The Coode Street Podcast

This week we’re joined by the fabulous Nnedi Okorafor, whose Akata Warrior (sequel to Akata Witch) will be published next week, and whose Binti: The Night Masquerade (concluding her award-winning Binti trilogy of novellas) is due in January. We discuss not only these books, but the ongoing excitement about the possible TV adaptation of Who Fears Death?, the forthcoming novel Remote Control, the growing awareness of African and Naijamerican SF and fantasy, her work in comics and graphic novels, her Star Wars short story, and the problems of juggling academic work with writing. Nnedi is one of the busiest writers in the field these days, and her insights, as always, are fascinating.

This week, we are joined by distinguished critics Niall Harrison, late of Strange Horizons, and Liz Bourke, whose latest collection of reviews and essays is Sleeping With Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Aqueduct), to discuss the debut novels of 2017 that we’re all excited or curious about. Here are some of the titles that come up in the discussion: Annalee Newitz, Autonomous Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter Karin Tidbeck, Amatka Robyn Bennis, The Guns Above Lara Elena Donnelly, Amberlough Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide Cat Sparks, Lotus Blue Nicky Drayden, The Prey of Gods Marek Sindelka, Aberrant Prayaag Akbar, Leila Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts Megan Hunter, The End We Start From Mohsin Hamid, Exit West Christopher Brown, Tropic of Kansas Sam Miller, The Art of Starving N.J. Campbell, Found Audio There's a long list of debuts with links to reviews and ordering here.  Here are specific recommendations and shout-outs from Liz and Niall: Liz Bourke The Guns Above, Robyn Bennis (Tor) Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor) The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden (HarperVoyager) Winter Tide, Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com) The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss (Saga) Lotus Blue, Cat Sparks (Talos) Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw (Orbit US) Gods & Monsters: Food of the Gods, Cassandra Khaw (Rebellion/Abaddon US) The Tiger’s Daughter, K Arsenault Rivera (Tor) Barbary Station, R. E. Stearns (Saga) Autonomous, Annalee Newitz (Tor) Niall Harrison Books that I have read and recommend: Leila by Prayaag Akbar (Simon & Schuster India) Spaceman of Bohemia, Jaroslav Kalfar (Sceptre) Aberrant, Marek Šindelka (Twisted Spoon Press) Amatka, Karin Tidbeck (Vintage) Books that I am particularly keen to read that other people did not mention (i.e. excluding Goss, Newitz, Brown): An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (Akashic Books) American War, Omar Al Akkad (Picador) An Excess Male,  Maggie Shen King (Harper Voyager) A first fantastic novel rather than first novel, but excellent: Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (Penguin) Not a novel at all, but a notable debut: Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press) As always, our thanks to Liz and Niall.   

Annalee Newitz, who writes on the cultural impact of science and technology for Ars Technica and who founded and edited io9.com, delivers her debut novel Autonomous this month. Annalee joined Gary and Jonathan in Helsinki, Finland where they were all attending WorldCon 75, to discuss Autonomous, science fiction, and the power of being able to tell stories about how science influences the world. As always,Gary and Jonathan would like to thank Annalee for joining us, and hope you enjoy the podcast.

This week Gary and Jonathan are joined by long-time friend of the podcast, Jeffrey Ford. Jeff is the winner of the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards and has published eight novels, six short story collections and more than 130 short stories. His most recent book is Shirley Jackon Award winner A Natural History of Hell. Just out is new short novel, The Twilight Pariah. He joins us to discuss his writing, genre and his first new novel in ten years, Ahab's Return, or The Last Voyage. As always we'd like to thank Jeff for making the time to join us. We'd also like to apologise, this time out, for some technical issues which affect the sound quality of this episode, especially in the first half. We think it's worth persevering with, though.  Next week: Annalee Newitz discusses Autonomous.

After a long and mostly unplanned hiatus, we're back! We travelled to Helsinki, Finland to attend WorldCon75, and then spent time travelling and not thinking about podcasting very much at all. Still, all holidays must come to an end, and so we headed back up to the Gershwin Room one more time to discuss WorldCon, the Hugo Awards, and the merits of developing a list of books for a Fantasy 101 type course (inspired by a question from Theodora Goss). As you can imagine, we talk, we disagree, there's rambling and Coode St is pretty much as it always is. We hope you enjoy the episode. See you next week!

And now for something special! During the recent WorldCon, held in Helsinki, Finland, Gary and Jonathan took to the stage to talk to WorldCon guest of honor Walter Jon Williams and Campbell Award nominee Kelly Robson to discuss Walter's career and his new novel, Quillifer. During recording we were fortunate enough to be able to give away copies of Quillifer to lucky convention attendees thanks to the generosity of Saga Press. We were a little limited by time (panels lasted exactly 45 minutes in Helsinki) but the conversation flowed and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Our special thanks to Walter Jon, to Kelly, and to the tech team at WorldCon 75 for making this possible. 

We were away! We came back! We missed you! After an unexpected four week hiatus, and with another four week hiatus coming up, Gary and Jonathan took some time to catch up with one another, discuss what they'd both been reading lately, consider the XPrize fiction projection Seat 14C, and have a chat about the best books of the year they've read so far. A lot for a chat a little under an hour, but rambling will get them there. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. We will be back next week with more!

Gary and Jonathan are back with a rambling conversation that touches on epic fantasy and its relationship to privilege, the recently announced Campbell Award ballot, Gary's theory on perspective, recent books they've read and more. They also discuss hiatuses, missed episodes and how to subscribe to the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!   Subscribe If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, use this link for iTunes.

Any time the Coode Street Podcast connects with the United Kingdom it's a special occasion. Jonathan stays up until the dead of night (often with a whisky in hand), while Gary is driven out of bed and into the arms of coffee. This week, in the face of puzzling technical difficulties, Jonathan and Gary are joined on the podcast by noted critic Paul Kincaid and award-winning writer Ken Macleod to discuss Paul's new book on the work of Iain Banks, science fiction, writing in Scotland, and much more. The aforementioned technical difficulties do mean there's echo on the line from Scotland, for which we apologise. We've tried to minimise it as much as possible, and think the conversation is worth persevering with, but are sorry the overall quality isn't a bit better. We hope you'll enjoy the episode and, as always, we should be back next week.

This week we talk with the multi-talented Theodora Goss, whose forthcoming novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, draws not only from her own doctoral research in late Victorian Gothic fiction, but from her earlier story "The Mad Scientist’s Daughter." By focusing on a group of women characters drawn from classic tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley—and bearing the familiar names of Jekyll, Hyde, Moreau, Rappaccini, and Frankenstein—Goss gives a voice to the largely invisible figures from classic works of terror. We also touch upon her recent story, “Come See the Living Dryad”—is it fantasy or not?-- as well as the reasons behind the appeal of monsters and the monstrous, and the delights of playing with genre. As always, we'd like thank Dora for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode. Note: We experienced some technical difficulties with this episode. There were issues with the audio (Dora drops out occasionally). We think the episode is interesting enough to release, but do apologise for the problems and hope you'll persevere.