The Coode Street Podcast

This weekend Silvia Moreno-Garcia joins us to talk about her debut fantasy novel, Signal to Noise.    Described in an upcoming issue of Locus as “one of the most important fantasy debuts of the year”, it’s an engaging and compelling story of a woman returning to her family home in Mexico for her father’s funeral, and of a time in her teens when she discovered that the right music played just the right way could change the world.    It may be that we grew up at the right time, it may be that Meche’s past overlapped mine in just the right way, but we loved this gentle, moving book quite a bit. If you have any interest in fantasy and music, then we think Signal to Noise is for you. It’s the best genre book about music that Jonathan has read since Lewis Shiner’s Glimpses.    The publisher describes the book like this: A literary fantasy about love, music and sorcery, set against the background of Mexico City. Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends -- Sebastian and Daniela -- and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. With help from this newfound magic, the three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love... Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral. It’s hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, and it revives memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? And, is there any magic left? Silvia was a terrific guest and the conversation we recorded talks about the book in an interesting way that really complements reading the book. Consider picking up a copy of Silvia’s book. It’s Coode Street Recommended.

This week Deborah Biancotti, Margo Lanagan, and Scott Westerfeld join Gary and Jonathan in the Gershwin Room (aka Skype) to discuss their exciting new book project, Zeroes. Our discussion ranges from collaborating, and all of the ins and outs of collaboration, to superheroes and the origins of the new series.  Zeroes will be released in September. As always, we would like to thank Deborah, Margo, and Scott for joining us, and hope you enjoy the episode. Next week: Silvia Moreno-Garcia, strong female characters and Signal to Noise.

This week we welcome the remarkable Kelly Link, celebrating her new collection Get In Trouble, her recent anthology with Gavin Grant , her career in general, and what’s coming up from Small Beer Press.  We talk about the differences (if there are any) between adult and YA fiction, genre and mainstream, the possibility of a new novel, and what we did or didn’t read in school.  In addition to discussing Kelly’s own fiction and her rapidly growing reputation between Stranger Things Happen and Get in Trouble, we touch upon other books and authors from T.H. White’s The Once and Future Kingto Peter Straub’s “Hunger: An Introduction,” from Ray Bradbury to Shirley Jackson.  And Kelly, who loves ghost stories, raises the very good question of why we return to the same stories again and again, even long after we know what’s going to happen.  Listen, and see if any of us come up with a good answer for that.

As the Aurealis Awards reach their twentieth anniversary, Jonathan sits down with Aurealis Awards judging co-ordinator Tehani Wessely, publisher Alisa Krasnostein, and critic Sean Wright to discuss the Aurealis Awards, their history and the recently released 2014 Aurealis Awards shortlist. This is the first time two episodes of Coode Street have been recorded and released on the same day! Our thanks to Alisa, Tehani and Sean for making the time to be available to record the podcast. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

We are always on the look-out for new and exciting books to read, and always want to know what we should keep an eye out for.  For years we've relied on Locus's quarterly Forthcoming Books issues as a guide on what to look for. One of the very earliest ideas for the Coode Street Podcast was that each month we'd sit down and discuss the newest issue of Locus. That didn't happen, but hopefully this is the start of a new series where, once every three months, we sit down with Locus Editor-in-Chief Liza Trombi to discuss what's new and exciting, and what we all should be looking for in the month's ahead. Our thanks to Liza for making time to record the podcast. The March issue of Locus will be on sale shortly.  We hope to get a list of titles from the episode up here soon. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. More next week.

Is there a difference to writing for younger readers? Do they want or need different kinds of stories? Do they have different expectations from older readers? How do you structure a series? What makes for a rewarding reading experience and how do genre expectations relate to that?  With new young adult novels published recently, Joe Abercrombie (whose Half the World, second volume in the Shattered Sea series, is just out) and Sean Williams (whose second Twinmaker novel, Crash, came out late last year) sit down with Jonathan to discuss this and more during a fascinating conversation recorded during the Perth Writer's Festival. As always, our thanks to Joe and Sean, and we hope you enjoy the podcast. More next week!

Welcome to The Coode Street Podcast, an informal weekly discussion about science fiction and fantasy featuring award-winning critics and editors Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe.  The Coode Street Podcast debuted in 2010 and has been nominated for the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Aurealis awards. This week Jonathan and Gary talk to old friend  Chris Brown,  and very special guest  William Gibson , in a discussion that ranges from William’s recent novel The Peripheral to the influences of writers as diverse as Mervyn Peake, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, and Avram Davidson and the question of what it means to write in and out of genre. We hope you find it as interesting as we all did recording it.  Coode Street, Episode 220 (1hr 17mins) The Coode Street Podcast is published by The Coode Street Press and Gary K. Wolfe, and is syndicated by Tor.com.

Jonathan returns and our heroes spend some time discussing the history and nature of short story collections in science fiction and fantasy. Warning: Contains some facts and a lot of wild speculation. Next week: William Gibson!

This week, in honor of the new Subterranean Press volume The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison, we are joined by Harlan himself, along with Subterranean publisher William Schafer. Although Jonathan wasn’t able to join us on this one, we get into some fascinating stories about Thomas Pynchon, Octavia Butler, Harlan’s famous house (including the “grotto”), the role of small-press publishers in the history of the field, and what it all looks like from the perspective of a legendary writer in his 81st year. Note: There's a break at the 42min mark when Gary's cat stepped on his laptop and paused the recording. A few minutes were missed, but conversation continued!!

This week we welcome James Morrow, one of SF’s premier satirists, whose new novel Galapagos Regained is just out, taking on Darwinism, Victorian religious attitudes, the Book of Mormon, and Morrow’s frequent themes of rationalism vs. received belief.  We also touch upon the role of a religious satirist, the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, old SF movies and TV programs, Morrow’s recent novellas Shambling Towards Hiroshima and The Madonna and the Starship, and his forthcoming collection Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow from Wesleyan University Press.