The Coode Street Podcast

For Day 13 of the Advent Calendar, Gary chats with Theodora Goss all the way from Budapest. They talk about re-reading Patricia McKillip, other favorite reading, and Dora’s excellent recent story collection Letters from an Imaginary Country, as well as her Athena Club novels and what it's like to write fantasies drawing from and commenting on other classic fantasies. As always, our thanks to Dora for making time to chat with us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

For this episode, Gary chats with the very busy and very talented Nnedi Okorafor, who has had quite a year with the publication of major new novel Death of the Author; One Way Witch, the second novella in her She Who Knows trilogy; Space Cat, a children’s book starring her own cat Periwinkle; and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025, which she co-edited with John Joseph Adams. We chat about what she’s been reading, her fondness for Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman, and what’s up for next year, including the final volume of that trilogy, set in the world of her World Fantasy winning Who Fears Death.

For Day 11 of our Advent Calendar, Jonathan calls up long-time friend of the podcast, acclaimed writer James Bradley, to discuss what he's been reading lately, his fabulous new novel Landfall, whether he revisits any favourite books or movies at this time of the year, and what he's been working on. As always, our thanks to James for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

As we approach the halfway mark of our Advent Calendar, Jonathan calls Emily Tesh, Hugo Award winning author of Some Desperate Glory and co-host of reigning Hugo Best Fancast Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, to discuss the podcast she hosts with Rebecca Fraimow, her year in reading, her wonderful novel The Incandescent, and what she's working on now.

For Day 9 of the 2025 Advent Calendar, Jonathan and Gary called Paul McAuley to discuss the books he's been reading and would recommend, holiday traditions, what he's had out recently, and his exciting new novel, Loss Protocol, which is due out in February. As always, our thanks to Paul for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

With our provider struggling a little following the various Cloudflare issues of late, Gary and Jonathan call up Nebula and BSFA Award winner Isabel J. Kim to talk about what she's been reading, her holiday favourites, what she had out in the past year, and the upcoming publication of her debut novel Sublimation next year. As always, our thinks to Isabel for making time to talk to us today. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Today Jonathan sits down with British SF Award winner and Arthur C. Clarke Award, BFA, and Tiptree Award nominee Aliya Whiteley to talk about what she's been reading and would recommend as the holidays get underway, as well as her recent collaboration with Oliver K Langmead, and her upcoming novel The Misheard World. As always, our thanks to Aliya for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Day 6 of the 2025 Coode Street Advent Calendar sees Gary and Jonathan taking a moment to catch up Hugo and Nebula Award winner Nancy Kress about what she's been reading, her most recent short story collection, and the new fantasy novel she has coming in 2026. As always, our thanks to Nancy for making time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

As we move towards the end of the first week of our 2025 Advent Calendar, Gary and Jonathan take a moment to sit down with Adrian Tchaikovsky to talk about what he's been working on, what he has coming out, and what holiday recommendations he might have. Adrian is the author of the brilliant Tyrant Philosophers series, which has been a highlight of the past couple of years, among many other wonderful books,  and now co-hosts the Starship Alexandria podcast with Emma Newman.  As always, our thanks to Adrian for making time to talk to us! We hope you enjoy the episode.

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’ve got coming out in the year ahead. It’s a Coode Street Advent Calendar if that’s your thing, or just a run-up to December 24 for book lovers. Today’s guest is Martha Wells, whose new novel Queen Demon came out in October. The next Murderbot novel, Platform Decay, is due in May, and season 2 of Murderbot is due in 2027.

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’ve got coming out in the year ahead. It’s a Coode Street Advent Calendar if that’s your thing, or just a run-up to December 24 for book lovers. Today’s guest is China Mieville. We chatted with China recently about Perdido Street Station, and today we get a chance to talk about what he's got coming up.

