Gary and Jonathan were supposed to record an episode this weekend, but that didn’t quite work out, as sometimes happens. And now they’re on hiatus again. This coming weekend Jonathan’s travelling to the United States for MidAmericon 2 and the following weekend he and Gary are actually at the convention, possibly recording some episodes. After that who knows?
At the moment they expect to return on the weekend of August 27/28 with a new Coode St and a new Coode St Roundtable. After that, they’ll have to see. They’re discussing reducing the frequency of the podcast, so things will probably change more! See you all in a couple weeks! And if you see Gary or Jonathan in Kansas City, do come up and say hi!
This week, in a quick episode recorded between hiatuses, we are joined by Locus Editor-in Chief Liza Groen Trombi to discuss the upcoming WorldCon, how Locus approaches covering the event, and books we’ve read recently and liked, and books we’re looking forward to.
As always, our thanks to Liza for making the time to be on the podcast and we hope you enjoy the episode.
After our longest hiatus so far, Jonathan is back from Italy and Gary is back from Readercon, and we ramble on about such questions as whether modern SF can be characterized as optimistic or pessimistic, how some stories survive as influences despite their obvious flaws, whether modern SF holds on to some of its cherished myths even when they no longer seem feasible, what we’re reading these days, and our own forthcoming public podcast at MidAmericon next month. As usual, any topic that you might find uninteresting will soon turn into another topic entirely.
Before Coode Street goes on hiatus for a few weeks when each of us travel to various exotic realms, we address a question which Jonathan raised about new editions of work by Clifford Simak and Tom Reamy—namely, what happens to the work of older writers in a world in which the midlist has all but disappeared? How do writers “read back†in the genre—or do they need to at all? How do writers as diverse as Joe Abercrombie and Neil Gaiman come across the work of Fritz Leiber, for example, or how do writers like Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Kij Johnson encounter Lovecraft? And for readers and writers who came of age in the 1990s or later, does “reading back†mean the same thing it did for earlier generations?
Then we chat a bit about our plans for Coode Street at MidAmericon in August, what we’re reading now, and what we’re looking forward to reading on the break. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode, and hope you don’t miss the podcast too much! See you in late July!
