Welcome to episode 12 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by the remarkable Zen Cho, whose new novel Black Water Sister will be followed later this summer by an expanded version of her Crawford Award-winning collection Spirits Abroad from Small Beer Press.

We touch upon issues of Malaysian identity both in the new books and in her popular duology Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, the stylistic and thematic challenges of writing for diverse audiences and writing humor in fantasy (with early influences including Terry Pratchett and P.G. Wodehouse), and the wonderfully inventive dragons in her short fiction, including the Hugo-winning ‘If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again.”

As always, our thanks to Zen for making the time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 11 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by Daryl Gregory, whose new novella The Album of Dr. Moreau is an improbable but delightful mashup of H.G. Wells, boy bands, Las Vegas, and locked-room murder mysteries.

We discuss the challenges of attempting so much at novella length, the importance of managing tone, and, not least, the sheer fun of the whole undertaking. Along the way, we touch upon some of Daryl’s earlier novels, including The Devil’s Alphabet, Raising Stony Mayhall, We Are All Completely Fine, and Spoonbenders, as well his forthcoming novel Revelator, a gothic tale set in the Smoky Mountains.

As always, our thanks to Daryl and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 10 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary have a delightful conversation with Nghi Vo, whose The Empress of Salt and Fortune won this year’s Crawford Award and is a Hugo finalist, and whose debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful, a fantastical revisioning of The Great Gatsby with a queer, Asian Jordan Baker as narrator, is out this week.

We discuss the value of fanfic, the virtues and vacancies of Fitzgerald’s classic novel, the question of whether any narrators are ever reliable, and how Nghi managed to convey the sense of a full epic fantasy in The Empress of Salt and Fortune and then shift to a very different narrative mode in When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, the second novella in the “Singing Hills” cycle.  We also get a preview of the forthcoming novel Siren Queen, with its intriguing exploration—again in fantastic terms—of the early Hollywood film industry as experienced by an Asian actress.

As always, our thanks to our guest, Nghi, for her time. We hope all of you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to episode 9 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary are joined by Nebula and Philip K. Dick award-winning author and musician Sarah Pinsker, whose new novel We Are Satellites is out this week. We touch upon the actual science of brain implants which served as background research for the novel, her reasons for narrating the story from the points of view of four different family members, the issues of corporate responsibility for new technology, and the surprisingly lax government oversight of medical devices such as those featured in the novel. We also discuss the reception of her much-heralded and prescient novel from last year, Song for a New Day, the challenges of writing near-future SF, her own influences and early reading in the field, balancing a career in music with one in fiction, and some of the stories in her collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea.

As always, we’d like to thank Sarah for joining us and hope you enjoy the episode!

Welcome to episode 8 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This time out, Jonathan and Gary are joined by P. Djèlí Clark, whose novella Ring Shout has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards this year and whose first novel, A Master of Djinn, appears this month.

\We touch upon themes of colonialism and racism, why he decided to set a steampunk novel in 1912 Cairo, his earlier short fiction, how his work as an academic historian informs his fiction, and what it was like, after a lifetime of reading, to discover a community that seemed to welcome his vision. Djèlí’s insights into everything from old Twilight Zone episodes to Birth of a Nation to Robert Jordan’s fantasies make for one of the more stimulating conversations we’ve had in some time.

As always, our thanks to Djèlí and we hope you enjoy the episode.