I’ve been wanting to chat with Mary Robinette Kowal on Eating the Fantastic ever since I brought the first episode live five years and two days ago, but alas, the stars never aligned. And now, at last, they have!

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut series — which so far includes the novels The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and The Relentless Moon — as well as the historical fantasy novels in The Glamourist Histories series plus Ghost Talkers. Her short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, and other magazines and anthologies, and her collections include Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.

She’s currently the President of SFWA, a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Nebula, and Locus awards. Her novel The Calculating Stars is one of only 18 novels to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards in a single year. She’s also a professional puppeteer and voice actor, and has won two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve.

We discussed the temporal differences between puppetry and science fiction conventions, how she transitioned from writing magical Regency novels to the Lady Astronaut series, why unlike many writers, she reads her reviews (albeit selectively), the reason she’s able to write relationships between reasonable people so well, how she constructs a science fiction mystery, why it’s so important she likes her characters’ clothing when she picks a project, the meaning of science fiction itself within her science fiction universe, the way she uses sensitivity readers to make her work better, how a novel is like a clear glass pitcher, and much more.

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My last restaurant meal took place March 10, 2020 with Michael Dirda — on which you got to eavesdrop during Episode 117 of this podcast. I’d planned to get together for lunch with this episode’s guest three days later at a Thai restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland, but before that day could come, I realized COVID-19 had made such a meeting unwise.

More than 10 months later, with no sense we’re coming to the end of this pandemic any time soon, I’m once again refusing to let this world steal a good conversation, and so longtime comics retailer Joel Pollack and I are reclaiming that lost meal — though with bagels and cream cheese and whitefish and smoked salmon rather than Pad Thai.

Joel Pollack has been a part of comics fandom even longer than I have — he attended one of Phil Seuling’s 4th of July Comic Art Conventions two years before I did — in 1968 — and founded Big Planet Comics in Bethesda, Maryland in 1986. That flagship store has expanded to other locations in Washington, D.C., College Park, MD, and Vienna VA, and I thought it would be fun to chat about the world of comics and comics fandom of the past half century, and how comics retailing has changed over the past three and a half decades.

We discussed what the pandemic has done to the comics shop business, the comic his mother bought him which changed his life, the card game which led to him getting his first piece of original art, how his run-in with a young Howard Chaykin convinced him he wasn’t cut out to be a professional comics artist, what opening day was like at the first of his Big Planet comic book stores, the biggest sales event he’s seen during his 35-year retailing career, what inspired Bernie Wrightson to draw a freaky issue of Swamp Thing, how he fights back against the Comic Book Guy cliche to makes his shops welcoming places, our joint distaste of slabbing, why he doesn’t like doing appraisals, and much more.

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One year ago, Nick Mamatas and I were making plans to get together during Balticon last May and record an episode of Eating the Fantastic. Neither that meal nor the con where it was supposed to happen took place, of course. But because I’m trying to prevent the pandemic from stealing all of the voices I’d hoped to harvest for you while on last year’s con circuit, we had that meal recently, even though there were thousands of miles between us.

Nick has published fiction in genre publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction and Tor.com, literary journals including New Haven Review and subTERRAIN, and anthologies such as Hint Fiction and Best American Mystery Stories 2013. His fiction and editorial work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker award five times, the Hugo Award twice, the World Fantasy Award twice, and the Shirley Jackson, International Horror Guild, and Locus Awards.

His novels include Under My Roof, The Damned Highway (cowritten with Brian Keene), Love is the Law, The Last Weekend, and I Am Providence, while his fiction has been collected in You Might Sleep, The Nickronomicon, most recently, The People’s Republic of Everything. His writing guide Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life has prevented many a beginning writer from, well, starving, and I suspect also convinced a few to seek a different line of work. Upcoming in 2021, Solaris will be publishing his novel The Second Shooter, and The Planetbreakers Son will appear as part of the Outspoken Authors series from PM Press.

We discussed why there’s a generational divide when it comes to what potential readers might think his upcoming novel The Second Shooter is about, our joint Brooklyn heritage and history with professional wrestling, why he threw away the first dozen stories he wrote, the reason Marvel Comics was always better than DC, his encounters with the famed monologuist Brother Theodore, the first bad book he ever read, the way having been a journalist helps him collaborate without killing his co-writers, why work for hire assignments can be difficult, how we feel about our refusal to pick a genre lane, and much more.

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Happy New Year! As 2021 begins, Eating the Fantastic will continue acting as if we’re living in the world we deserve rather than the one we got, and break bread — albeit remotely — with those we would have met in the flesh at various conventions which unfortunately had to cancel their in-person incarnations. This episode, I invite you to join me at the table with writer/editor/publisher Ian Randal Strock as we pretend the recent Capclave had actually happened as a mass gathering rather than virtually.

