliament
• Christopher Rowe and These Prisoning Hills
• Rachel Swirsky and January Fifteenth
• Lavie Tidhar and Neom
• Nghi Vo and Siren Queen & Into the Riverlands
• Liz Williams and Embertide
• Neon Yang and The Genesis of Misery

The sharp-eyed among you will notice that there aren't quite 28 entries in our Advent Calendar. You're right! We're still to record a few, but they should all be in place before this is done. But keep your eyes peeled for more.

What else did we do? Well, it's Coode Street, so we rambled about books of the year, short story collections and more. Hope you enjoy it!

The end of the year is nigh. Jonathan and Gary are working on their year-end recommended reading, and many of us are working on our holiday shopping lists. It's that magical time of the year, for many.

And so, as a little bonus, the Coode Street team are reviving the Ten-Minutes with... format and talking to twenty-four writers about what their reading, what they have coming out, and what their favourite holiday season reading is. Twenty-four writers? It's like one of those calendar-thingies you get in shops at this time of the year. Cool!

We are having fun recording these episodes and, come the first of December, we hope you have fun listening!

With Gary about to leave for the World Fantasy Convention to be held in New Orleans next week, and with Jonathan in the process of assembling anthologies on the most recent iterations of space opera, we spend most of our time discussing the characteristics, history, and too-common misuse of that venerable term.

While we do touch briefly on the etymology of 'space opera', and on the pulp-era adventures that Wilson Tucker had in mind when he rather contemptuously coined the term in 1941, most of the discussion focuses on how the idea has evolved since M. John Harrison set out to demolish the old-school space opera with The Centauri Device in 1974, the efforts of Paul J. McAuley and others to define a new space opera in the 1980s (and Jonathan and Gardner Dozois’s The New Space Opera anthologies of 2007 and 2010), the influence of media, and more recent examples ranging from James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series to Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya universe, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series, and other authors who have energetically begun to reclaim space opera for a more diverse cast of characters. We fully expect enthusiastic disagreements.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. See you all again after World Fantasy!

This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by the wonderful Eileen Gunn, whose Night Shift Plus... is the latest volume in PM Press’s ongoing series of “Outspoken Authors” collections, which combine fiction and nonfiction with an author interview by series editor Terry Bisson.

We discuss Eileen’s stories, her essays on Ursula K. Le Guin, Carol Emshwiller, and Gardner Dozois (and her essay on William Gibson's Neuromancer that she could not include in the collection), her earlier collections Stable Strategies and Questionable Practices, the early days of the online zine Infinite Matrix and what it was like in the early days of Microsoft, her wide range of connections in the SF world, and her fascinating novel in progress. As usual, there are digressions, but they’re pretty interesting, too.

With the fall season of Coode Street underway, Jonathan and Gary sit down with the brilliant Ray Nayler, whose first novel The Mountain in the Sea has just been published. We touch upon the many themes of the novel, from the problems of alien communication to artificial intelligence, the nature of consciousness, the ethics of science, and corporate malfeasance—not to mention lots of octopuses.

We also chat about his eclectic reading habits, from his early passion for Shakespeare to allusions in his novel as varied as Mary Shelley and Jack London. He also discusses his relationship to genre and how his reading and writing fit into the considerable demands of his professional career.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

After far too many weeks of an unscheduled summer hiatus, Jonathan and Gary are back with a discussion of the recent Worldcon, which felt in many ways like a return to classic Worldcon form. But then we amble into a discussion that ranges from whether there are too many awards in SF to the question of whether “hard SF” is still a viable category that means what it once did—"playing with the net up”--and how the multiverse seems to have joined time travel and even moon colonies as narrative devices which has more or less escaped the rigours of SF to become features of mainstream novels and media franchises. Also, as always, a bit about who and what we’ve been reading.

For the handful of listeners who might be nostalgic for those earlier Coode Streets which were mostly just disorganized rambles, this week we return to form—or lack of form, as the case may be.

We do mention Rich Horton’s recent re-reads of pre-Hugo SF classics, and his contention that 1953 was a high point in SF publishing, but then get into questions of why it was just an impressive year (partly due to a backlog of SF writing that hadn’t previously been widely available in book form), which in turn leads us to another discussion of the familiar periods of SF history still make much sense given the broadening of the field in the last half-century. Are there other Golden Ages? Are we in one now? How do today’s readers decide which earlier SF is worth reading? Is the overall quality of SF stronger today than ever, or are we simply applying different or more stringently literary standards? This leads to a digression about exciting books coming out later this year, and a number of other topics that we challenge you to even try to keep track of. But at least we had fun.

This week we’re joined by the distinguished, multiple award-winning John Kessel, whose collection The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel is recently out from Subterranean Press, representing John’s four-decade career as an SF writer, teacher, editor, scholar, and workshop leader. We touch upon not only his short fiction, but novels like The Moon and the Other and Pride and Prometheus, his early studies under James Gunn, his thematic anthologies co-edited with James Patrick Kelly, and what really happened in SF during the 1980s.

As always, we'd like to thank John for taking the time to talk to us and hope you'll enjoy the episode.

For the first week in July, we’re joined by Nebula Award winner Rachel Swirsky, whose novella January Fifteenth ( just out from Tordotcom) is a provocative exploration of the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as it might play out in the lives of four women in very different circumstances. We touch upon Rachel’s decision to focus on characters rather than systems, to set the tale in a recognizable near future, and to deliberately restrain from many science-fictional bells and whistles.

This leads to how SF deals, too rarely, with questions of economic policy and the effects on individual lives —in the case of January Fifteenth, a woman escaping from an abusive ex-spouse, a journalist covering the effects of UBI, a well-off college student whose friends deliberately waste their annual checks, and a young member of a repressive religious cult. As usual, we touch upon what’s next for Rachel, including an intriguing collaboration with Ann Leckie.

As always, our thanks to Rachel for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

This week, Jonathan and Gary are delighted to chat with Kate Heartfield, whose thoroughly engrossing historical fantasy The Embroidered Book, already a bestseller in the UK and Canada, has just been published in the United States.

We talk about the research that went into her fascinating tale of the sisters Antoine and Charlotte, who grew up to become Marie Antoinette and Queen Charlotte of Naples, and of how magical books of spells secretly helped shape the history of 18th century Europe. We touch upon her earlier Aurora-winning Armed in Her Fashion, the various ways of incorporating fantasy into history, the question of whether historical fiction might be received differently in different cultures and markets, and some hints about her current work in progress.

It’s a pretty lively discussion, and we think a lot of fun. As always, our thanks to Kate for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode!

This week, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the brilliant Christopher Rowe, whose novella These Prisoning Hills appears next week from Tordotcom, revisiting the wonderful and bizarre world first introduced in his earlier stories “The Voluntary State” and “The Border State.”

We cover quite a bit of territory, ranging from Christopher's own influences, what it means to be associated with a particular region (such as Kentucky and Tennessee in Christopher’s case), the nature of influence in SF, and Christopher’s own discovery of the work of Cordwainer Smith, whose stories he’s been assiduously collecting in their original magazine appearances.

As usual, we would like to thank Christopher for taking the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the podcast.

Earlier this week, we were all stunned by the news of the tragic death of World Fantasy Life Achievement Award winner Patricia McKillip, whose luminous works have influenced and moved generations of readers and writers for nearly half a century.

Jonathan and Gary are joined by McKillip’s longtime friend, Ellen Kushner, herself a winner of World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Awards, and by Campbell Award winner E. Lily Yu, We talk some about Pat’s personal modesty and sharp wit, but mostly about her astonishing body of work, not only in fantasy but (as Lily points out) in her less familiar forays into SF. Like all tributes, it’s probably inadequate to the work, but it’s deeply felt by all of us.

