Here is the first full-length Coode Street podcast. Recorded just minutes ago, Gary and I discuss what it means to work and review for Locus, SF’s attraction to the ‘new’ in new weird, new space opera and new sword and sorcery, career pressure on short story writers, as well as books by China Mieville and others. We also mention some books we’re looking forward to.
With a little luck we’ll podcast regularly (every week or two), so we hope you enjoy it. Also if there are any problems with the audio, my apologies. I’m still working this out.
Neeeeed itunes syndication. Please? Or a mp3 version would work in a pinch.
Am enjoying it very much, but most days I don’t have the luxury of listening to long things while sitting at my laptop :D Listening is for housework & driving!
Luckily it’s Saturday. Elsewhere in the house, the baby is setting off the robot vacuum cleaner and it’s not my job to stop her…
It IS syndicated on iTunes. Just search for ‘Notes to Coode Street’. I’ve also restored the download option. Glad you’re liking it. I’m thinking I’ll balance short ‘audioblog’ bits of 5 mins or so with “Live with…” podcasts of 30 mins +.
Good, thanks. Because if only on iTunes, will never be able to hear it.
Am finally getting around to listening to this … extremely interesting, and its rather reassuring to see that people I think of as “pros” as against my amateurish self feel some of the same things — particularly what you called “reviewer fatigue” wrt certain writers. Exactly, I thought! And, “it’s not just me!”
I’m fascinated to find that the first Ian McDonald novel you reviewed was ARES EXPRESS. I don’t recall your review — I may have skipped it, having not read the book at that time. And in fact I hadn’t, I think, read a McDonald novel to that point. But I eventually got a copy for review from SF Site, and I reviewed it there. Suffice it to say that it’s one of my favorite novels of the past decade — I suppose perhaps I’m an outlier in my admiration for it, but I just think it’s damn near perfect, and just gorgeous and joyous.
And, I might add, it is only just now being published in the US.
The comments about M. Rickert and Ted Chiang, and the pressure on them if they were to write a novel, are fascinating as well.
Note — as Gary did! — that one reason Bob Silverberg made a living writing short fiction was that he wrote so damn much! And while it was mostly pretty competent, slickly done, there was almost nothing really memorable.
Speaking of New Yorker writers, they do get paid a lot more than SF writers. And they used to have guys on sort of retainer, though I don’t think they do that any more.