The Coode Street Podcast

Every year there are thousands of books published and any one of them could appeal to you. To help you find great new books, Locus publishes a list of forthcoming titles every three months.   And to help you navigate through that, each quarter we invite Locus  Editor-in-Chief Liza Groen Trombi to join us and discuss the books that we think might be most interesting that are due out between now and the end of 2015. This month, unfortunately, Liza was not able to join us. However, we have persevered and have some recommendations for you. Of course, we strongly recommend you pick up a copy of the June issue of Locus and see the full list, which goes through to March 2016.  As promised, here's our list: ABERCROMBIE, JOE Half a War, Ballantine Del Rey, Jul 2015 (eb, hc)  BEAR, GREG Killing Titan, Orbit US, Oct 2015 (hc) BENFORD, GREGORY The Best of Gregory Benford, Sub- terranean Press, Jul 2015 (c, eb, hc) BIANCOTTI, DEBORAH Waking in Winter, PS Publishing, Jul 2015 (na, hc) BLAYLOCK, JAMES P. Beneath London, Titan US, May 2015 (eb, tp) BRAY, LIBBA Lair of Dreams, Little, Brown, Aug 2015 (1st US, ya, eb, hc) CHO, ZEN Sorcerer to the Crown, Macmillan, Sep 2015 (eb, hc) CIXIN, LIU The Dark Forest, Tor, Jul 2015 (eb, hc)  DE BODARD, ALIETTE House of Shattered Wings, Penguin/Roc, Sep 2015 (1st US, hc) DICKINSON, SETH The Traitor Boru Cormorant, Macmillan/Tor UK, Aug 2015 (eb, hc) GORODISCHER, ANGELICA Prodigies, Small Beer Press, Aug 2015 (eb, tp)  HAND, ELIZABETH Wylding Hall, Open Road, Jul 2015  HOLLAND, CECELIA Dragon Heart, Tor, Sep 2015 (eb, hc)  HOPKINSON, NALO Falling in Love with Hominids, Tachyon Publications, Aug 2015 (c, tp) HURLEY, KAMERON Empire Ascendant, Angry Robot US, Oct 2015 (eb, tp) HUTCHISON, DAVE, Europe in Autumn, Solaris, UK/US Nov 2015  (tp) KIERNAN, CAITLÍN R. Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea, Subterranean Press, Nov 2015 (c, eb, hc) KRESS, NANCY The Best of Nancy Kress, Subterranean Press, Sep 2015 (c, eb, hc) LECKIE, ANN Ancillary Mercy, Orbit US, Oct 2015 (tp)  LIU, KEN The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Simon & Schuster/Saga Press, Nov 2015 (c, eb, hc) McDONALD, IAN Luna: New Moon, Tor, Sep 2015 (eb, hc) McDONALD, IAN The Best of Ian MacDonald, PS Publishing, Jun 2015 (c, hc)  McDONALD, IAN The Locomotives’ Graveyard, PS Publishing, Aug 2015 (na, hc)  McDONALD, IAN Mars Stories, PS Publishing, Aug 2015 (c, hc) MIÉVILLE, CHINA Three Moments of an Explosion, Ballantine Del Rey, Aug 2015 (1st US, c, eb, hc) MITCHELL, DAVID Slade House, Random House, Oct 2015 (eb, hc)  MORROW, JAMES Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow, Wesleyan University Press, Nov 2015 (c, hc) NAGATA, LINDA, The Red:Going Dark, Saga Press, Nov 2015 (hc) NIX, GARTH  To Hold the Bridge, Harper, Jun 2015 (c, ya, hc) PRATCHETT, TERRY The Shepherd’s Crown, HarperCollins, Sep 2015 (ya, hc)  REYNOLDS, ALASTAIR The Best of Alastair Reynolds, Subterranean Press, Nov 2015 (c, eb, hc) RICKERT, MARY The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece: New and Selected Stories, Small Beer Press, Aug 2015 (c, eb, tp) ROBERTS, ADAM The Thing Itself, Orion/Gollancz, Dec 2015 (tp) SCALZI, JOHN The End of All Things, Tor, Aug 2015 (eb, hc) SWANWICK, MICHAEL Chasing the Phoenix, Tor, Aug 2015 (eb, hc)  WESTERFELD, SCOTT Zeroes (with Margo Lanagan & Debo rah Biancotti), Simon Pulse, Sep 2015 (ya, hc) WOLFE, GENE A Borrowed Man, Tor, Oct 2015 (eb, hc) As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!  Correction: During the podcast Jonathan incorrectly said Linda Nagata's Going Dark was the reissue of the first book in her "The Red" sequence. It's actually the third, with The Red: First Light coming in June, The Red: The Trials in August, and series closer The Red: Going Dark in November. All are worth your attention.

This week we pay a return visit to World Fantasy Award winning author Elizabeth Hand, discussing her new short novel Wylding Hall, the British folk revival of the 1970s which provides the novel’s background, the use of multiple narrators (and the advantages of audio-books in differentiating them), and such diverse matters as the legacy of Arthur Machen, why there aren’t more fantasy novels about the arts, and what to expect next in her ongoing series of crime novels involving the troubled ex-punk photographer Cass Neary. As always, our thanks to Liz for making the time to talk to us and we hope you enjoy the podcast!