This week’s discussion begins with Gary wondering about what he tentatively calls the use of absurdism in some recent novels, mentioning Kelly Barnhill’s When Women Were Dragons and Sunyi Dean's forthcoming The Book Eaters, each of which features a powerful central metaphor that refuses to resolve itself into traditional SF or fantasy systems—somewhat like the old Theatre of the Absurd playwrights like Ionesco. This leads to yet another discussion of what may be happening with the notion of genres, and how an earlier generation of gatekeeping editors has given way to editors more welcoming to a variety of voices and approaches. We more or less conclude that, while this reinvigorates the traditional genres, there are plenty of options for readers who still prefer the familiar formulas and traditions. Finally, we talk a bit about getting together for a possible live podcast at Chicon later this summer. 

It's only been a week since Jonathan and Gary sat down to chat with Nicola Griffith about her new book, Spear, but in a bid to get back on schedule, they took a moment to record a new episode for the coming long weekend.

They kick off chatting about travel during the pandemic and the coming WorldCon, before Jonathan admits he's only just read Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and they then go on to talk about Le Guin's work, the oddities of book buying and collecting, and then our hosts attempt to answer the age-old questions: do you need to read a book? if so, why? do you need to keep book? which ones can you get rid of, and how?  Really, it's a ramble that kicks off with Earthsea and ends up chatting about books. It's a Coode Street podcast.

As always, our thanks for your patience with our rambles. We hope you enjoy the episode, and see you again pretty soon!

This time out, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the brilliant Nicola Griffith, whose Spear, out this month, revisits Arthurian tales from an entirely new perspective. We chat about how the novel came about, Arthurian literature as fan fiction, the wonderful illustrations by Rovina Cai, and what it was like to record the audiobook. We also discuss its similarities to and differences from her well-received historical novel Hild and its forthcoming sequel Menewood, as well as Nicola’s classic early novels Ammonite and Slow River, her recent So Lucky, and forthcoming reissues of her Aud Torvingen novels, beginning with The Blue Place.

With Gary just back from ICFA in Florida, he discussed whether this will really be the year of re-emergence, with both the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago and World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans in the offing. This led, as it does, to discussion of the Hugos, whether small categories with few nominations should be dropped, whether other categories should be added, and whether major historical studies such as Mike Ashley’s five-volume The History of the Science-Fiction Magazines really have a chance of being seen because of availability issues, as compared to the increasingly broad definition of “related work.”

Inevitably, we chatted about new or forthcoming books we’re excited about. We both liked Guy Gavriel Kay’s All the Seas of the World, Alix E. Harrow’s A Mirror Mended, and Christopher Rowe’s These Prisoning Hills, while Jonathan is tempted by Karen Joy Fowler’s new novel Booth and Gary’s about to start Samit Basu’s The City Inside. 

Of course, there are lots of digressions in between, including the nature of historical fiction and nostalgia for printed books in the age of e-books (at least for reviewers and critics).

After reminding listeners that the deadline for Hugo nominations is fast approaching on March 15 (and reminding them once again of the eligibility of this podcast for Best Fancast and of Jonathan for Best Editor, Short Form), we move on to the much-discussed, record-setting Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter, and the question of whether it really matters to anyone other than Sanderson and his readers. Acknowledging that Sanderson readers are fully likely to get exactly what they are expecting, this led us into a brief discussion of reader expectations, also the topic of a recent essay by Molly Templeton on Tor.com. While occasionally we come across a book with almost no prior knowledge or publicity, most books come with expectations based on the author’s previous work, or even the publisher’s reputation.

Some of the authors discussed here, and some that Jonathan and Gary are currently reading or expecting to read, include Guy Gavriel Kay, R.F. Kuang, Kelly Barnhill, Nghi Vo, John Crowley, and Karen Joy Fowler. At the end, we touch briefly upon the question of history in fiction, and the different strategies of using entirely fictional characters, almost entirely historical figures, or a mixture of both.

This week, in our more-or-less annual discussion of the Locus Recommended Reading List, we are delighted to be joined by Locus Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi.

We talk about the purpose of the list, how it has changed over the years, how books or stories get on the list, and a few thorny questions about how to decide whether a novel is SF or fantasy if it contains substantial elements of both. In addition to mentioning some of our own favourite works of the year, we touch upon the importance of the First Novels list, which might be a harbinger of what's to come, and how story collections and YA novels have grown in importance over the years.

Toward the end, we pay a brief tribute to two Locus Magazine pioneers, reviewer Faren Miller (who was also the magazine's first full-time employee), and bibliographer William G. Contento, who helped establish resources that remain crucial to anyone interested in the SFF field.

This week (episode 3 of season 13) we return to our tradition of almost entirely unstructured rambling. Jonathan and Gary consider such questions as to whether a novel can be good SF, but not much good in literary terms, or a good literary novel not much good as SF.

While we recognize that many popular subgenres, from military SF to heroic fantasy, have plenty of readers loyal to the old traditions, we muse about whether many of today’s writers feel some pressure to meet both traditional literary and SF standards, and Jonathan namechecks R.F. Kuang. Some writers we mention, such as Arkady Martine, seem to effortlessly do both. On the other hand, why were several genre mystery readers of the 1930s and 1940s, like Hammett and Chandler, were later recognized as major literary figures, the same didn’t seem to have to SF writers of the same period.

Toward the end, we touch upon Paul Kincaid's provocative new essay, "A Taxonomy of Reviewing" and his book on Brian W. Aldiss, amongst other things. 

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. 

This week Jonathan and Gary are back, a little early, to talk about the annual science fiction calendar, the awards season, how there are so many awards, what books they’re reading, and what books they’ve worked on.  Oh, and for a short moment, they touch on movies and TV too.

All in all, episode two of season 13, sounds pretty much like most of the other episodes we've recorded over the past twelve years, so if they were your jam, this might be too. 

As always, we hope you enjoy it and are very grateful to everyone for listening in...

Welcome to The Coode Street Podcast. With 2021 barely in the rearview mirror, it's time to kick off season 13 with a brand new episode. A little over a month ago we sat down with James Bradley, Alix E. Harrow, and Ian Mond to discuss 2021: The Year in Review in Episode 568. At the end of that chat, we all said we'd back to discuss the books we're looking forward to in 2022, and here we are!

This week we discuss 25 or so books that we are looking forward to or, maybe, have read already and can recommend that you check out (along with a few strays). Pre-order links are below. We also are clear we've definitely missed books we'll end up loving.

As always, our sincere thanks to James, Alix, and Ian for making time to chat with us.  We hope you enjoy the episode and that you'll see us again in a couple weeks.

JAMES

1. The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
2. To Paradise, Hanya Yanigihara
3. Goliath, Tochi Onyebuchi
4. Sea of Tranquility, Emily St John Mandel
5. A History of Dreams, Jane Rawson

ALIX

1. Siren Queen, Nghi Vo
2. Saint Death's Daughter, C.S.E. Cooney
3. How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu
4. Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
5. Spear, Nicola Griffith

IAN

1. The This, Adam Roberts
2. Dark Breakers, C.S.E Cooney
3. The Last Blade Priest, Will Wiles
4. Booth, Karen Joy Fowler
5. Hard Places(1), Kirstyn McDermott

JONATHAN

1. The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest, Felix Salten (trans. Jack Zipes)
2. Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution,  R.F. Kuang
3. The Landing, Mary Gentle
4. All the Seas of the World, Guy Gavriel Kay
5. Devil House, John Darnielle

1. A Mirror Mended, Alix E. Harrow
2. Aspects, John M. Ford
3. High Times in the Low Parliament, Kelly Robson
4. The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
5. Boys, Beasts, and Men, Sam J. Miller

(1) Pre-order not yet available.

The Coode Street Podcast kicked off in May 2010.  Over the next 568 episodes Jonathan and Gary, and far too many friends of the podcast to be named here individually, talked about a shared love of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in all of their many forms. 

