This week we return to the Gershwin Room to chat with Maureen McHugh, award-winning author of novels China Mountain Zang, Half the Day is Night, Mission Child, and Nekropolis, and the short story collections Mothers and Other Monsters and After the Apocalypse. We discuss her time in Los Angeles and how it is affecting her writing, the nature of story, and many other things.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

PS: This podcast is usually cross-posted at www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp, however that site is unavailable at the moment. The episode will be published there when service is restored.

In one of our most problem-free podcasts of recent times, Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan return to the Waldorf Room high atop the corporate tower that is the Coode Street Motel Six to discuss lists, the Locus All-Time Poll that has just closed, and essays/articles by Paul McAuley on “Lets Put the Future Behind Us” and Jonathan McAlmont on “Annoyed with the History of Science Fiction“, with passing reference to Gary Westfahl and Paul Kincaid (but only passing). Along the way lists were made, recommendations avoided, and a laugh or two was had. It’s one of our longest podcasts of recent times, for which apologies, but as always we hope you enjoy it. See you next week!

And now the podcast that technology did not want you to hear! When the Coode Street team traveled to Toronto, Canada for the 2012 World Fantasy Convention we planned and recorded a series of podcasts that have become known as the Great Lost Coode St Podcasts. Five podcasts cruelly wiped by idiosyncratic technology (and definitely not incompetent users) featuring Jo Walton, Guy Gavriel Kay, Robert Shearman & Ellen Klages, James Blaylock & Tim Powers, and Graham Joyce.

This week Graham Joyce incredibly kindly agreed to try again, to join us via Skype and have an entirely new conversation about fiction, fairy tale and much, much more.  And five minutes into recording Skype, for the first time in 124 podcasts, crashed.  Ignoring all of the signals from the universe that this podcast was not meant to happen, we pushed forward and despite a slightly tinny connection and the accidental return of the dreaded stereo, ended up with a conversation that we think totally rewarded our persistence. We hope you’ll agree.

Our sincere thanks to Graham Joyce who persisted despite our incompetence and was exceediingly kind and generous with his time.

With jetlag slowly disappearing into the haze of memory, we once again ascended to the Waldorf Room high above the Coode St Motel 6 to discuss science fiction, list making, new writers, C.J. Cherryh, recnogition and other stuff. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!