The Coode Street Podcast

This week we were joined in the Waldorf Room by Campell Award winning author Kathleen Ann Goonan, where we discussed the future of science fiction, teaching SF, nanotechnology, women writing hard science fiction,  her new collection Angels and You Dogs, the Nanotech Quartet, and her most recent novel, This Shared Dream.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

During Episode 115 of the Podcast we discussed Paul Kincaid's review essay, "The Widening Gyre" (originally published by the LA Review of Books). In the essay, while reviewing three 'best of the year' anthologies, Paul asked whether science fiction was suffering from exhaustion and, more importantly perhaps, whether writers had lost confidence that the future was comprehensible and therefore storyable. Our original conversation didn't cover the subject well, so we invited Paul to join us in the Gershwin Room to discuss the essay and the issues surrounding it.  Our thanks to Paul for being such a generous guest and, as always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

We are back after an unexpected break over the WorldCon weekend. We intended to have a podcast for you, and to record many, many exciting interviews. Instead, life took over and we did something else. However, we were back in the Gershwin Room this weekend to discuss the Hugo Awards, Paul Kincaid's LA Times article on the exhaustion of science fiction, and steampunk, through the lens of two very fine stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan ("Goggles (c.1910)" from Steampunk 3) and Nick Mamatas ("Arbeitschraft" from The Mammoth Book of Steampunk). As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

This week Gary and I have a quick sixty-six minute chat about Fourth Generation SF, some of my anthologies, WorldCon, the SF Awards Database, and so on. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

This week award-winning authors and celebrated anthologists James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel join Gary and I to discuss their upcoming anthology Digital Rapture, their anthology work generally, and whether science fiction has a mission! As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

And this week the wonderful Genevieve Valentine joins us in the Waldorf Room to discuss Readercon and harrassment at conventions, steampunk, dystopias and After and the recently released World Fantasy Awards ballot.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Once again Gary and Jonathan ascend to the Waldorf Room high above the Coode St Motel Six, to find there's not all that much happening in SF right now (where IS that World Fantasy Awards ballot?), and so they discuss books to give to people who are interesting in reading SF for the first time and a possible Coode St Award.

After a final July hiatus we're back! This weekend Gary and I headed to the Waldorf Room to discuss thoughts on Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 and SF set within our Solar System, World Fantasy Award Lifetime Achievement recipients Alan Garner and George R.R. Martin, and recent issues at Readercon. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

After a short break, we're back! Gary travelled to Massachusetts to attend Readercon 23 and managed to persuade convention guests of honor Caitlin R. Kiernan and Peter Straub to join us to discussCaitlin's most recent novel The Drowning Girl,  writing, Readercon and much, much more. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

At the risk of repeating ourselves, we invited new Perth resident and fabulous writer Amelia Beamer, our very first guest, to join us to chat about taking time away from the field, reading science fiction and much else of tinterest. As always we hope you enjoy the podcast!

After much re-scheduling, this weekend authors, editors, and Small Beer supremos Gavin Grant and Kelly Link join Gary and I  in the Waldorf Room to discuss publishing, science fiction and, well, stuff. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

With the Locus Awards weekend in full swing in Seattle, Kij Johnson joined Gary in the official Coode St Suite and Jonathan in his office at home via the magic of Skype to discuss her amazing new Small Beer short story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, transgressive fiction, gender, life and other stuff. The conversation was intriguing and engaging, and one we intend to revisit in coming weeks. A small warning: the Gods of Skype were not on our side and there are some audio difficulties with the recording, though things do improve. Our apologies for the problems, but we feel the conversation was interesting enough to justify releasing as is. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Episode 105, in which Jonathan joins Gary in achieving ConventionFail by failing to record a single podcast at Continuum 8 (the Australian National Science Fiction Convention), but instead gets to discuss the convention, the Writer & the Critic podcast, the Tiptree awards and Jonathan possibly having said too much elsewhere, and the recent death of Ray Bradbury.  All in all, an episode we hope you enjoy. We will be back this weekend with #106, where we hope to have Kij Johnson join us as a guest.

This is a small test to see if the mobile gear is working. Our apologies for tsking up your bandwidth with this hopefully tiny file, but with a little luck it will confirm that everything is working and some podcasting can happen this weekend from Continuum 8.

And with the Waldorf Room closed, Gary and I retired to the wine bar high atop the Coode Street Motel 6 to chat about stuff. These notes might be more clear, were I not rushing for a plane, but I can guarantee it contains waffling and is definitely 100% Coode!

The Coode Street Productions Multinational World Domination Unit sent Gary to Madison, Wisconsin with the idea that, perhaps, we might do a Wiscon-related podcast. Time and circumstance meant that instead we spent far too long discussing the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. What is it they say: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men. . Gang aft agley". Still, as always we hope you enjoy the podcast. We'll try to sneak another episode in before I, Jonathan, head East and into the rising damp of Melbourne and Natcon!

With the sun slowly setting over the Coode Street Motel 6, Gary and I headed for the Waldorf Room to record episode 102 of the podcast. For the first time in two years we had show notes, we had plans, and we had news: surely nothing could go wrong!  Surely! We had much to discuss: the Nebula Awards winners, which had just been announced; feedback from Cheryl Morgan on Episode 101 and whether women write rigorous SF; gender and whether the gender of the author affects how we perceive the genre of their work; and more! Really. For those seeking show notes, we did discuss all of the above, along with mention of the Tiptree Centenary (time to start planning!), Gary's upcoming attendance at Wiscon and Readercon, and other stuff. However, this is the Coode St Podcast. It soon became clear Gary had not *read* the show notes, that we couldn't fit in everything we'd planned and...well, we did the best we could. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Next week, Wiscon!

From high atop the Coode Street Motel Six, deep in the Waldorf Room,  Gary and I fired up the podcasting equipment to bring you episode 101 where, finally, we come to an appreciation of which convention we correspond to, while discussing the recently released Campbell Memorial Award ballot, the SF Hall of Fame, and other things.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

It's our 100th episode and our 2nd Anniversary! Bereft of even so much as a good champagne-cork-popping sound effect we discuss the podcast, the recently announced Locus Awards ballot, consensus in science fiction and who is the new Dean of Science Fiction, and touch on what we've been reading lately. We had all sorts of grandiose plans for the 100th episode, but in the end it's just the two of us, rambling. We do want to thank all of our listeners, guests, commentators and friends - anyone who's said anything nice about the podcast at all - for your enthusiasm and support. That's what will get us through the next 100 episodes!

On the cusp of our 100th episode Gary and I fire up Skype to talk about year's bests, awards, genre and other stuff. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!