Just a week ago, the members of the World Science Fiction Convention awarded the Coode Street Podcast with the Hugo Award for Best Fancast.  This time out we take a moment, on the very edge of the holidays, to say thank you. Thank you to everyone out there involved, no matter how small or how large your contribution to our ongoing conversation. We will ever be in deeply in your debt for your support.

We'll be back in 2022, but for now we'd like to wish you a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season and a thoroughly magical New Year. See you again soon!

The holiday season is upon us, another strange, unforgettable year is almost done, and here at Coode Street it's time for our annual gift guide/year in review, where we recommend some books we loved during the year.

This time out we invited special guests and good friends James Bradley, Alix E. Harrow, and Ian Mond to join us to recommend just a few of the books we'd loved the most during 2021. Perhaps more than in any other year, this was a time when we all were almost surprised at how much great reading we found.

Because this is Coode Street, traditions are traditions and we had some technical issues. All is good for most of the hour of the recording, but there's a jump or two towards the end. We hope you'll excuse this, and that the recommendations will prove of interest.

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 use. To help, the recommendations are below. And we're in talks to maybe return in January for a books we're looking forward to chat as well...

James Bradley recommended:

• Jennifer Mills, The Airways
• Elizabeth Knox, The Absolute Book
• Nina Allan, The Good Neighbours
• Olga Ravn, The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century

and also mentioned:

• Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun
• Laura Jean McKay, The Animals in That Country
• Marion Engel, Bear
• Garth Nix, Terciel and Elinor
• Sim Kern, Depart, Depart
• Hari Kunzru, Red Pill

Alix E. Harrow recommended:

• Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons
• Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun
• Ava Reid, The Wolf and the Woodsman
• Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

And I also loved/mentioned/endorsed:

• Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built
  Angela Slatter, All the Murmuring Bones

Ian Mond recommended:

• Build Your House Around My Body, Violet Kupersmith
• The Thing Between Us, Gus Moreno
• The Confessions of Copeland Cane, Keenan Norris
• All the Murmuring Bones, Angela Slatter
• Dead Souls, Sam Rivière
• The Angels of L19, Jonathan Walker
• Mrs Death: Misses Death, Salena Godden
• The Employees, Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken)

Jonathan recommended:

• The Hood, Lavie Tidhar
• A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
• The Wisdom of Crowds, Joe Abercrombie

and passingly mentioned The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty.

Gary recommended:

• Karin Tidbeck, The Memory Theatre
• M. Rickert, The Shipbuilder of Belfairie
• E. Lily Yu, On Fragile Waves
• Nina Allan, The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories
• P. Djèlí Clark, A Master of Djinn

Pus a couple of titles that were also on other folks’ lists, like The Hood and The Chosen and the Beautiful.

Welcome to episode 25 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary sit down with the very talented and extremely busy Sheree Renée Thomas to discuss her award-winning collection Nine Bar Blues, her first year editing the venerable Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the lasting impact of her Dark Matter anthologies, her forthcoming anthologies Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue (co-edited with Pan Morrigan and Troy L. Wiggins) and Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction (co-edited with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight, her own experiences growing up as an SF and horror reader, and the new age of recognizing African and African diaspora SFF.  It’s a pretty lively conversation.

As always, our sincere thanks to Sheree Renée Thomas, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Order now!

Welcome to episode 24 of Season 12 of the Coode Street Podcast. As the year draws to a close and winter comes to Chicago and summer to Perth, Gary and Jonathan sit down for an unexpected and unplanned conversation about life achievement awards and their meaningfulness, a brief foreshadowing of a discussion about interrogating the sociopolitical assumptions of a work of fiction, and more.

This time out there were a few technical issues in the final five minutes of the recording, but those have hopefully been addressed by editing. Two episodes remain in the season - a good time to be discussing the year in review and the best fiction of 2021 - before we go on hiatus, but for now we hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 23 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week, after a brief and mostly irrelevant discussion of whether the proposition that Ray Bradbury as the quintessential October writer means anything at all outside North America, Jonathan and Gary actually try to focus on an important question: whether posthumous publications actually do anything to enhance an author’s reputation.

We make distinctions between works that the author clearly wanted to be published (like Philip K. Dick final four novels), works that the author clearly did not intend for publication (like some late Heinlein manuscripts), and works which the author may or may not have tried to publish during their lifetimes (such as a number of R.A. Lafferty manuscripts completed or continued by other hands, including novels by Walter M. Miller, Jr., Robert Jordan, and Terry Pratchett). We even touch upon whether the J. Michael Straczynski The Last Dangerous Visions is a useful idea decades after Harlan Ellison began the project. Do author's estates see posthumous publication as a means of keeping an author’s name alive, as a purely commercial proposition, or as a way of arguing for an author’s canonical status? Other authors touched upon include J.R.R. Tolkien, John M. Ford, Philip José Farmer, and even a few examples from mainstream fiction, such as John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, which won a Pulitzer Prize more than a decade after its author's death.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 22 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. In this episode, Gary and Jonathan talk to Oghenechovwe Ekpeki, author of the Otherwise Award-winning and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, British SF Award, and Nebula Award-nominated novella "Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon", editor of The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction, and co-editor with Zelda K. Knight of the British Fantasy Award-winning anthology Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. 

Oghenechovwe joins us from Lagos, Nigeria to discuss growing up reading speculative fiction in Nigeria, his hopes for The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction series, the challenges facing writers from Africa to get a chance to be a part of the international science fiction community, his upcoming anthology African Risen for Tordotcom (co-edited with Sheree Renee Thomas and Zelda K. Knight), and much more.

While there are, later in the podcast, a few moments where static affected our Skype connection, we hope you'll bear with the episode. As always, we'd like to thank Oghenechovwe for taking the time to talk to us, and hope that you enjoy the episode.

Available for order now:

Welcome to episode 21 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast.Once again, it's just Jonathan and Gary, talking about the various roles anthologies have played in the history of science fiction and how that role may be different these days, the nominees and winners of the 2021 Ignyte Awards from FIYAHCON 2021, N.K. Jemisin being named as one of Time Magazine's top 100 most influential people, how SF has begun to shift its historical perspective in terms of colonialism and international literatures, new media adaptations of Asimov and Herbert, and, as always, how genre and other barriers are breaking down and how neither of us is quite keeping up with all the fascinating new fiction published every month, suggesting that maybe 2021 is turning out to be a pretty exciting year.

Welcome to episode 20 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. It's just Jonathan and Gary again, eventually circling around an interesting question raised by Andrew Liptak in Transfer Orbit concerning the question of reading the right book at the right time, rather than being chained to the constant parade of new books and their publicity cycles.

Along the way we pause to note the recent passing of Erle Korshak, one of the last survivors of 1930s fandom; the value and hazards of re-reading old favorites from Gene Wolfe to Dune; the way to arrange stories in an anthology or collection; some newer books by Lavie Tidhar, Joe Abercrombie, and others; the importance of context in reviewing, and, inspired by Matt Bell's My Le Guin Year: Craft Lessons from a Master on Tor.com, how Ursula Le Guin got some things right long before anyone else did, with her own Tehanu. In other words, our usual laser-like focus on whatever comes up in the moment.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 19 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This time out, Jonathan and Gary return, sans guests or much of a plan. They do manage to touch upon a number of significant issues, such as the work of newly minted World Fantasy Life Achievement winner Howard Waldrop, whether Waldrop could be viewed as a regional author (a Texan in particular), and which other writers might be thought of a representing particular regional voices (R.A. Lafferty, Andy Duncan, Christopher Rowe,  Daryl Gregory?), and how regional voice may show up even in the work of hard SF writers like Gregory Benford. This leads into a more general discussion of influences. Are films based on Philip K. Dick now more influential than Dick’s novels themselves? How are innovative writers like Greg Egan (who just turned 60) and Ted Chiang seen as influential?