Ian — who may be the person with whom I’ve appeared on more panels than any other — is currently the owner, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Gray Rabbit Publications and its speculative fiction imprint, Fantastic Books. He began his genre career by working at both Analog and Asimov’s magazines for six years, starting out as an editorial assistant, and rising to be Associate Editor.

He left to launch his own magazine of science fiction and science fact Artemis, which he edited and published for four years. He’s twice won the Analog Readers Poll — both for his short fiction and a science fact article. He’s also quite a history buff, having published The Presidential Book of Lists, Ranking the Vice Presidents, and other political titles.

We discussed what he said upon meeting Isaac Asimov which caused the Grand Master to refuse to write him a limerick, why he prefers The Princess Bride novel to the movie, the reason his father advised him not to name his publishing company after himself, why the 1,000-word short story is his natural length, the question editor Stan Schmidt asked before purchasing his first story for Analog, the essay which so thrilled him he felt compelled to start his own magazine, the most difficult aspect of running your own publishing company, why ending a story too late isn’t as great a sin as starting one too early, how his fascination with presidential trivia began in the bathroom, and much more.

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It’s getting to be that time again, so if you’re eligible to nominate for the 2020 Hugo Awards, I invite you to check out my 20120 short story publications — but please also consider Eating the Fantastic in the category of Best Fancast as well.

Once March rolled around, and I was no longer able to travel to conventions and record episodes in restaurants, the nature of Eating the Fantastic changed. Now the nibbling occurred, not face-to-face across a table, but with hundreds or thousands of miles between me and my guests.

As I attempted to recapture the year we were supposed to have rather than the year we were given, sometimes we baked, and sometimes ordered takeout, sharing pizza, Weiner schnitzel, pappardelle, brownies, scones and more. In this new world, food continued to do what food always does — relax us, loosen our tongues, turn strangers into friends and bring friends even closer.

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During last year’s Nebula Awards weekend, I recorded episodes of Eating the Fantastic with Gerry Conway, Mark Evanier, and Rachel Swirsky — so you know that when it came time for SFWA to gather in Los Angeles again earlier this year, I had plans. But you know what they say about plans …

One of the writers I’d intended to take out for a meal during that cancelled event was William F. Wu, and because I’m trying to live in the 2020 we should have had rather than the one we got, the two of us nibbled brownies and chatted recently even though there were 3,000 miles between us.

William F. Wu attended the Clarion Writers Workshop at Michigan State University in the summer of 1974 — the same year I would have gone had I not been turned down. (But don’t worry — I was accepted in 1979). I first became aware of Bill not from his fiction, but from the letters he wrote to Marvel commenting on the depiction of Asians in the company’s Master of Kung Fu comic book. He made his first professional sale in 1975, and since then has published more than 70 short stories and more than a dozen novels. He’s been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards twice each, as well as a World Fantasy Award. He wrote all six novels in Isaac Asimov’s Robots in Time series, two entries in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot City series, and is one of the writers in George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards anthology series.

We discussed how the two of us almost ended up at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop together (and why we didn’t), the reason he wasn’t terrified when he got the chance to play in Issac Asimov’s robot universe, how an assignment from Harlan Ellison gave birth to one of his more famous short stories (which was later adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone, what he found easy about writing in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards universe, how you might never have read his science fiction if crime editors had been kinder to him, what Kate Wilhelm told him which helped fix a story problem, why Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu comic books attracted him (and how he’d have written the book if given the chance), how he manages to collaborate with other writers without killing them, and much more.

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I love the Baltimore Book Festival, not only due to each year’s stellar programming, but also because I’ve managed to record some of my favorite episodes of Eating the Fantastic there, including one with Nalo Hopkinson, who was recently named as SFWA’s 37th Grand Master. I’d hoped to harvest additional conversations for you during this year’s incarnation, but alas … well … you know.

And yet, even though we live in a world where such mass gatherings are impossible, I’ve decided to pretend as if this year’s Baltimore Book Festival still went off as scheduled, and snack on some slices of pizza — albeit remotely — with a guest I’d have dined with there in person had that been allowed — the Ignatz Award-winning Alison Wilgus.

Alison Wilgus is a writer and cartoonist who’s been working in comics for more than a decade, and whose latest work is Chronin, a science fiction duology published by Tor. Their first professional gig was as a colorist and staff writer for Cartoon Network’s Codename: Kids Next Door, and since then has been published by Scholastic, Del Rey, DC, Nickelodeon Magazine, Dark Horse, and First Second Books. They’ve also written works of graphic non-fiction, including The Mars Challenge (illustrated by Wyeth Yates) and Flying Machines: How the Wright Brothers Soared (illustrated by Molly Brooks). Alison is also co-host of Graphic Novel TK, a podcast about graphic novel publishing.

