Since restaurants began closing down and social distancing became the sensible thing to do for my health, the health of potential podcast guests, and the health of the herd, listeners have been suggesting I consider recording episodes of Eating the Fantastic remotely … and I’ve resisted. Because my purpose here is to share the magical, intimate, relaxed conversations which occur best when people are chatting face-to-face over a table filled with food. That’s why last episode, I ended up letting you ask me the questions.

But then it occurred to me — there’s one person on the planet — and only one — with whom I was willing to record remotely. And that person is Sarah Pinsker, my guest on Episode 1 of this podcast four years and two months ago. I intended to catch up with her in meatspace anyway all these years later, but suddenly it felt right for us to chat in cyberspace.

The reason I felt that way is due to her wonderful debut novel, A Song for A New Day, which was published in September 2019. It’s set in a near future where due to a terrorist attack and an accompanying pandemic, all mass gatherings are banned — no concerts, no sporting events, no ways for people to come together the way people have done since the beginning of time — and we’re instead only allowed to meet in VR. So meeting up with Sarah remotely made artistic and poetic sense — because it would almost be as if we were living in the world of her novel.

Since that first episode, Sarah’s short story collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea was published in March of last year by Small Beer Press. It includes many award-nominated and award-winning stories, including her Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” and her Nebula Award winner “Our Lady of the Open Road.” The collection as a whole was recently awarded the Philip K. Dick Award. 


Her novel A Song for a New Day is currently a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award. She’s also a Hugo Award finalist for Best Novelette for “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye,” published last year in Uncanny Magazine.

We discussed how relieved she was her pandemic novel A Song for a New Day was published in 2019 rather than 2020, why she originally wrote that book in a song format (and why that had to change), how she loves being surprised by her own characters, why neither of us can bear listening to music while we write, the extremely scientific, color-coded process she came up with for organizing her first short story collection, how one of her favorite fictional tropes led to the creation of the original story she wrote specifically for that collection, why the thing that most interests her is the way people cope with what’s put in front of them rather than why those things happen, the reason she prefers leaving interpretations to readers rather than providing answers, her terrible habit when reading collections and anthologies, how she’s coping with the surreal feeling of living in the world of her novel, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation —

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to download a few of the 119 previous episodes.

2) Listen using the RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss on the device of your choice.

3) Or check it out via the embed below.

Here’s what we ate during our socially distant meal —

Corn Fritters
crispy thai-style fried corn

Tofu Pad See Ew

Roast Chicken Thigh
with a Yonah Schimmel knish and roasted vegetables

If you enjoyed this episode and want to support my mission of breaking bread with creators of the fantastic while letting you listen in, there are several ways you can help bring this podcast to the attention of potential new listeners looking for science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics ear candy —

One is to rate Eating the Fantastic on Apple Podcasts and like it on Facebook.

Also — you could tell your friends about the show by sending them a link to your favorite episode and letting them know what I’m doing here.

Finally — because of Eating the Fantastic’s unique niche — that is, usually on-the-road restaurant interviews — which I hope I’ll be getting back to soon — there are expenses beyond the usual ones for studio-based podcasts. I sometimes use ride-sharing services to carry me and my guests from convention centers to restaurants and back, or I gas up to drive them myself — and then there’s that food I used to entice those guests to wander off and share of themselves with you, food which loosens their tongues, relaxes them, and — counterintuitively, because we are after all out in public surrounded by other diners — results a much more intimate environment than if we were alone together in a sterile studio.

So I hope you’ll consider becoming a supporter of the show, and help fund this mission of mine.

You could make a small recurring monthly donation over at Patreon, where there are various perks involved depending on your level of support, such as access to a patrons-only blog, getting a shout-out on the show, stickers, postcards, and more.

Or if an ongoing level of commitment’s not for you, or if Patreon’s just not your thing, then consider tossing a couple of bucks in the tip jar instead and making a one-time donation of any size via Paypal.me.

Or you could head on over to https://ko-fi.com/eatingthefantastic and send me the funds to cover the cost of a cup of coffee.

Thanks for your support!

Coming up next, I’m going to bring you another sheltering in place episode. My call for listeners and former guests to send me questions resulted in me receiving 95 of them, and I was only able to get through 33 in Episode 119. So a few weeks from now, I’ll once again sit down at home for lunch with all those questions in a bowl, pull them out at random, and answer them while I eat. There are so many questions I never got to, including ones from Paul Levitz, George R. R. Martin, Barry Malzberg, Rachel Pollack, and many many more.

I hope you’ll join me!