Eating the Fantastic

  • Home
  • Eating the Fantastic

Eating the Fantastic Eating the Fantastic replicates the great conversations over great food I've had during my years attending science fiction, horror, and comic cons.

It’s time for the third of five culinary conversations I brought back from the Glasgow Worldcon, following my chats with...
08/11/2024

It’s time for the third of five culinary conversations I brought back from the Glasgow Worldcon, following my chats with Jenny Rowe, creator of the one-woman show Tiptree: No One Else’s Damn Secret But My Own, based on the life of the remarkable James Tiptree Jr./Alice Sheldon, and Wole Talabi, author of the seemingly universally acclaimed Nommo Award-winning novel Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon.

This third episode I brought back features Paul Cornell, with whom I’ve been trying to break bread ever since the 2019 Dublin Worldcon. Paul started out writing Doctor Who fan fiction, which led to him writing canonical Doctor Who novels (where he created the companion Bernice Summerfield), audio plays, and comics. Plus he recently won the Terrance Dicks Award for lifetime achievement in Doctor Who writing from the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.

But aside from his achievements in the Doctor Who universe, he’s created so many other awesome experiences for us. He’s written episodes of Elementary, Primeval, Robin Hood, and many other TV series, including his own children’s show, Wavelength. He’s worked for every major comics company, including his creator-owned series I Walk With Monsters for The Vault, The Modern Frankenstein for Magma, Saucer Country for Vertigo, and This Damned Band for Dark Horse, plus runs on Young Avengers and Wolverine for Marvel, and Batman and Robin for DC,

He’s the writer of the Lychford rural fantasy novellas from Tor.com Publishing. His short fiction has been published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Interzone, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and at Tor.com, plus he also written for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards short story anthologies. He’s won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, an Eagle Award for his comics, a Hugo Award for his SF Squeecast podcast, and shares in a Writer’s Guild Award for his Doctor Who work. He’s the co-host of Hammer House of Podcast.

We discussed where he stands on the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby debate, how his UK mind was blown the first time he saw a U.S. issue of The Avengers, why fannish history fascinates him, the reason he went the self-funding route for Who Killed Nessie (and what that did to his blood pressure), how some of his Doctor Who fan fiction eventually became canon, the reason he’s suspicious of nostalgia, how he knows when ideas pop into his head which of his many projects they’re right for, the legacy comics characters he’d love to write more of, what he learned from the great Terrance Dicks, how he manages to collaborate while remaining friends with his co-creators, his fascination with Charles Fort, why he announced there’d be no more Doctor Who in his future, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at the 106-year-old University Cafe —

https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2024/11/08/paul-cornell/

Enjoy!

Happy 93rd birthday to Larry Lieber, co-creator of Iron Man, Thor, and Ant-Man! Celebrate his latest revolution around t...
26/10/2024

Happy 93rd birthday to Larry Lieber, co-creator of Iron Man, Thor, and Ant-Man! Celebrate his latest revolution around the sun by joining us for dinner on an episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast, and learn why he feels like Don Quixote — and much more. https://www.scottedelman.com/2019/11/29/larry-lieber/

The year’s Glasgow Worldcon marked the 50th anniversary of my first Worldcon, and I had as much fun this time around as ...
25/10/2024

The year’s Glasgow Worldcon marked the 50th anniversary of my first Worldcon, and I had as much fun this time around as I did then. One big difference — five decades later I have a podcast, which means you get to share in some of that fun, too — such as joining me for breakfast with writer, editor, and engineer Wole Talabi.

Wole Talabi is the author of the critically acclaimed Nommo Award-winning novel Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon — which was also a finalist for the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the Ignyte Award — plus was named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post.

He’s actually a three-time winner of the Nommo Award – because he also won in 2018 (for “The Regression Test”) and 2020 (for “Incompleteness Theories”). He’s been a finalist for the Hugo Award for his novelette “A Dream of Electric Mothers,” a story which also won him the Sidewise award for alternate history. His fiction has appeared in such magazines as Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld, and anthologies such as The Big Book of Cyberpunk, Africa Risen, and Nowhereville: Weird Is Other People. Many of those stories may be found in his collections Incomplete Solutions (2019, Luna Press) and Convergence Problems (2024, DAW Books).

