The Coode Street Podcast

As we move into October and the end of the year begins to come into view, we sit down to talk about whether the SF ghetto still exists, especially after M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and whether SF itself has become thoroughly integrated into the mainstream. We also discuss whether terms like space opera and epic fantasy have meaning beyond their utility in selling books, and just when it's OK to give up on reading a book. We also mention a few novels that we’ve been reading and recommending. 

As we move into October and the end of the year begins to come into view, we sit down to talk about whether the SF ghetto still exists, especially after M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and whether SF itself has become thoroughly integrated into the mainstream. We also discuss whether terms like space opera and epic fantasy have meaning beyond their utility in selling books, and just when it's OK to give up on reading a book. We also mention a few novels that we’ve been reading and recommending. 

Coode Street picks up our recent conversation about short fiction with James Patrick Kelly and Michael Swanwick with Cadwell Turnbull, whose excellent short fiction collection All the Hidden Places is one of the highlights of the year and is out this month.

As always, our conversation wanders a little, but we touch upon how he assembled the collection, his experiences in both Clarion and an MFA program, SF and fantasy writing from the Caribbean, formative influences such as Orwell and Le Guin, writing about AI, his own earlier Convergence Trilogy, and writing as part of a group with the Darkly Lem group.

Our thanks to Cadwell for making time to take to us. We hope you enjoy the conversation!

This week’s episode is a wide-ranging discussion of robots and AI in fiction, and particularly in the work of our two distinguished guests: James Patrick Kelly, whose The Book of Bots is just out from Fairwood Press, and Michael Swanwick, whose The Universe Box appeared from Tachyon earlier this year.

We talk not only about how each author’s treatment of AI themes has evolved over the years, but how SF in general has dealt with them for more than a century, and what it might have to tell us about our own anxieties and the Awful Warnings that now seem to show up in our inboxes almost daily.

As always, Michael and Jim are thoughtful, witty, and engaging. We hope you enjoy the conversation and will join us next time!

It's been far too long since one of our favorite guests, Garth Nix, has visited us on Coode Street, but with the forthcoming publication of his adult science fiction novel, Massif, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with one of the world’s leading fantasists.

We talk about the different challenges of writing SF or fantasy, how his own military experience informs some key parts of the novel, and how he came up with an entire mountain range flying off into space, nine foot tall hamster-like aliens whose drumming can be dangerous, and a far-future space  crew limited to technologies like typewriters and shotguns.

We also touch upon Garth's ongoing work, such as The Left-Handed Booksellers of London series, and, as always, what books and authors he’s been reading.

Time certainly flies. Although it has been nearly four years since we last chatted with Alix E. Harrow, she has quickly become one of our very favourite guests. This week we are delighted to welcome her back. Her novel The Everlasting is currently nominated for both the Hugo and World Fantasy awards, and her excellent first collection of short stories, The Slantwise Histories, will be published in October.

In a lively discussion, we touch upon reading and writing short fiction as opposed to novels, the myriad ways fairy tales have been used from the Brothers Grimm on, the challenges and rewards of writing novels that differ so dramatically from one another (in Alix’s case, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, Starling House, and The Everlasting), and navigating the expectations of both readers and publishers.

As ever, Alix’s insights are both sharp and delightful.

Can you believe a storyteller? Ray Bradbury was a consummate storyteller who, in the introduction to his 1950 short story collection The Martian Chronicles, offered a possible origin story for the work.

He had, he recalled, been 24 years of age when he read Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, a collection of stories about small-town life.  The book inspired him to wonder if he could do something similar for American small-town life, but set on Mars.

In amongst his other commitments, he set sail on a journey that ultimately would see him produce close to three dozen short stories set on the red planet. The first, "The Million Year Picnic" appeared in 1946, but they followed over the next four years. At some point between then and 1948 Bradbury set the notion of a book to one side and it was only when he travelled to New York in 1949 that he picked the task up once more. 

Doubleday editor Walter Bradbury was interested in publishing Bradbury, but needed a novel to anchor the deal. It was he who suggested that Bradbury should sketch out a plan for a book, and who then signed it up and published it the following year.  The Martian Chronicles went on to international acclaim, selling millions of copies across many, many editions, and remaining one of Bradbury's most famous works.

The recent 80th anniversary of the first appearance of "The Million Year Picnic" and the passing this week of August 4, 2026 (the date specified in "There Will Come Soft Rains") inspired Gary and Jonathan to sit down with Jeffrey Ford and Kelly Link to discuss the continuing relevance of Bradbury's classic work.

In this week’s episode, we sort of turn the tables on Jonathan to discuss the art of assembling anthologies, and in particular no fewer than four books he has coming out over the next few months: Revolution in the Heart: Stories Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Book of the Dead, Vaster Than Empires:, Speculative Fiction of the Eternal and the Ephemeral , and The Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1.

Not surprisingly, there is a story behind each of these. One honors one of our greatest writers, another continues a popular series that began with The Book of Dragons and The Book of Witches, a third comes from MIT Press, and the fourth includes stories voted on by jurors at Locus magazine. Along the way we both get to mention some of our favorite writers, along with new discoveries and other surprises—in other words, why anthologies are almost always fun to read.

Order links:

This week, Jonathan and Gary are joined by multiple award winning writer and critic Amal El-Mohtar, whose first story collection Seasons of Glass and Iron appeared earlier this year, and whose novella The River has Roots has won Nebula and Locus awards for 2026.

We talk about our favorite stories in the collection, a diverse range of writers including Patricia McKillip, J.R.R. Tolkien, Hope Mirrlees, Virginia Woolf, and Charle de Lint, and about Amal’s own experiences as a writer of Lebanese descent living in Canada and Glasgow.

We hope that what the discussion lacks in focus, it makes up with Amal’s sharp insights as a writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism (in her occasional New York Times Book Review columns).

Many podcasts far more professional than ours have offered discrete segments covering different topics, so this week we decided to carefully organize the episode—wait, no we didn’t; we’re just rambling again. But we do begin with a small tribute to Jane Yolen, both a great writer and a great friend, which leads into some musings on how reputations are made and sustained. We then touch upon the recent Nebula Awards, the role of small presses like Subterranean, and some exciting new books we’re reading, including Jacly Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners. By our standards, all this is carefully planned and laser-focused.