The Coode Street Podcast

The year is fast running out, but with the holiday season approaching Gary and Jonathan invited award-winning writers and critics Paul Kincaid and Adam Roberts to join them in the Gershwin Room to discuss a small sampling of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year. They also discussed some of the most interesting and important trends in science fiction during 2015. What books are recommended? Well, you'll need to listen to the episode to get the full list, but there are a good handful of familiar books and few surprises that you may want to hunt down before the year is done. As Jonathan says towards the end of the episode, whether this is the final Coode Street recorded for 2015 (we do have several others recorded for you and there may be a special second best of the year episode) or not, we would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to listen to the podcast, for the feedback you've sent in throughout the year, and for your support of Coode Street. We'd also like to thank everyone who has made time to appear on the podcast during 2015. It's been a heck of a year.

With the year coming all too quickly to a close, this week we are joined by distinguished veteran editor Jim Minz, who discusses his career from his University of Wisconsin days to working for Tor Books in Wisconsin and New York, Ballantine Del Rey, and currently Baen Books in North Carolina. We touch upon the various market segments of different subgenres of SF and fantasy, the various ways in which Baen and its market may have been misunderstood, the role of women editors in SF, and various other matters related to the SF publishing industry over the past two or three decades. As always, we'd like to thank Jim for making the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the episode!

This year isn't over yet, but we can just see the end of it over the horizon. Back in Chicago and Perth after their visit to Saratoga Springs, Gary and Jonathan sit down to deliver a classic rambling discussion of science fiction, fantasy and other stuff. They discuss the World Fantasy Awards, lifetime achievement and much more.  As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

And we're back with a new episode!  This week, from the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, we are joined by the genuinely iconic Pamela Sargent, author of many novels including The Shore of Women and editor of the legendary Women of Wonder anthology series, and Suzy McKee Charnas, author of the classic feminist SF series The Holdfast Chronicles and the equally classic The Vampire Tapestry, for a lively discussion of the changing role of women in SF since the 1970s and digress as usual into some fascinating byways and memories. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

This week, in our continuing series of discussions about the experiences of women writers in the science fiction field, we are fortunate to be joined by Eleanor Arnason and Linda Nagata.   Linda, whose Going Dark appears next week from Saga Press is the third volume in her trilogy that began with the Nebula-nominated The Red, began publishing novels twenty years ago with the nanotech series that started with The Bohr Maker, still available from Mythic Island Press.   Eleanor, winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. award for her classic novel A Woman of the Iron People, is currently completing a collection of her popular Hwarhath stories and has most recently published a collection of her Icelandic fantasies, Hidden Folk.  We touch upon the problems and opportunities presented by self-publishing, working with small presses, and whether women SF writers might more readily disappear from the collective memory of SF readers.  As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.

This week Gary and Jonathan are back in the Gershwin Room, killing time and talking about Jonathan's new anthology Meeting Infinity, which we discuss in some detail. It leads on to a conversation about our perceptions of 'the alien' and 'the other' in science fiction (and how that has changed over time), and quite a lot more in what is a classic Coode Street ramble. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. More next week!

This week Gary returns from the wilds of Virginia or Washington DC or somewhere or other on the US Eastern seaboard. We discuss his experience writing and performing a series of lectures on science fiction; the strengths and weaknesses of Ridley Scott’s The Martian; compiling Gary’s Library of America volumes, and whether or not we kid ourselves on whether a work really is canonical.  All of that and a little bit more. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. We should be back next week with a new episode, as we begin our run down to World Fantasy and the end of the year.

This week we welcome distinguished historical novelist Cecelia Holland back to the podcast to discuss her new fantasy novel Dragon Heart, her classic SF novel Floating Worlds, the relationships between SF, fantasy, and historical fiction, and historical and political themes in the work of writers like Kim Stanley Robinson and George R.R. Martin. As always, our thanks to Cecelia for making time to be on the podcast. We hope you enjoy the episode.

This week we are joined by multiple award winning writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch who discusses her long and diverse career in science fiction, as a writer,  as editor at Pulphouse then at F&SF, and her more recent experiences as a writer working in both mainstream and independent publishing. We also discuss her 'Retrieval Artist' saga, including the eight novel 'Anniversary Day' series. We spend most time, though, discussing Kris's work editing a new anthology of science fiction by women, Women of Futures Past, which will be published by Baen Books in 2016, and her new Women in Science Fiction website. As always, we'd like to thank Kris for making the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the episode!

The glory days of 2003 when I was going to review every short story that I read and publish it at The Coode Street Review of Science Fiction. Sanity prevailed, but reviews did appear.  During 2003 I reviewed Howard Waldrop's "A Better World's in Birth", Ellen Klages' "Basement Magic", and Lucius Shepard's "Liar's House". During the podcast I recommend the following books:Portable Childhoods, Ellen Klages (Tachyon) The Dragon Graiule, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean) Howard Who?, Howard Waldrop (Peapod) Things Will Never be the Same: Selected Stories, Howard Waldrop (Old Earth) More anon!