This leads, somehow, into a discussions of how writers like Dick, Lovecraft, Le Guin, Octavia Butler made it into the Library of America, and finally to the importance of international and regional anthologies such as Oghenchovwe Donald Ekpeki’s new Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction. As always, we also touch upon what we’re reading this week.

Welcome to episode 18 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This time out, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the wonderful Arkady Martine, author of the Hugo-winning A Memory Called Empire and its equally remarkable sequel A Desolation Called Peace. We touch upon how her research as an academic historian helped shape her fiction, the various meanings of empire (and the comparative virtues of SF and fantasy in dealing with such concepts), growing up with a houseful of SF classics from Asimov to Zelazny, and her own current work—including the possibility of more stories set in the Teixcalaanli universe and a likely venture into near-future SF.

As always, our thanks to Arkady for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 17 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. For those very few of you who might be wondering what Jonathan and Gary ramble on about when they’re not recording or talking to guests, here's a taste—especially if you make it all the way to the last ten minutes or so, when we end up talking about our vaccination cards and possible travel plans.  

Before we get there, however, we touch upon the new Lavie Tidhar novel The Hood, which we’re both in the midst of reading and is due out in October. That leads to a broader discussion of Tidhar's work and an even broader discussion about how historical material is handled differently in fantasy from the way it is in SF, and whether the classic view of SF’s manifest destiny even holds up anymore, given the variety of voices and perspectives now available.

Some of the authors we touch upon are Arkady Martine, John Varley, C.J. Cherryh, Isaac Asimov (and the forthcoming Apple TV+ series derived from the Foundation series), Kelly Robson, John Varley, and a few others. A mixed bag, for sure.

Welcome to episode 16 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week, Jonathan and Gary chat with the marvellous M. Rickert, whose new novel The Shipbuilder of Bellfaerie is out next week from Undertow Publications.

We touch upon how the novel draws from traditions as varied as nautical legends, mysteries, and even Frankenstein, and on  the virtues and challenges of the novel as a form compared to novellas and short fiction, the importance of letting the reader use their own imaginations, whether or not M. Rickert fiction is horror fiction (depending, of course, on how horror is defined), whether a reader missing the point is really such a bad thing, and some earlier classic M. Rickert stories like “The Chambered Fruit,” “Bread and Bombs,” and “The Mothers of Voorhisville.”

As always, our thanks to Mary for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 15 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast.

For the first time in more than two months, it’s just Jonathan and Gary again, talking about science fiction of the anthropocene, whether science fiction has shifted its “consensus future” away from the optimism of past eras, the notion that forms such as space opera have begun to look more like heroic fantasy than old-fashioned extrapolation, and the rapidly multiplying meanings of the term dystopia.

In an unusual departure from our usual literature-based rambles—we also touch on what we both think of recent MCU contributions like Loki, Black Widow, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—and what they may tell us about corporate storytelling, along with chatter about Miracle Workers and Jonathan's rewatch of The Lord of the Rings.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

Welcome to episode 14 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by multiple award-winning author and editor Lavie Tidhar to discuss his brand new anthology, The Best of World SF: Vol 1, his years working to bring SF from around the world to North American and UK audiences, the value of reading widely and from different perspectives, and much more. Along the way we also touch on his forthcoming new novels The Escapement and The Hood, and much more.

As always, our thanks to Lavie for making time to talk to us and we hope you enjoy the episode. See you again soon!

Welcome to episode 13 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by the wonderful Catherynne M. Valente to talk about her new book The Past is Red, which continues the tale of Tetley Abednego, first introduced to readers in the Sturgeon Award-winning "The Future is Blue" from Jonathan’s anthology Drowned Worlds.

We discuss the origins of that story, of the Hugo-nominated Space Opera and its forthcoming sequel Space Oddity, the thriller Comfort Me With Apples (also forthcoming this October), and the importance of working with supportive editors and agents

As always, our thanks to Cat for taking the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 12 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by the remarkable Zen Cho, whose new novel Black Water Sister will be followed later this summer by an expanded version of her Crawford Award-winning collection Spirits Abroad from Small Beer Press.

We touch upon issues of Malaysian identity both in the new books and in her popular duology Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, the stylistic and thematic challenges of writing for diverse audiences and writing humor in fantasy (with early influences including Terry Pratchett and P.G. Wodehouse), and the wonderfully inventive dragons in her short fiction, including the Hugo-winning ‘If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again."

As always, our thanks to Zen for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 11 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by Daryl Gregory, whose new novella The Album of Dr. Moreau is an improbable but delightful mashup of H.G. Wells, boy bands, Las Vegas, and locked-room murder mysteries.

We discuss the challenges of attempting so much at novella length, the importance of managing tone, and, not least, the sheer fun of the whole undertaking. Along the way, we touch upon some of Daryl’s earlier novels, including The Devil’s Alphabet, Raising Stony Mayhall, We Are All Completely Fine, and Spoonbenders, as well his forthcoming novel Revelator, a gothic tale set in the Smoky Mountains. 

As always, our thanks to Daryl and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 10 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary have a delightful conversation with Nghi Vo, whose The Empress of Salt and Fortune won this year’s Crawford Award and is a Hugo finalist, and whose debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful, a fantastical revisioning of The Great Gatsby with a queer, Asian Jordan Baker as narrator, is out this week.

We discuss the value of fanfic, the virtues and vacancies of Fitzgerald’s classic novel, the question of whether any narrators are ever reliable, and how Nghi managed to convey the sense of a full epic fantasy in The Empress of Salt and Fortune and then shift to a very different narrative mode in When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, the second novella in the “Singing Hills” cycle.  We also get a preview of the forthcoming novel Siren Queen, with its intriguing exploration—again in fantastic terms—of the early Hollywood film industry as experienced by an Asian actress.

As always, our thanks to our guest, Nghi, for her time. We hope all of you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 9 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by Nebula and Philip K. Dick award-winning author and musician Sarah Pinsker, whose new novel We Are Satellites is out this week. We touch upon the actual science of brain implants which served as background research for the novel, her reasons for narrating the story from the points of view of four different family members, the issues of corporate responsibility for new technology, and the surprisingly lax government oversight of medical devices such as those featured in the novel. We also discuss the reception of her much-heralded and prescient novel from last year, Song for a New Day, the challenges of writing near-future SF, her own influences and early reading in the field, balancing a career in music with one in fiction, and some of the stories in her collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea.

As always, we'd like to thank Sarah for joining us and hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 8 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This time out, Jonathan and Gary are joined by P. Djèlí Clark, whose novella Ring Shout has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards this year and whose first novel, A Master of Djinn, appears this month.

We touch upon themes of colonialism and racism, why he decided to set a steampunk novel in 1912 Cairo, his earlier short fiction, how his work as an academic historian informs his fiction, and what it was like, after a lifetime of reading, to discover a community that seemed to welcome his vision. Djèlí’s insights into everything from old Twilight Zone episodes to Birth of a Nation to Robert Jordan’s fantasies make for one of the more stimulating conversations we’ve had in some time.

As always, our thanks to Djèlí and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 7 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary return to form with a classic ramble through a jumble of topics ranging from the postponement of this year’s Swancon in Perth (and a bit of trivia about an American Swanncon from decades ago); the possible effects of the missing convention years on the SFF field; a brief foray into utopian/dystopian fiction; Charles de Lint, urban fantasy, and his new novel Juniper Wiles; our mutual admiration for Catherynne Valente's forthcoming The Past is Red; and bits about what we’ve been reading lately, including Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful, fictions that focus on a single technology like Sarah Pinsker's We Are Satellites, alternate histories like P. Djèlí Clark's A Master of Djinn, set in Cairo, and why we’ve been overloaded on London steampunk (especially on TV), while other world cities seem to get short shrift in the whole steampunk/alternate history trend. Some of these authors, we promise, will get a chance to speak for themselves in future episodes.

