Out in the flesh and blood world, the 80th World Science Fiction Convention is long over, but here at Eating the Fantastic — where I’ve already invited you to eavesdrop on my meals there with Wesley Chu, Carol Tilley, and Eileen Gunn — it lives on. This time around, for the fourth of six culinary conversations I managed to find time for during a busy Worldcon, I invite you to join me for brunch with Michael Swanwick

Michael has won five Hugo Awards and three Locus Awards, as well as a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award — plus has been nominated for and lost more of these major awards than any other writer. His novels include Vacuum Flowers, Stations of the Tide, and Bones of the Earth, plus his most recent, City Under the Stars, a novel co-authored with the late Gardner Dozois. He’s also published a baker’s dozen of short story collections over the past three decades, starting with Gravity’s Angels in 1991 and most recently Not So Much Said the Cat in 2016, as well as the 118 short stories included in The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, one per each element. His recent novel The Iron Dragon’s Mother completed a trilogy begun with The Iron Dragon’s Daughter in 1993, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. Two of his short stories — “Ice Age” and “The Very Pulse of the Machine” — were adapted for the Netflix series Love, Death + Robots.

We discussed his response to learning a reader of his was recently surprised to find out he was still alive, how J. R. R. Tolkien turned him into a writer, why it took him 15 years of trying to finally finish his first story, how Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann taught him how to write by taking apart one of his tales and putting it back together again, why it was good luck he lost his first two Nebula Awards the same year, the good advice William Gibson gave him which meant he never had to be anxious about awards again, which friend’s story was so good he wanted to throw his own typewriter out the window in a rage, the novel he abandoned writing because he found the protagonists morally repugnant, why he didn’t want to talk about Playboy magazine, the truth behind a famous John W. Campbell, Jr./Robert Heinlein anecdote, and much more.

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Here’s what we had for brunch while chatting at Rosebud on Randolph —

Scott’s Bananas Foster French Toast
challah bread, fresh bananas, caramel sauce, whipped cream,
vanilla gelato, powdered sugar, maple syrup

Michael’s Carnitas Benedict
carnitas, hollandaise, potatoes

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Please join me next time for my penultimate Worldcon meal with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette earlier this year, who was also up for two Hugo Awards that weekend.

Thanks for listening!