Welcome to the second episode of The Coode Street Roundtable. The Roundtable is a monthly podcast from Coode Street Productions where panelists James Bradley, Ian Mond, and Jonathan Strahan, joined by occasional special guests, discuss a new or recently released science fiction or fantasy novel.
Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the SkyThis month Coode Street co-host Gary Wolfe joins us to discuss All the Birds in the Sky, the second novel from Hugo Award winning author Charlie Jane Anders. It's a warm, humane, funny, and genuinely engaging novel described by its publisher as follows:
From the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning novel about the end of the world--and the beginning of our future...
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during middle school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.
But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.
We discuss the novel in detail, including how the story develops and ends. If you're keen to avoid spoilers, we recommend reading the book before listening to the episode. If you don't already have a copy, All the Birds in the Sky can be ordered from:
We encourage all of our listeners to leave comments here and we will do our best to respond as soon as possible.
Next monthEpisode 592: The Coode Street Advent Calendar: Kelly Barnhill
Episode 591: The Coode Street Advent Calendar: Nicola Griffith
Episode 590: The Coode Street Advent Calendar 2022
Episode 589: Announcing a Coode Street Advent Calendar
Episode 588: Let’s Talk About Space (Opera), Baybee...
Episode 587: Eileen Gunn and the Night Shift
Episode 586: Ray Nayler and Breaking Down Communicating
Episode 585: Caution - May Contain Traces of Kitten
Episode 584: Back on the ramble
Episode 583: John Kessel and a Life in Science Fiction
Episode 582: Rachel Swirsky and the Universality of Caring
Episode 581: Kate Heartfield and The Embroidered Book
Episode 580: Christopher Rowe and the Instrumentality of Influence
Episode 579: Remembering Patricia A. McKillip
Episode 578: Kind of dull, but it’s something
Episode 577: Books, classics, and collecting
Episode 576: Nicola Griffith and Spear
Episode 575: New books, old readers, and such
Episode 574: Kickstarters, communities, and more
Episode 573: The 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List
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