This year has been tough for a lot of people. Swancon has suffered a lot of extra costs and GoH Claire Coleman is running a GoFundMe to help them out. You can donate here. Also, John Varley had major heart surgery earlier this year. They're running a GoFundMe to help him with expenses. You can donate here. Both campaigns are worthy of support.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll see you again soon!

Welcome to episode 6 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by the delightful Nebula and Aurora winning author Kelly Robson, whose first collection Alias Space and Other Stories has just been published by Subterranean Press. Kelly discusses life during lockdown in Toronto, the joys of becoming a widely admired short fiction writer after starting out as a “late bloomer,” how SF and fantasy helped get through challenging times when younger, what she’s learned from writers such as Michael Bishop, James Tiptree, Jr., Howard Waldrop, and Connie Willis, the worldbuilding behind her novella Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (and other stories set in that universe), and the fun she’s had exploring humorous fiction in new work that she's completing right now. And, of course, the wonderful stories that go to make up her new collection.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll see you again soon!

Welcome to episode 5 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. After three weeks of unexcused absences, Jonathan and Gary return, just as the world starts re-emerging with the announcement that the Montreal World Fantasy Convention, at least at present, expects to host an in-person event in early November. That led us to return to our occasional discussion of possible candidates for Life Achievement Awards (limited to those over 62 years of age), with Jonathan again presenting his case for Howard Waldrop, which Gary finds it hard to disagree with. But Gary also mentions several other eligible possibilities.

That leads us toward the other categories on the ballot, and we name some possible candidates for novel, novella, anthology, collection, and artist, as well as the more mysterious categories of special achievements, professional and nonprofessional.  As always, we welcome reminders of those we have inevitably overlooked, some of which we will undoubtedly embarrassed about.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll see you again soon!

Welcome to episode 4 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. Despite an unexpected glitch that caused Jonathan to disappear partway through, he and Gary are joined by Veronica Schanoes, whose Burning Girls and Other Stories is just out, with endorsements from writers and scholars as diverse as Karen Joy Fowler, Jack Zipes, Jane Yolen, Catherynne Valente, Jeffrey Ford, and Roz Kaveny. We talk about fairy tales, anti-Semitism, feminism, labour history, immigrant history, punk rock, and many other elements that go to make up her remarkable short stories.

As always, we'd like to thank Veronica for making the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the podcast.

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!

Last year Coode Street sat down with people from all over the world to talk about what they were reading, what they were up to, and how they were coping with strange times. We did it every day, which we probably never will again, and along the way found out it was fun and interesting to check in for a short chat. We're continuing that during 2021.

The second "Ten Minutes with..." chat for 2021 is with Max Gladstone, the acclaimed author of the Craft Sequence, the Empress of Forever and, with Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War.

Max sat down with Jonathan last year and discussed what he had been reading (a lot!), what he'd recommend, and what he had coming up. As always, our thanks to Max for taking the time to chat with us.

Welcome to episode 2 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week, in the second of our main season of twenty-six hour-long episodes, our hosts Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan talk to Locus Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi and award-winning writer Daryl Gregory about the year in science fiction and fantasy.

The annual Locus Recommended Reading issue is due out at the beginning of February featuring an overview of the year, the 50th Locus Reader's Poll and annual recommended reading list, so it seemed like a good time to talk trends, themes, books, and more.  And, of course, there's the odd digression because it's Coode Street and that's what we do.

As always, our thanks to our guests Liza and Daryl. We hope you enjoy the episode and see you next time!

Last year Coode Street sat down with people from all over the world to talk about what they were reading, what they were up to, and how they were coping with strange times. We did it every day, which we probably never will again, and along the way found out it was fun and interesting to check in for a short chat. We're continuing that during 2021.

The first "Ten Minutes with..." chat for 2021 is with Apex Magazine editor and publisher, Jason Sizemore. Apex is an award-winning magazine that publishes fantastic fiction. It paused publication due to illness, but is back with exciting new material in 2021. During our conversation Jason discusses the future of the magazine, watching Deadwood for the first time, and the fiction of Mary Doria Russell.

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.

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.

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!)

We're getting to the end of an extraordinary year and it's almost time to shutter the podcast before a well-earned holiday break.

But, before Gary and Jonathan close the door on the Gershwin Room for the last time for 2020, a special gift guide episode. There were no notes, no plans, no lists - just some off-the-cuff gift suggestions for the holidays.  We hope you'll consider your local independent businesses when choosing gifts for the holidays. They're a vital part of our communities.

While this isn't the last time you'll hear from Coode Street in 2020, we would like to thank you all for listening and wish you and your loved ones a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season.

Jonathan and Gary continue their irregular 2020 schedule with a conversation with Charles Coleman Finlay, who for more than five years has carried on the grand tradition of editing The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Sheree Renée Thomas, who picks up the mantle as new editor beginning with the March/April 2021 issue. We talk about the magazine’s distinguished history, the challenges of maintaining an iconic magazine in a radically changing short fiction field, and their own experiences as SF readers, writers, and editors.

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

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.

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 Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning writer Rebecca Roanhorse chats about living and working through lockdown in New Mexico, the appeal of epic fantasy, reading fantasy for pleasure and science non-fiction for work, her stunning new fantasy novel Black Sun, and her experiences working in the writers' room for an unnamed new TV show.

Books mentioned include:

• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

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

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.

Multiple award-nominated novelist Paul Park discusses reading the Book of Mormon in preparation for his new novel, the challenges of writing about a society with no recognition of gender (including the problem of pronouns), reading about the Dreyfuss affair, serializing a 14-part story on his Facebook page, and a possible new collection of short fiction.

Books mentioned include:

• A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park
• All Those Vanished Engines by Paul Park
• A City Made of Words by Paul Park
• An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
• The Odyssey by Homer  Emily Wilson (trans.)

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 chats with S. Qiouyi Lu about being highly prolific during the pandemic, the pleasures of immersive reading, reading work in translation (especially in Chinese), the growth in diverse voices, how changing times impact on stories, the recently announced novella In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu, and much more.

Books mentioned include:

• In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu (2021)
• Inhalations: Collected Works Vol. 1 by S. Qiouyi Lu 
• The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Jonathan and Gary are back with their usual laser-like focus on a single important topic--or maybe not. Starting at the recent release of the trailer for Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune, which has many of us looking back at Frank Herbert's classic novel, they touch upon re-reading old favourites, books that are genuinely sui generis and whether they have a lasting influence, other books that caused us to rethink the possibilities of SFF, "classics" or classic ideas that really don't hold up that well, and of course what they've been reading lately and might be thinking about for the Locus recommended reading list, which we'll both need to start working on in next month. 

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

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 calls up Tordotcom Publishing editor Ruoxi Chen to chat about revisiting all-time favourites and how re-reading can help keep editors in touch with the readers they need to be, the therapeutic values of disaster nonfiction, dipping into audiobooks, the state of speculative fiction and why there’s a lot to be optimistic about, and a lot more.

Books mentioned include:

• The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (forthcoming, June 2021)
• The Queen's Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner
• The Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix
• We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
• The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Coode Street has a long history of talking to Kim Stanley Robinson about the world and his work, starting back in 2011, continuing in our 200th episode in London, and on the publication of 2312, Aurora, and New York 2140, so we couldn't pass up the chance to talk to him now.

In what is easily the longest episode of Coode Street for this strange pandemic year, Gary, Jonathan, and Stan discuss his brand new novel, The Ministry for the Future, the value and purpose of science fiction, Stan's important working relationship with editor Tim Holman, experimenting with form, what comes next, and more.

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

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.

