The Coode Street Podcast

This week saw the release of Nebula Award winning author Aliette de Bodard’s  powerful and engaging fourth novel, The House of Shattered Wings.  Aliette was in Spokane, Washington for Sasquan: the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention when she made to time to sit down and discuss the novel; using the real world in world buildin; urban fantasy; combining work, family and writing; and much more with Gary and Jonathan. “Paris has survived the Great Houses War – just. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens continue to live, love, fight and survive in their war-torn city, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over the once grand capital. House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls. Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation. They may be the architects of its last, irreversible fall…” As always, we would like to thank Aliette for making time to appear on the podcast. We hope you enjoy the episode!

In a recent interview with Locus, Hugo and Campbell Award-winning author Ian McDonald discussed his new hard SF novel, Luna: First Moon: ‘My next books are Luna parts one and two, a duology set on a moon base – Game of Domes. In the Luna books, I’m still writing about developing economies, it’s just that this one happens to be on the moon, about 2089. It was basically Gary K. Wolfe who was responsible for it. On an ancient Coode Street podcast about invigorating stale subgenres in science fiction, he said he’d love to see a new take on the moonbase story. I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved moon stories. John Varley did one, Steel Beach. I thought about it, and Enid, my partner, was watching TV, the new version of Dallas. It wasn’t very good, but the old version was great. My book is Dallas on the moon, so it’s got five big industrial family corps on the moon, called the five dragons, and it’s about their intrigues and battles.” Given Coode Street’s part in the history of Luna (see episode 72), we decided to invite Ian, a long-time friend of the podcast, back to discuss the new novel, his writing, and much more. As always, we’d like to thank Ian for making the time to be part of the podcast, and hope you enjoy the episode. More next week!

This week we are joined by reviewer, critic, podcaster and one half of the Ladybusiness team, Renay, and British Science Fiction Award winning author of The Race, Nina Allan, to discuss the implications of Renay’s recent essay on Strange Horizons, ‘Communities: Weight of History’. In an engaging discussing we touch on what it is that makes a science fiction fan, what a fan needs to know about SF, whether there is a ‘science fiction canon’, how much of you actually need to be familiar with, whether there is cultural pressure to read stories by men, and if women are being made invisible and written out of SF history. Oh, and probably some stuff we’ve left out.  We are very grateful to both Nina and Renay for making time to be part of the podcast and, as always, we hope you enjoy the episode. More next week!

This week we welcome very special guest Michael Swanwick, discussing his new 'Darger and Surplus' novel Chasing the Phoenix, the origins of the Darger and Surplus stories, his long-ago discussions with Fritz Leiber about whether the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories were actually horror stories, collaborating with Eilieen Gunn, William Gibson, and others, and what it was like to  work with legendary editors Terry Carr and Gardner Dozois, plus other random-but-related topics. As always, our thanks to Michael for making the time to be on the podcast and to you for taking the time to listen to it!

As time slowly runs out to vote for the most controversial Hugo Awards in recent times, our intrepid commentators sit down to discuss the joy of attending a great convention like Archipelacon, some minor issues surrounding Sad Puppydom, discussion of Stories for Chip, tribute anthologies and much more.  Pig entrails are mentioned, so you have been warned.  As always we hope you enjoy the podcast. Next week, while Jonathan is travelling, we expect Michael Swanwick on the podcast to discuss his latest novel.

This week we have a very special episode of the Coode Street Podcast indeed. During his recent appearance as Guest of Honor at Readercon 26 in Burlington, Massachusetts, Gary Wolfe sat down for a wide-ranging informal conversation with SF Hall of Fame inductee and SFWA Grand Master Samuel R. Delany to discuss his work, a recent collection of his early novels, and much, much more. Jonathan was supposed to be part of the podcast, but due to calendar-keeping skills that could at best be described as rudimentary, missed the recording. Nonetheless, we hope you'll enjoy the episode. We would like to thank Chip for making time to be part of the Coode Street Podcast. It's greatly appreciated.

Over the weekend of June 25-28 Gary travelled to distant and beautiful Mariehamn in the land of the midnight sun where he was to appear as a guest of honor at Archipelacon: The Nordic SF & Fantasy Convention. In amongst time spent appearing on panels, making speeches and marveling that the sun was still up as midnight approached, Gary took time to sit down with fellow Archipelacon guest Karin Tidbeck and long-time friend of the podcast Cheryl Morgan to discuss Karin’s writing, Finnish and Swedish SF, some recommended new translations, and much more. As always, our sincere thanks to Karin and Cheryl for taking the time to be part of Coode Street. We hope you enjoy the episode. Next week: Readercon goodness!

This week, with Gary returned from Archipelacon in Finland, we touch once again upon the problems of translation, the Finnish Weird, the international SF community, and such timely matters as the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the announcement of World Fantasy Life Achievement winners Ramsey Campbell and Sheri S. Tepper, new critical books in the series from University of Illinois, and even some odd ideas about short books or essays we’d like to see on the model of the 33 1/3 series, as well as the usual random rambles. Next time we'll be back with a special episode recorded at Archipelacon featuring Karin Tidbeck and Cheryl Morgan.  As always, we hope you enjoy this week's show!

This week we are joined by Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss generation starships, how we might live in space, how space opera is becoming a subset of fantasy and his exciting new novel Aurora (due July 7). We are delighted to be able to present what is one of the first major discussions about this extraordinary new novel, which we think will prove to be one of the standout SF novels of 2015. As always, we'd like to thank Stan for making the time to talk to us, and hope you enjoy the podcast.

After a brief, unplanned hiatus due to scheduling and personal issues (meaning that Gary got more involved in the Nebula weekend than he intended to), we return with a discussion that ranges from the Nebula nominees and winners this year, the encouraging sense of the health of the field during the Nebula weekend, the question of whether middle volumes in trilogies are always worth reading, the question of world-building by accretion through a series of stories (as in Fritz Leiber or Robert E. Howard) versus worldbuilding as a pre-writing activity, the question of how to achieves a balance between science fiction and fantasy in anthologies (or if it makes a difference at all), and various other topics that will delight listeners who enjoy our usual rambling, and hopefully not too seriously frustrate others. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Next week: Kim Stanley Robinson on Aurora.