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!

Episode 554: Zen Cho and Finding Black Water Sister

Discussion and digression on science fiction and fantasy with Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan.

Arts

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Visual Arts

Books

Gary and Jonathan are joined by Tobi Ogundiran, whose novella In the Shadow of the Fall is the first of the “Guardian of the Gods,” and whose first story collection Jackal, Jackal, was published to considerable acclaim last year.
Winner of the Ignyte and nominee for the BSFA, and Shirley Jackson awards, Tobi discusses growing up in Nigeria reading what SFF he could come across, the importance of discovering FIYAH as a place for his fiction, the relationship between Western and African storytelling traditions, managing viewpoints and voices, and his own plans for the future.
As always, our thanks to Tobi for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the podcast!

Episode 650: Tobi Ogundiran and the Guardian of the Gods

This week, we’re joined by the wonderful Nghi Vo, whose The Brides of High Hill is out this week. It’s the fifth of her ongoing “Singing Hills” sequence of novellas about the peripatetic Cleric Chih and their sharp-tongued companion hoopoe, Almost Brilliant.
We discuss how Nghi has made use of different storytelling modes throughout the series, her novels The Chosen and the Beautiful and Siren Queen, a forthcoming novella (again alluding to the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a very intriguing novel due in the fall, The City in Glass, which involves doing very interesting things with libraries. There are also, as usual, some totally irrelevant digressions involving everything from writing blurbs to The Clan of the Cave Bear.

Episode 649: Nghi Vo and The Brides of High Hill

This week Jonathan and Gary start out with something resembling a topic: the proliferation of subgenres, movements, and marketing categories in SF and fantasy: from the evolution of space opera in SF to the rise of epic fantasy (and Ballantine’s earlier term “adult fantasy”), as well as consciously developed movements such as the New Wave, cyberpunk, or Africanfuturism and new market categories such as “romantasy".
After a wide-ranging discussion of the various ways of slicing up genres, we spend some time musing about the hot market for collectible, special, limited, and subscriber editions from publishers such as the Folio Society or Subterranean Press.

Episode 648: Genre, marketing, and more

Once again with no guest to give us focus, Jonathan and Gary return to rambling mode, spurred on by the observation that voting for the 2024 Hugo Awards is now open.
This leads to our ongoing discussion of what the Hugo Awards do and do not represent, why voting for your favorite works is important even if you haven’t read all the nominees, what makes a genuine SFF classic, and how the Hugo procedures and categories differ from those of the World Fantasy Awards—which are also accepting nominations from members of the 2022, 2023, and 2024 conventions.
We suggest you take a look at Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos if you're interested in a history of the Hugos, and point out that nominations for the 2024 World Fantasy Awards are now open too.

Episode 647: Oh no, not us again...

Peter S. Beagle joins Gary and Jonathan to discuss his new novel, I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons.

Episode 554: Zen Cho and Finding Black Water Sister

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