Madeleine E. Robins, author of the Sarah Tolerance historical mysteries, SF and fantasy, and historical novels, talks about starting her career with Regency novels influenced by Georgette Heyer, how "fluffy bunny" reading doesn’t necessarily mean fluffy, making masks and researching mask laws from a century ago (and the “mask riots” in San Francisco then), and her own recent work and work-in-progress.

Books mentioned include:

• Sold for Endless Rue by Madeleine E. Robins
• "Omunculus" by Madeleine E. Robins
• Whitehall by Liz Duffy Adams, Mary Robinette Kowal, Madeleine E. Robins, Barbara Samuel & Delia Sherman
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Lord Peter Wimsey Series by Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Complete Novels by Jane Austen
• R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

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.

Nebula and Locus award-winning Linda Nagata talks about what life in Maui is like with almost no tourists, how audiobooks have improved in recent years, her experiences in running her own publishing company and establishing her own deadlines, and her timely forthcoming novel Pacific Storm.

Books mentioned include:

• The Red Trilogy by Linda Nagata
• Edges by Linda Nagata
• Silver by Linda Nagata
• Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
• Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition by Buddy Levy
• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen

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.

Multiple award-nominee Benjamin Rosenbaum discusses the pandemic as seen from Switzerland, learning to write in his garden when cafes are no longer available, designing board games with his son, the reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, rereading classic SF, and his own recent stories and forthcoming genderless novel.

Books mentioned include:

• The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum (forthcoming)
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull
• A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Startide Rising by David Brin
• The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

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 author, editor, and scholar Delia Sherman talks about reading old French newspapers and memoirs; the rewards of research; listening to audiobooks during long walks (including a lot of Dickens!); the orderly appeal of good murder mysteries from Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and others; missing out on being a teenager; and how political themes are finding their way into her novel in progress.

Books mentioned include:

• The Porcelain Dove by Delia Sherman
• The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman
• A Quiet Life in the Country by T.E Kinsey
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
• Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• The Phryne Fisher Series by Kerry Greenwood

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.

Writer, professor, and Strange Horizons founder Mary Anne Mohanraj chats with Gary about launching a new cookbook just as everything got locked down, how virtual conventions seem to be improving—and are likely to change the way all cons are conducted in the future, keeping busy sewing masks, serving as a public library board member, and teaching online, why SF doesn’t have enough food in it, South Asian SFF writers, and even how the word serendipity came into the language.

Books mentioned include:

• A Feast of Serendib by Mary Anne Mohanraj
• A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
• How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
• Best American Food Writing 2019 edited by Samin Nosrat
• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee

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.

Playwright, professor, director, and Carl Brandon and Otherwise-award winning writer Andrea Hairston talks with Gary about the necessity of reading during hard times, the appeal of hefty nonfiction titles as well as epic fantasy, the odd satisfaction of a virtual book tour, Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurisms, and her new novel Master of Poisons.

Books mentioned include:

• Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
• The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
• The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel José Older
• Nine Bar Blues by Sheree Renee Thomas
• Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

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

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, Astounding, and British Fantasy Award-winning Jeannette Ng joins Gary from northern England, discussing what it’s like to live near stands of ancient trees, learning to "read" the trees, the folklore and symbology of yew, hawthorn, and mistletoe, the advantages of reading manga on e-devices, and the rewards of reading Jasper Fforde and D&D-related manga.

Books mentioned include:

• Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
• The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History by Rian Thum
• The Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde
• Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
• The Delicious in Dungeon series by Ryuko Kui

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.

Crawford Award winner Stephanie Feldman joins Gary to talk about the unexpected complexities of virtual Kindergarten; writing about young adult characters and their attraction to the unknown; the appeal of short fiction by Daphne Du Maurier, Joan Aiken, and Angela Carter; the rewards of reading nonfiction; and her recent story "The Staircase" (published in the July 2020 issue of F&SF).

Books mentioned include:

• The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• The Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken

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 spends ten minutes or so chatting with exciting debut novelist Andrea Stewart about living and working through the pandemic, the pleasures of reading, exciting new books by Kerstin Hall, Megan O'Keefe, and Lisbeth Campbell, and her own book, The Bone Shard Daughter.

Books mentioned include:

• The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
• Star Eater by Kerstin Hall
• Inherit the Flame by Megan E. O'Keefe
• The Vanished Queen by Lisbeth Campbell

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 is joined by Aurealis Award-winning writer Jane Routley and they chat about how Jane's coping with the Melbourne shutdown and with being an essential worker, enjoying and participating in the New Zealand Worldcon, reading the Hugo nominees, watching The Umbrella Academy, American Gods, Tales from the Loop, and lots more.

Books mentioned include:

• Shadow in the Empire of Light by Jane Routley
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and others
• Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
• Fly Trap by Frances Hardinge
• A Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine
• Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

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.

Science journalist, novelist and Hugo Award-winning podcaster Annalee Newitz joins Jonathan to chat about living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area during the pandemic, the joys of modern science fiction, their novel-in-progress The Terraformers, and much more.

Books mentioned include:

• The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
• Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
• Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Titles mentioned include:

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.

Multiple award-winning author, editor, narrator, and radio personality Ellen Kushner chats with Gary about moving back to New York; ordering favorite children’s and YA books from independent bookstores; reading Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Joan Aiken; the brilliance of Frances Hardinge; group reading Shakespeare with friends online; the University of Glasgow’s new fantasy study center; and odd historical genres like “silver-fork novels.”

Books mentioned include:

• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
• Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken
• Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken
• Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
• The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
• The True Queen by Zen Cho
• Silk & Steel: An Adventure Anthology of Queer SF&F with High Femmes & Dashing Women edited by Janine A. Southard (forthcoming)

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

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.

Multiple award-winning author, poet, and educator Candas Jane Dorsey talks with Gary about teaching writing online, how her communications students seem to be better motivated in recent years, the appeal of detective stories (which John Gardner included among "moral fictions"), why middle-aged women read Jack Reacher novels, and her own forthcoming series of mystery novels and forthcoming YA novel.

Books mentioned include:

• The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery by Candas Jane Dorsey
• Ice and Other Stories by Candas Jane Dorsey
• Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey
• A Paradigm of Earth by Candas Jane Dorsey
• Crimes and Survivors by Sarah Smith
• The Vanished Child by Sarah Smith
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsin Muir
• On Moral Fiction by John Gardner
• Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child

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 chats with exciting debut novelist Micaiah Johnson about the strangeness of lockdown in Nashville, struggling to work in the early stages of quarantine, the pleasures of listening to creepy horror audiobooks, her early memories of reading genre fiction, and how she found her way to writing book that became The Space Between Worlds.

Books mentioned include:

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
• Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
• The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

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.

Widely respected historical novelist (and very occasional SF or fantasy writer) Cecelia Holland talks with Gary about the smoky conditions in northern California, the joys of doing research, her own new novel about Mongol invasions in the Middle East, and the small comforts of reading favourite poets like W.H. Auden, Richard Howard, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Books mentioned include:

• Heart of the World by Cecelia Holland
• The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson
• Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
• Plagues and Peoples by William McNeill
• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
• The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

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

A reissue, with apologies.

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 spends some time chatting with Lev Grossman about living and working during the pandemic, spending more time than usual with your loved ones, focussing on work, writing for a different audience, and his brand new middle-grade novel, The Silver Arrow.

Books mentioned include:

• The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie

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.

Multiple World Fantasy Award winner Terri Windling joins Gary to discuss life in a rural English village, her current reading on the connections between oral storytelling and literature, old favourites like Patricia A. McKillip, Robin McKinley, Ursula Le Guin, and Graham Joyce, a new Center for the Study of Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow, and the Modern Fairies Project supported by the Universities of Oxford and Sheffield.

Some of Terri's work can be found at her Patreon.