We discussed his love of combining contradictory ideas, why failing is an important step toward success, how optimism can be a choice (and why making that choice could also make the world a better place), how to convince others who might fear hurting your feelings you truly want their honest criticism, whether AI could ever actually be intelligent or create art, what he means when he says he often writes “two or three people in a room science fiction,” how a friend’s gift of a story seed led to the longest piece in his new collection, the things he learned from writing his first novel which are helping him write his second, the secret to writing successful flash fiction, the accidental catalyst which launched his editing career, the stubbornness that keeps him going both on the page and in the ring, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for breakfast at Cafe Gandolfi, one of the city’s oldest family-owned restaurants —

https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2024/10/25/wole-talabi/

Enjoy!

Happy birthday to Jenny Rowe, who wowed me at the Glasgow Worldcon by becoming James Tiptree, Jr. in the one-woman show ...
22/10/2024

Happy birthday to Jenny Rowe, who wowed me at the Glasgow Worldcon by becoming James Tiptree, Jr. in the one-woman show No One Else’s Damn Secret But My Own. Celebrate the date by joining us at the table on an episode of Eating the Fantastic as she shares how she brought that brilliant writer to life. https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2024/08/16/jenny-rowe/

Happy birthday to Paul Levitz and Bob Proehl, two former guests of Eating the Fantastic who both completed trips around ...
21/10/2024

Happy birthday to Paul Levitz and Bob Proehl, two former guests of Eating the Fantastic who both completed trips around the sun today! I invite you to celebrate the date by taking a seat at the table as I chat and chew with them on Episodes 82 and 112 of the podcast. https://pod.link/1083737796

For those who like knowing how the podcast sausage is made — editing down the raw audio for Friday's episode of Eating t...
19/10/2024

For those who like knowing how the podcast sausage is made — editing down the raw audio for Friday's episode of Eating the Fantastic required 982 snips, removing 12 minutes, 41 seconds of the extraneous so my chat with Wole Talabi would be more pleasing to you. Join us! https://pod.link/1083737796

Ended the night editing to the halfway point in the raw audio from my Glasgow Worldcon brunch with writer Wole Talabi, o...
18/10/2024

Ended the night editing to the halfway point in the raw audio from my Glasgow Worldcon brunch with writer Wole Talabi, on which you'll be able to eavesdrop one week from tomorrow on the next episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast. I hope you'll join us at the table! pod.link/1083737796

Happy birthday to Cynthia Felice and Usman Mlk, two previous guests of my Eating the Fantastic podcast! Why not celebrat...
12/10/2024

Happy birthday to Cynthia Felice and Usman Mlk, two previous guests of my Eating the Fantastic podcast! Why not celebrate their trips around the sun by learning more about them on Episode 37 (recorded at the Watergate Hotel) and 163 (from the first in-person pandemic Worldcon)? https://pod.link/1083737796

It’s time to say farewell to Readercon with one final meal there following last episode’s lunch with Jeffrey Ford — so g...
11/10/2024

It’s time to say farewell to Readercon with one final meal there following last episode’s lunch with Jeffrey Ford — so get ready to take a seat at the table with the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer John Chu.

John’s a microprocessor architect by day, and a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Apex, and at Tor.com, plus in anthologies such as The Mythic Dream, Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and others. His translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF, and other venues.

He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, won the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” plus the Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Awards for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” In the days before our lunch, he surprised us all with the announcement he’d sold his first novel — and you’ll hear my own surprise during our conversation.

We discussed the way he gamified the submission process when he started out, how the pandemic made him feel as if he was in his own little spaceship, when he learned he couldn’t write novels and short stories at the same time, how food has become a lens through which he could explore a variety of issues in his fiction, the rejection letter he rereads whenever he wants to cheer himself up, how writing stories at their correct lengths was one of the most difficult lessons he had to learn as a writer, what it was about his 2015 short story “Hold-Time Violations” that had him feeling it was worthy of exploring as a novel, how he was changed by winning a Hugo Award with his third published story, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Pho Pasteur Vietnamese restaurant —

https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2024/10/11/john-chu/

Enjoy!

