All posts by Jonathan Strahan

Episode 169: Live with Paul McAuley

This October the Coode Street commentary team travelled to Brighton, England for the 2013 World Fantasy Convention. In amongst too much drinking and late night conversation, they managed to record two engaging conversations for your enjoyment. The first of these was with long-time Coode Street favourite, Paul McAuley. 
 
Over the period of about an hour, while hotel airconditioning worked hard to overcompensate for a mild UK autumn, hard science fiction, the state of science and much, more was discussed. Our sincere thanks to Paul for his time.
 
As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Next week: Neil Gaiman discusses R.A. Lafferty.

Delivered! Winter is coming…

I have just delivered my latest project! For the past year I have been working away on a special issue of Subterranean Magazine for Bill Shafer and Subterranean Press. I love Subterranean and feel incredibly lucky to have been invited to edit a second issue of the magazine.  There’s still a little work to do on the issue, which features an anthology’s worth of new original science fiction and fantasy stories, but here’s the table of contents!

  • The Scrivener, Eleanor Arnason
  • Bit Players, Greg Egan
  • The Prelate’s Commission, Jeffrey Ford
  • Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story, Karen Joy Fowler
  • Hayfever, Frances Hardinge
  • Caligo Lane, Ellen Klages
  • I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There, KJ Parker
  • Pilgrims of the Round World, Bruce Sterling

The issue, which I think will be the Winter 2014 issue, is due out in early January. I’m searching for some cover art for it at the moment!

Episode 168: Terminology, hard SF and other inexactiudes

After an unexpected break the Coode Street Podcast returns to discuss the use of terminology in genre, Linda Nagata’s recent io9 article on hard SF, and other things large and small.

Assuming nothing unexpected happens, this episode marks the final official recording session for the podcast before our long holiday hiatus. New episodes recorded in Brighton will appear December 7 (169) and December 14 (170).

We will be running a series of classic repeats that have been chosen by long-time listener Cat Sparks to hopefully entertain you during the hiatus and will return in late January energised and ready for an exciting year.

In the meantime we wish you, your family, your friends and everyone else a safe and happy holiday season and a wonderful 2014!

On episode 167, podcasts and fantastika

Every episode of the Coode Street Podcast tends to be an unedited, unplanned ramble through whatever circular discussion topic might occur to Gary and I. Generally, we’ve not discussed what we’re going to chat about beforehand, which means we’ve also not dont any particular research either.

This makes for a quick and relaxed preparation for us, and also makes the workload of doing a weekly podcast in amongst everything else we do manageable. What that means, though, is that it’s critical that we acknowledge when we’ve got it wrong, or have just not presented as balanced a picture as we should.

During Episode 167 of the podcast, Gary and I discuss fantasy, fantastika and things terminalogical. One of us – probably me (Jonathan) – incorrectly refer to “fantastika” as a term coined by our good friend and critic John Clute.  This, as commenters have correctly pointed out, is not true.   As John himself writes in the SF Encyclopedia:

“A convenient shorthand term employed and promoted by John Clute to describe the armamentarium of the fantastic in literature as a whole, encompassing science fiction, Fantasy, fantastic horror and their various subgenres; (see also Equipoise; Horror in SF). The term has long been used in Czech, other Eastern European and Russian discussion of genre; it is the title of Bulgaria’s first sf magazine (formerly known as F.E.P.) and, as Fantastyka (which see) of Poland’s. Clute discusses the term in his Pardon This Intrusion: Fantastika in the World Storm (coll 2011), where he advocates the use of the term primarily to describe works of the fantastic after about 1800, when the genres for which it serves as an umbrella began to take on conscious form, and began tentatively to use the planet itself (past, present and particularly the future) as a default arena (> Ruins and Futurity). [JC/DRL]

John is quite clear about the origins and usage of the term, as should we have been. Our apologies, and thanks commenters for bringing it to our attention.

Episode 167: On Hild, History, Genre and WFC

This week our two commentators, emerging from the pall of jetlag and the reality of impending deadlines, turn their attentions to what is intrinsic to science fiction as a genre, what SF & fantasy has in common with historical fiction, the terrible burden of having to read lots of books, and Nicola Griffith’s acclaimed sixth novel Hild. 

There is also, towards the end of the episode, a brief discussion of issues related to this year’s World Fantasy Convention, which are outlined in greater depth and with more intelligence over at Cheryl Morgan’s blog.

We also want to remind listeners that we will be going on hiatus for four weeks, starting 14 December 2013 and returning 18 January 2014.

As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.