Books mentioned include:

• The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
• The Moon Wife by Terri Windling (forthcoming)
• The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King
• Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of My Ancestors by Louise Erdrich
• The Way of Imagination by Scott Russell Sanders
• Comet Weather by Liz Williams
• The Gift by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce
• Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

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.

World Fantasy Award winner Sheree Renée Thomas talks with Gary about old horror movies like Burnt Offerings and Trilogy of Terror as comfort viewing, the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking Dark Matter anthology and how the SFF landscape has changed since then, the influence of Octavia E. Butler, and different kinds of music.

Books mentioned include:

• Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora by Sheree Renée Thomas ed.
• Dark Matter: Reading the Bones by Sheree Renée Thomas ed.
• Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future by Sheree Renée Thomas
• Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White
• The Lark Ascending: The Music of the British Landscape by Richard King
• Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
• The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
• The Deep by Rivers Solomon
• The Blues Line: Blues Lyrics from Leadbelly to Muddy Waters by Eric Sackheim & Jonathan Shahn
• The Big Book of Modern Fantasy by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer eds.

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.

World Fantasy Award winner C.S.E. Cooney joins Gary to talk about the joys of rediscovering reading during these strange times; reading Don Quixote aloud; enjoying Ellen Kushner’s forthcoming novel along with work by Sarah Monette / Katherine Addison, Martha Wells, and Sherry Thomas; finishing her first full-length novel; and collaborating with her husband on a screenplay.

Books mentioned include:

• Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney
• Don Quixote by Cervantes (trans. Edith Grossman)
• Doctrine of Labyrinths Series by Sarah Monette
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
• The Lady Sherlock Series by Sherry Thomas
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie

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.

Locus Award winner and Hugo and Nebula nominee Mimi Mondal and Gary K. Wolfe chat about gardening and cooking Indian food during the lockdown, researching the ancient history of India and Bangladesh (including the origins of Tibetan Buddhism), cultural references in the Avatar franchise, and, of course, what she’s been reading.

Books mentioned include:

• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
• Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
• Six Months, Three Days, Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders
• Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
• A People’s Future of the United States by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, eds.

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.

Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer and scholar Veronica Schanoes joins Gary to talk about what lockdown is like with a 5-year-old in virtual pre-K, the appeal of classic detective stories in depicting a world in which rational solutions work, the portrayal of Jews in the English fairy tale tradition, the influence of Jane Yolen, and her forthcoming short story collection.

Books mentioned include:

• Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
• All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor
• The Inquisitor’s Apprentice by Chris Moriarty
• The Shortest Way to Hades and Hilary Tamar mysteries by Sarah Caudwell
• The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

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.

Gary talks with Hugo and Nebula Award winner Suzy McKee Charnas about the delights of a public library during lockdown, her own pioneering work in feminist SF and vampire fiction, a new novel about Bram Stoker, returning to the reliable work of Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas A. Disch, and Joanna Russ, and her own forthcoming titles from Aqueduct Press.

Books mentioned include:

• The Holdfast Chronicles by Suzy McKee Charnas
• The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas
• Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor
• Reluctant Voyagers by Elisabeth Vonarburg
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Comet's Tale: How the Dog I Rescued Saved My Life by Steven D. Wolf
• Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason
• Paper Sun by S.J. Rozan
• Night of the Jaguar by Michael Gruber

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 writer and longtime Locus editor Tim Pratt talks with Gary about serving on juries for two different awards in the same year (the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize and the Philip K. Dick Award), worrying about the fires that everyone in California worries about at this time of year, the appeal of mystery and crime fiction, and of fantasy novels that only imply a larger world rather than spelling it out in detail, and his own forthcoming alternate universe novel, Doors of Sleep.

Books mentioned include:

• Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt
• The Marla Mason Series by Tim Pratt
• The Axiom Series by Tim Pratt
• The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg
• Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine
• The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
• Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

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

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.

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

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 gets to spend talking to one of New Zealand's finest writers, Elizabeth Knox, who joins the conversation from Wellington (home of the 2020 WorldCon) to talk about living, working and writing during the pandemic, the joys to be found in reading absolutely everything by Diana Wynne Jones and Patrick O'Brian, her new novel The Absolute Book (due in the US in 2021 in a revised edition), and much more.

Books mentioned include:

• The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
• Nothing to See by Pip Adam
• The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
• The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg

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 Gary is joined by Crawford Award-winning and World Fantasy Award- nominated Swedish author Karin Tidbeck, discussing her remarkable 2010 Clarion class (three Crawford winners!), the audio narrating skills of Robin Miles, listening to Sandman as an audio drama, the work of Garth Nix and Tove Janssen, a fascinating new novel still awaiting English publication, and her forthcoming The Memory Theatre.

Books mentioned include:

• Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
• Jagganath by Karin Tidbeck
• The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck
• The Sandman (audio) by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs
• The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (narrated by Robin Miles)
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsin Muir
• The Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix
• The Moomin books and others by Tove Jansson
• Monsters In Therapy by Jenny Jägerfeld & Mats Strandberg

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.

World Fantasy Life Achievement winner John Crowley chats with Gary about his oddly prescient horror story “Spring Break” (which he says is his only horror story), the evocative prose of Graham Greene’s thrillers, the terror of Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge, and his own recent collections of essays and stories.

Books mentioned include:

• And Go Like This: Stories by John Crowley
• Reading Backwards: Essays and Reviews 2005-2018 by John Crowley
• This Gun for Hire (aka A Gun for Sale) by Graham Greene
• The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
• The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
• Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn
• The Invisible Valley by Su Wei (trans. by Austin Woerner)

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.

World Fantasy Award Life Achievement recipient and WorldCon Guest of Honor Charles de Lint joins Jonathan to discuss living, working, and reading in these strange times, what he's been working on, the relationship between his work and contemporary urban fantasy, the rewards he's found in taking control of his own publishing, and a new series of urban fantasy novels set in Newford, starting with Juniper Wiles, which he is planning for later this year.

Books mentioned include:

• The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint
• Ballistic Kiss: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey
• Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne
• Melissa F. Olson is creating stories: A Patreon by Melissa F. Olson
• Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's by Tiffany Midge

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 the UK's most distinguished novelists, Christopher Priest, joins Gary to discuss how from the beginning he strived for consistency in his body of work, how the lockdown seems to represent a historical discontinuity comparable to World War II, the war's effect on writers such as John Wyndham, H.E. Bates, and Rex Warner, his frustrating experiences with the film version of The Prestige, his recent retrospective story collection, and his forthcoming novel.

Books mentioned include:

• The Prestige by Christopher Priest
• An American Story by Christopher Priest
• Episodes: A Collection by Christopher Priest
• The Evidence by Christopher Priest (forthcoming October)
• The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• V for Victory by Lissa Evans (forthcoming 2021)
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

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

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.

Gary is joined by multiple award-winning artist and illustrator Charles Vess, chatting about country living during the lockdown, working with authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Neil Gaiman (including a new collector’s edition of Stardust from Lyra's Books with new illustrations and handmade paper), and Charles’s own novel, The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, available on his Green Man Press website.

Books mentioned include:

• Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
• Honeycomb (forthcoming 2021) by Joanne Harris (ill. Charles Vess)
• The Queen of Summer’s Twilight by Charles Vess
• Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings
• The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert McFarland
• The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
• The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
• Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
• The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

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 spends a while chatting with Hugo Award winner Sarah Gailey about reading, writing, and getting through these strange times; the attractions of reading immersive texts (whether fiction or non-fiction); rediscovering The Hunger Games, reading the prequel, and her Medium article "Everything is The Hunger Games now"; her fabulous story from The Book of Dragons; writing YA and her upcoming novels, and more!