This week we sit down and discuss the World Fantasy Awards, the Life Achievement Award, and quite a lot more. Another old-fashioned ramble for the Coode Street Archives. We would mention that members of the 2013, 2014 and 2015 World Fantasy Conventions are eligible to vote for this year's World Fantasy Awards. A voting form is available, and you may vote via email.  Voting closes 31 May 2015. Support what you think is worthy. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast and will be back next week with more.

This week we are joined by the Hugo and Nebula Award winning Paolo Bacigalupi, who is just about to publish his first science fiction novel for adults since 2009s The Windup Girl.  Picking up from where his harrowing short story "The Tamarisk Hunter" left off, The Water Knife is lean thriller that asks important questions about how global warming will affect us all as seas rise in some places and drinking water becomes scarce in others. The publisher of the book describes  The Water Knife like this: In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg-breaker, assassin and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel “cuts” water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet, while the poor get nothing but dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in drought-ravaged Phoenix, Angel is sent to investigate. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with no love for Vegas and every reason to hate Angel, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas refugee who survives by her wits and street smarts in a city that despises everything that she represents.  With bodies piling up, bullets flying, and Phoenix teetering on collapse, it seems like California is making a power play to monopolize the life-giving flow of a river. For Angel, Lucy, and Maria time is running out and their only hope for survival rests in each other’s hands. But when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only thing for certain is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink. The conversation is, as always, fascinating and provocative. We're very grateful to Paolo for making the time to return to the podcast and, as always, hope you enjoy the episode.

This week we return, without guests, to a topic with which we have annoyed listeners in podcasts for years—the idea of SF canon formation: who gets dropped from the canon, who gets added, and whether such things as Hugo nominations make any difference at all. The decade between 1985 and 1995 (20-30 years ago now), saw the deaths of many of the writers who helped establish much of the "classic" SF canon — Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Herbert, Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, James Tiptree Jr, Cliffard Simak, Lester del Rey, Philip K. Dick, C.L. Moore, and more. Who among them are still being discovered by new readers, and which writers and books in the last 20 years are likely candidates for a future canon? Does it take 50 years or more to determine what is canonical? Are Hugos any sort of reliable guide? And what difference do canons make anyway, beyond collective lists of personal favorites? We also have decided, as announced in the podcast, to officially support the Helsinki in 2017 and Dublin in 2019 WorldCon bids. Coode St endorses these conventions, will be buying memberships to them, and will attend should they be successful. Both Gary and Jonathan are eager to be part of major international WorldCon events like 2014's Loncon. We hope you'll join us in supporting these great bids. We hope you enjoy this week's episode. Next week: Paolo Bacigalupi and The Water Knife!

This week James Bradley and Ian Mond join Jonathan to discuss the five novels that have made the final Hugo Awards ballot. The shortlisted novels are: Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)  The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)  The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)  The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)  Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books) We almost completely avoid issues surrounding the ballot, and instead focus on discussing the novels and what might make them interesting to read.  Our thanks to James and Ian for making time to record the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

This week’s very special episode is a conversation with the superb and formerly mysterious K.J. Parker, whose newest work The Two of Swords begins serialization this week from Orbit, and whose Savages is due later this summer from Subterranean Press.   We discuss the influence of writers as diverse as E.F. Benson, P.G. Wodehouse, Mercedes Lackey, and C.J. Cherryh, the reason there isn’t much overt magic in Parker’s worlds, the freedom offered by fantasy over straight historical fiction, the relative advantages of novellas vs. novels, where all that wonderful dialogue comes from, and—of course—who K.J. Parker really is... As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

This has been a busy year for the Coode Street Podcast, talking to interesting guests, covering a wide-range of issues, and being syndicated by our friends at Tor.com. For a bit of change, Gary and Jonathan decided to sit down together and record an old-fashioned Coode Street Podcast, just two guys rambling about science fiction. Topics covered, or touched on, included awards (of course), politics, the anniversary of SF classics, what makes a a work entertaining, and more.  All in all, a pretty typical episode of the podcast.  As always, we hope you enjoy the episode and will be back for more next week!

With Swancon 40, the 2015 Australian National Science Fiction Convention, in full swing Jonathan sat down with convention guest of honour John Scalzi and Twelfth Planet Press editor/publisher Alisa Krasnostein to discuss science fiction, community, Robert Heinlein, having just finished new novel The End of All Things and more! As always, we'd like to thank John and Alisa for appearing on the podcast. John's next novel, The End of All Things, is out for preorder and you can support the Pozible campaign for Alisa's new project Defying Doomsday here.  We hope you enjoy the episode!

This week Gary* is joined by award-winning author Ken Liu and Joe Monti, Executive Editor at Saga Press, to discuss Ken's exciting debut novel The Grace of Kings, his forthcoming collection The Paper Menagerie, and much more. As always we'd like to thank Ken and Joe for making the time to talk to us. And we hope you enjoy the podcast! The Grace of Kings is in stores next week.* Jonathan missed this episode due to illness.