We discussed how their life might have gone an entirely different way if not for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, why they describe themselves to people as “a feral nerd,” how an unsolicited pitch on a Post-it note led to selling their first script, what fanfic taught them about writing professionally in other people’s universes, the best way to interact with sensitivity readers, why they’ve retired from Hourly Comics, what would have happened with Odo and Kira if their Deep Space Nine spec script been accepted, the big surprise about the way they made their first sale to Analog, and much more.

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I’d planned to break bread with award-winning writer A.C. Wise during Balticon earlier this year, and I refuse to let the conversation which would have occurred over that meal be stolen from me merely because COVID-19 prevented the convention from being held in meatspace. So we both got to baking, and now you can eavesdrop as we nibble — she on chocolate zucchini bread and me on cherry pecan bread — and pretend we had the year we wanted instead of the year we got.

Wise is a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award, two-time finalist for the Sunburst Award, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Plus she’s won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her fiction has appeared in Uncanny, Tor.com, Shimmer, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies. Her work can also be found in two collections, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again and The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories, both published with Lethe Press. Her debut novel, Wendy, Darling, will be out from Titan Books in June 2021, and a new short story collection, The Ghost Sequences, will be published by Undertow Books next August.

We discussed how her first professionally published fiction ended up printed on a coffee can, the 24-hour challenge which led to the creation of her Lambda Award-nominated collection, which comic book character obsesses her the most, how individual stories can act as commentary on all stories, why she enjoys wielding the power of ambiguity, how workshopping with other writers can help make stories better, what The Queen’s Gambit can teach us about dealing with reader expectations, the unexpected way a flash fiction piece turned into her first novel, and much more.

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Here at Eating the Fantastic, I’m continuing to act as if the year we’re living in isn’t really happening, and we instead got the 2020 we deserved. Which means it’s time to return for a third meal which should have happened during StokerCon, following up on my remote meals with Priya Sharma and Robert Shearman.

My guest this time around for a conversation which couldn’t happen earlier this year but which we’re going to pretend did, thanks to the urging of my Patreon supporters, is Munich-based writer Steve Toase.

Steve’s fiction has appeared in Aurealis, Not One Of Us, Nox Pareidolia, Three Lobed Burning Eye, Shimmer, Lackington’s, and other magazines and anthologies. His stories have been reprinted multiple times in volumes of The Best Horror Of The Year. He was also the lead writer on a project called Haunt, about Harrogate’s haunting presence in the lives of people experiencing homelessness there. He writes regularly for Fortean Times and Folklore Thursday. His first short story collection, To Drown In Dark Water, will be released by Undertow Publications in January.

We discussed how his COVID-19 lifestyle has been both an inspiration for and a distraction from his writing, the way reading his stories at open mic nights helped him hone his craft, the importance of dread in horror, how his background in landscape archeology helps make his fiction more visceral, the challenge of scripting a planetarium show for the visually impaired, what gave birth to his fascination with Forteana, his advice for those who’d like to improve their flash fiction, the short story sale which told him he’d made it, our shared love of the great Italo Calvino, which of his creations brings him the greatest pride, the advice he wishes he could give his younger self about writing, and much more.

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2020 will forever be remembered by me as the first year — and the only year, I hope — during which I wasn’t able to attend an in-person, face-to-face convention. But here at Eating the Fantastic, I’m doing my best to turn those might have beens into realities.

And so you’ve already had the chance to eavesdrop on meals which were meant to have taken place in Wellington, New Zealand during Worldcon — with Lee Murray, Stephen Dedman, and Farah Mendlesohn — and last episode, we went to Scarborough together for a StokerCon meal with Priya Sharma. Now it’s time to return to StokerCon to chat and chew with the always entertaining Robert Shearman.

Robert Shearman has won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and multiple British Fantasy Awards for his fiction, some of which has been gathered in such collections as Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical (2009), Remember Why You Fear Me (2012), They Do the Same Things Different There (2014), and earlier this year, a massive three-volume collection We All Hear Stories in the Dark. His writings for television, radio, and the stage have won him the Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award, the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award, and the Guinness Award for Theatre Ingenuity. He also wrote the Hugo Award-nominated Doctor Who episode “Dalek” at the request of producer Russell T. Davies.

We discussed the reason we’re lucky we each survived to adulthood, how he almost talked his way out of selling his first short story, the way he starts every story thinking it’s funny even as things turn horrific, why some readers find his new collection offensive and others uplifting, how he’s following up that three-volume, 2,000-page, 650,000-word, 101-story collection, the way his brush with COVID-19 has affected his writing, and much more.

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