You can listen to an excerpt from Sarah's story, "We Don’t Talk About the Dragon", 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:

• Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
• When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey
• The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
• Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
• Camp by Lev A.C. Rosen
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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, Tiptree, and Shirley Jackson Award winner Maureen McHugh joins Gary to talk about online teaching during the lockdown, the benefits of Zoom work sessions with fellow writers, the reissue of her classic novel China Mountain Zhang, researching the 13th century, and completing a draft of her first novel in almost two decades(!)

Books mentioned include:

• China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch
• A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré

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 Hugo and Nebula award winning writer, poet, and critic Amal El-Mohtar, whose novella This Is How You Lose the Time War (co-written with Max Gladstone) has been sweeping all of the awards this year, to chat about reading, working and living during the pandemic, the pleasure of reading graphic novels, and some great new books. Amal's poem "A Final Knight to Her Love and Foe", appears in The Book of Dragons.

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:

• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• Dance on Saturday by Elwin Cotman
• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
• Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans
• The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

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.

Over the past decade Daniel Abraham has become famous as half of James S.A. Corey, creators of The Expanse, but in addition to creating incredible space opera and great television, Daniel has crafted some of the best science fiction and fantasy of the past decade. Today he talks to Jonathan about reading, writing, and working during the pandemic, working for television, the work of Tim Powers and Carmen Maria Machado, and much more.

You can listen to an excerpt from Daniel's story, "Yuli", 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:

• Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey
• Last Call by Tim Powers
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
• The Plague by Albert Camus

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

Flying in the face of both good judgment and common sense, Jonathan and Gary return once again to the question of canons in science fiction and fantasy—a discussion which has widely re-emerged in recent weeks as a result of controversies over the Hugo Awards presentation at ConZealand. Are canons lists of books that people actually need to read, or are they ways of defining and celebrating your own reading communities? Are they useful at all? Are publishing programs such as the Gollancz Masterworks or the Tor Essentials trying to impose a particular idea of canon, or simply to make certain works widely available for those who might be interested? Are there multiple canons for multiple interest groups, or does each reader form their own canon? Would it even be possible to start thinking about works published since 2000 in terms of this discussion? As usual, we have strong opinions without really deciding anything much.

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.

Gary chats with A.T. Greenblatt -- this year’s short story Nebula winner for "Give the Family My Love" -- about the pleasures of escape reading even in normal times, listening to romances, mysteries, and memoirs, the graphic novels of Marjorie Liu and Neil Gaiman, the Murderbot stories of Martha Wells, and serious walking as an inspiration for fiction. 

Books mentioned include:

• Educated by Tara Westover
• Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
• Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman et al.

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.

Legendary fan, publisher, and critic Cheryl Morgan talks with Gary about some favourite new and forthcoming books; the comfort in watching classic TV and movies; watching Doom Patrol and Black Panther; Sam Jordison and Galley Beggar Press; her own fanzine Salon Futura and Wizard’s Tower Press, and being a sensitivity reader for trans characters and issues.

Books mentioned include:

• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
• Mordew by Alex Pheby
• The Green Man's Heir and The Green Man's Foe by Juliet E. McKenna 
• The Tales of Einarinn series by Juliet E. McKenna
• The Aldabreshin Compass series by Juliet E. McKenna
• untitled forthcoming collection by Aleksandar Žiljak

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-nominated biographer, Analog contributor, and novelist Alec Nevala-Lee talks with Gary about his current research for a biography of R. Buckminster Fuller, who was a good friend of Arthur C. Clarke but also once gave a lecture at a Hubbard organization in the early 1950s; Alec’s own fascination with the cultural history of the 1960s, the evolution of futures studies, and the comfort to be found in returning to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, and the metafictional “grand game” that has evolved from them. Alec’s first collection, Syndromes, is available now as an audiobook original from Recorded Books.

Books mentioned include:

• Syndromes: Science Fiction Stories by Alec Nevala-Lee
• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlen, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 by Norman Mailer
• The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer 
• The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by W.S. Baring-Gould
• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie S. Klinger

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 calls up newly minted Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, Arkady Martine, to talk about reading, writing, and working during the pandemic, how influence on writers is often quite different from what a reader might expect, the current state of space opera, her next novel, and a new novella coming late next year from Subterranean Press.

Books mentioned include:

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
• Rose House by Arkady Martine (forthcoming)
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
• The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler
• Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

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.

World Fantasy Award nominee Molly Gloss joins Gary to chat about listening to fiction on her commute to the horses, taking some solace in novels with pastoral settings (including SF), the eerie feeling of reading Sarah Pinsker's A Song for a New Day at the very beginning of the lockdown, recent reprints of her classic novels by Saga Press, her long friendship with Ursula K. Le Guin, and her award-nominated retrospective collection Unforeseen.

Books mentioned include:

• Unforeseen: Stories by Molly Gloss
• The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
• Wild Life by Molly Gloss
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
• A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
• The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Horseman by Tim Pears
• This is Happiness by Niall Williams

Ten minutes with... is a regular series of short podcasts 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.

Gary kicks of the second series of Ten Minutes with by spending a few minutes with Hugo and Nebula-nominated K.M. Szpara discussing the appeal of audiobooks, young-adult mysteries and horror stories (and their value in learning about plotting), what it’s like to launch a novel at the very beginning of the lockdown, and his own forthcoming work.

Books mentioned include:

• Docile by K.M. Szpara
• First, Become Ashes by K.M. Szpara (forthcoming April 2021)
• Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
• The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
• The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
• In the Hall with a Knife: A Clue Mystery by Diana Peterfreund
• Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
• Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas

Well, without really planning it, we had a bit of a hiatus. It seems like recording over a hundred episodes in a row left us - or at least Jonathan - with the need for a little break, but we're back! We think.

With the Virtual ConZealand not quite over, Gary and Jonathan sit down to talk awards, congratulate the award-winners, talk about inclusiveness and the need for a fresher take on the genre, thank the ConZealand team and shout out to coming conventions, and more. Oh, and thank the World Fantasy Awards for a very unexpected nomination! Thank you!

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. We should be back soon with more!

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 spends ten minutes or so chatting with Sarah Monette about living and writing during the pandemic, her alter ego Katherine Addison, the comforts of immersive reading and true crime, and the recurring attraction of the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the world of his famous detective.

Books mentioned include:

• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
• The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (forthcoming)
• The Anatomy Murders by Lisa Rosner
• Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People by Tim Reiterman
• The Baby Farmers: A Chilling Tale of Missing Babies, Shameful Secrets and Murder in 19th Century Australia by Annie Cossins

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 spends ten minutes or so calling up Orange Country, California to talk to World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winner James P. Blaylock about reading and writing during these strange times, the allure of crime novels, what's up with Langdon St Ives, his new novel-in-progress, and a lot more.

Books mentioned include:

• The Gobblin' Society by James P. Blaylock
• River's Edge by James P. Blaylock
• Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
• Freddy's Book by John Gardner
• Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
• The Easy Rawlins Novels by Walter Mosely
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• City of Fallen Angels by Paul Buchanan

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.

With the Ten Minutes with... series complete as a daily thing, Jonathan fires up the computer and calls Hugo and Shirley Jackson award winner Peter Watts to discuss how this apocalypse is only a tiny taste of the real thing, how he's coping with working and reading right now, Jevon's Paradox, the value of depressive realism, and a lot more.

Books mentioned include:

• Peter Watts is an Angry, Sentient Tumor by Peter Watts
• "Incorruptible" by Peter Watts 
• Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder
• Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett

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 England’s finest novelists, M. John Harrison, talks with Gary about the paradoxical insights of the poet Charles Simic, the essays of Olivia Laing, the early John le Carré novels, and his own new novel and forthcoming story collection.

Books mentioned include:

• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
• Settling the World: Selected Stories 1969-2019 by M. John Harrison
• Things That Never Happen by M. John Harrison
• The Monster Loves his Labyrinth: Notebooks by Charles Simic
• Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing
• The Early George Smiley novels by John le Carré