

The Coode Street Podcast
Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
Discussion and digression on science fiction and fantasy with Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 8, 2020 • 17min
Episode 509: Ten Minutes with Lev Grossman (redux)
A reissue, with apologies.

Sep 7, 2020 • 17min
Episode 509: Ten Minutes with Lev Grossman
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

Sep 6, 2020 • 16min
Episode 508: Ten Minutes with Terri Windling
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

Sep 5, 2020 • 18min
Episode 507: Ten Minutes with Sheree Renée Thomas
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.

Sep 4, 2020 • 15min
Episode 506: Ten Minutes with CSE Cooney
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

Sep 3, 2020 • 13min
Episode 505: Ten Minutes with Mimi Mondal
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.

Sep 2, 2020 • 15min
Episode 504: Ten Minutes with Veronica Schanoes
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

Sep 1, 2020 • 15min
Episode 503: Ten Minutes with Suzy McKee Charnas
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

Aug 31, 2020 • 13min
Episode 502: Ten Minutes with Tim Pratt
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

Aug 30, 2020 • 20min
Episode 501: Ten Minutes with Chen Qiufan
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