Coming tomorrow morning on a new episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast — my Vietnamese lunch with Hugo and Nebula A...
10/10/2024

Coming tomorrow morning on a new episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast — my Vietnamese lunch with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer John Chu! Subscribe now to be among the first to join us at the table. https://pod.link/1083737796

Happy birthday to Theodora Goss and Sheree Renée Thomas, two previous (and coincidentally consecutive) guests of Eating ...
30/09/2024

Happy birthday to Theodora Goss and Sheree Renée Thomas, two previous (and coincidentally consecutive) guests of Eating the Fantastic! Why not celebrate their latest trips around the sun by learning more about them on Episode 195 and 196 of the podcast? Bon appétit! https://pod.link/1083737796

If you've got FOMO because Capclave kicks off in Rockville tomorrow and you won't be able to make it, Eating the Fantast...
26/09/2024

If you've got FOMO because Capclave kicks off in Rockville tomorrow and you won't be able to make it, Eating the Fantastic has your solution! Twenty of this year's panelists have been previous guests of the podcast, so why not download a few and host your own Capclave at home? https://pod.link/1083737796

I last chatted with Jeffrey Ford — last for your ears, that is — eight years ago during the 2016 Readercon — in a conver...
26/09/2024

I last chatted with Jeffrey Ford — last for your ears, that is — eight years ago during the 2016 Readercon — in a conversation which appeared on Episode 17. Back then, I described him as a six-time World Fantasy Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer whose new short story collection A Natural History of Hell had just been published. But now that it’s 2024, he’s an eight-time World Fantasy Award-winning writer and a four-time Shirley Jackson Award winner.

Since that previous meal, he’s also published the novel Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage in 2018, A Primer to Jeffrey Ford in 2019, The Best of Jeffrey Ford in 2020, and Big Dark Hole in 2021, plus three dozen stories or so new stories.

We discussed why writing has gotten more daunting (but more fun) as he’s gotten older, the difficulties of teaching writing remotely during a pandemic, how he often doesn’t realize what he was really writing about in a story until years after it was written, the realization that made him write a sequel to Moby-Dick, why if you have confidence and courage you can do anything, the music he suggests you listen to while writing, the reason he thinks world building is a “stupid term,” the advice given to him by his mentor John Gardner, how the writing of Isaac Bashevis Singer taught him not to blink, why he prefers giving readings to doing panels, the writer who advised him if everybody liked his stories it meant he was doing something wrong, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Gennaro’s Eatery —

https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2024/09/26/jeffrey-ford/

Enjoy!

How will tomorrow begin for me? By bringing live the latest episode of Eating the Fantastic, during which the astounding...
26/09/2024

How will tomorrow begin for me? By bringing live the latest episode of Eating the Fantastic, during which the astounding Jeffrey Ford and I discuss all he's done since he last appeared on the podcast eight years ago. Subscribe now to be among the first to eavesdrop! https://pod.link/1083737796

Happy birthday to Wesley Chu! Celebrate by joining us at the table on an episode of Eating the Fantastic, and learn why ...
23/09/2024

Happy birthday to Wesley Chu! Celebrate by joining us at the table on an episode of Eating the Fantastic, and learn why you’ll never get to read his 180,000-word first novel, the heavy lifting a well-written fight scene needs to accomplish — and more. https://www.scottedelman.com/2022/09/23/wesley-chu/

Snuck off from Baltimore Comic-Con today for a fun lunch chatting and chewing with Martha Thomases at Attman’s Delicates...
21/09/2024

Snuck off from Baltimore Comic-Con today for a fun lunch chatting and chewing with Martha Thomases at Attman’s Delicatessen — on which you’ll get to eavesdrop during a future episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast. I hope you’ll join us!

Happy birthday to my wife, Irene Vartanoff, whom I met June 24, 1974 during my first day on the job at Marvel Comics. Le...
18/09/2024

Happy birthday to my wife, Irene Vartanoff, whom I met June 24, 1974 during my first day on the job at Marvel Comics. Learn why I love her so by eavesdropping as we discuss those good old days — and all the days since — on an episode of Eating the Fantastic. Have a great day, dear! https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2020/09/14/irene-vartanoff/

Address


Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Eating the Fantastic posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Eating the Fantastic:

Shortcuts

  • Address
  • Alerts
  • Contact The Business
  • Claim ownership or report listing
  • Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?

Share