The Coode Street Podcast

With many thanks to young Sophie for joining us last week, Gary and I fired up our microphones and chatted about a veritable miscellany of SFnal stuff, including audiobooks, recommended reading, and such.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. If all goes to plan, we'll be back next week with Paul Cornell. NB: My apologies for a technical hitch about an hour into the recording.  You'll know it when you get to it.

This week Gary and I decided to vary things a little, inviting my ten-year-old daughter Sophie to join us to discuss a younger reader's view on story, character and such. It makes for a very different Coode Street podcast, but we hope you'll enjoy it, as always. Normal programming will resume next week!

Things are still a little wobbly because jetlag and such, but Gary and I fired up Skype this morning and spent some time talking about the ways information gets used online, the SF Encyclopedia, when it's a good time to do a "Best of" collection and I spent a little time raving about Patrick Ness's  A Monster Calls.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Having spent the past three weeks traveling (where his microphone disappeared in-transit), a heavily jetlagged Jonathan contacted Gary in Chicago to discuss the San Diego World Fantasy Convention, traveling, Amazon.com, and a number of other things.  Our apologies if Jonathan's heavily jetlagged state led to a more garbled than usual discussion. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast, and will see you next week!

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention held in Reno, Nevada we sat down with Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss his new novel 2312.

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention held in Reno, Nevada we sat down with Alastair Reynolds to discuss his new novel Blue Remembered Earth and other things. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention held in Reno, Nevada we sat down with Ian McDonald to discuss his new novel, Planesrunner.

This week saw the publication of Margaret Atwood's new book of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, which discusses her thoughts on science fiction in some detail.  We invited Ursula K. Le Guin to join us on the podcast to discuss Atwood, science fiction and her new book.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Note: As mentioned at the end of the podcast, this will be the last newly recorded episode until mid-November. The next three episodes will be interviews with Alastair Reynolds, Ian McDonald, and Kim Stanley Robinson recorded in Reno at WorldCon.

After a lot of discussion about buzz and best of the year matters, Gary and I wrench our attention away from such matters and move on to discuss the one true mission of science fiction, the matter of small presses in SF  (a little), and the new new new new new space opera.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

As a continuation of our discussion on finding the best books of the year and understanding how buzz is generated, this week Gary and I turned to our reader's comments (both here and over at my blog) about buzz;  the New Wave and women in SF, and much more.  We also repeat our call for reader's to tell us about their best books of the year, which we hope to continue to discuss in coming months.  Listener Tansy Rayner Roberts has posted her terrific 'Best of the Year so far' list, and we'd like to see yours!