In amongst the hurly burly of the end of the year and putting together the Coode Street Advent Calendar, Gary and Jonathan found time to sit down with long-time friend of the podcast (and most frequent guest!) Kij Johnson.  We last spoke when Kij's most recent short story collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending was published. Since then, Kij has been busy working on writing and developing role playing games, most notably the adaption of her fabulous novel The River Bank, which is out now in a gorgeous edition from Kobold Press with stunning art from Kathleen Jennings. In addition to all that, we talked about books, reading, and for a good while, the nature of farce. As always, our thanks to Kij for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode as much as we did recording it.

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’ve got coming out in the year ahead. It’s a Coode Street Advent Calendar if that’s your thing, or just a run-up to December 24 for book lovers. Today’s guest is the wonderful Arkady Martine, whose Hugo nominated novella Rose/House is coming out in a brand new edition.

The end of the year is fast approaching, we're behind on episodes and we're keen to end the year on a high note. So this year we're going back to something we did in 2022. We’ve invited 24 creators of some of this year’s best and most interesting books to join us for ten minutes or so to talk about what they’re reading now, their favourite holiday reads, what they had out this year, and what they’ve got coming out in the year ahead. It’s a Coode Street Advent Calendar if that’s your thing, or just a run-up to December 24 for book lovers. To kick off the Advent Calendar, December 1st's guest is the wonderful Nina Allan whose incredible novel A Granite Silence was released earlier this year.

The World Fantasy Convention was held in Brighton, England two weeks ago. Gary and Jonathan both attended, so we shouldn't be surprised that they were jetlagged and not making to much sense when they recorded this ramble a week ago. As always, we hope you enjoy it!

Our guest this week is the remarkable Kemi Ashing-Giwa, whose new novel The King Must Die is out in November. We talk about science fantasy—or whether genre labels mean much at all to the new generation of writers—her own influences, her well-received first novel, the space opera The Splinter in the Sky, and even her current scientific work on mass extinctions and the loss of her family home in the California wildfires earlier this year. As always, our thanks to Kemi for making time to talk to us today, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

This week we have a lively conversation with the remarkable Ken Liu, whose new thriller All That We See or Seem introduces a new protagonist, the gifted hacker Julia Z, in a tale that explores the growing role of AI, the possibility of a technology of shared dreams, a variety of near-future surveillance tech, and some pretty fearful players with even more fearful schemes. A dramatic shift from his epic fantasy/historical world of the Dandelion Dynasty series or the earlier classic short stories, it seems to represent an exciting new dimension in Ken’s career.

In a rare shorter episode, we chat about the late and much missed Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, with whom Jonathan and Gary had strangely similar encounters some years ago, and her early career as an SF writer before her decades-long success with her Saint-Germain series of vampire novels. That leads, briefly, to considering midlist vs. niche authors, before we get into some of the odd features of American copyright law as revealed by the recent Anthropic AI settlement.

With Gary recently returned from Worldcon in Seattle, we chat a bit about the Hugos (mostly avoiding second-guessing the results), which leads to some discussion of the differences between Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.  Jonathan raises an intriguing question about the novella category, with its rather reductive word-length definition of the form. But what, other than length, really distinguishes a novella from a short story or a novel? We talk a bit about favorite novellas, and specifically a 2013 Locus survey in which readers voted on the best novellas from 2000-2010. Which of those would still make the list today, and how has Tordotcom’s program of standalone novellas affected our view of the form? Of course, we ramble a bit about other matters and some interesting new and forthcoming books we’re excited about. Then, finally, we shut up.

Twenty five years ago China Mieville's second novel, Perdido Street Station, introduced the world to the fantastical city of Bas Lag. It went on to win the Arthur C Clarke and British Fantasy awards, and be nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Tiptree, and Locus awards among others. Perdido Street Station was followed by two further novels set in Bas Lag, The Scar and Iron Council and then Mieville turned his attention to other worlds. Today China joins Gary and Jonathan to chat on the podcast for the first time to look back at Perdido Street Station, how it was written and where it came from, and how he feels about it now. We also chat a little about what he's doing next.   As always, our sincere thanks to China for making the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the discussion. Note: The original cover art for Perdido Street Station (shown above) was by British artist Les Edwards (painting as Edward Miller). You can see more of his work here.