On September 20, 1995, four years into editing Science Fiction Age magazine, I got together with scientist/science fiction writers Geoffrey A. Landis and Yoji Kondo at a restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland to chew over the question — How old is the universe anyway?

Why were we doing this?

When I launched Science Fiction Age in 1992, one of the things I decided to do to deliver a different experience than other science fiction publications of the time was to have our science column be — not an essay by a single author — but a Science Forum. There was an occasional exception, but for the most part, from the very beginning, until the magazine shut down in 2000, I’d take science fiction writers who were also scientists out for a meal, we’d eat, we’d chat, and I’d record the results for publication.

A couple of years back, I realized that since I’d been eating in restaurants talking about the fantastic with science fiction writers, it made sense to repurpose what conversations survived for this podcast. And now, with the coronavirus making meals in restaurants either risky or impossible depending on your location, I thought it would be fun to share yet another time travel episode.

At the time of this conversation 25 years ago, Geoffrey A. Landis worked for Sverdrup Technology at the NASA Lewis Research Center and was named by Ad Astra magazine as a “cutting edge” theorist in the special issue on the “stars” of space. As an SF writer, Geoffrey Landis had won the Hugo Award for “A Walk in the Sun” and a Nebula Award for “Ripples in the Dirac Sea.” In the quarter century since, he’s won 2003 Hugo Award for best short story “Falling Onto Mars,” the 2011 Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short science fiction for “The Sultan of the Clouds,” and the 2014 Robert A. Heinlein Award.

A quarter of a century ago, Yoji Kondo, an astrophysicist, was the director of the geosynchronous satellite observatory IUE. The previous year, he co-organized and co-chaired the International Astronomical Union Symposium on “Examining the Big Bang” in The Hague. Under the pseudonym Eric Kotani, he had written five SF books, four with John Maddox Roberts and one with Roger MacBride Allen. Since that time, he published an additional novel with Roberts, as well as the Star Trek Voyager novel Death of A Neutron Star. In 2003, the Lunarians awarded him its Isaac Asimov Memorial Award. Sadly, Kondo passed away October 9, 2017.

We discussed how the idea of the universe even having a beginning is a relatively new concept, the way we choose between the many competing theories of its age, how the phrase “Big Bang” was a joke which stuck, the paradox of some stars appearing to be older than the universe itself, how a science fiction writer’s imagination might solve unanswered questions, whether knowing when the universe was born will help us calculate when it will end, and more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)

Regular listeners to Eating the Fantastic know that once a year, instead of serving up the usual well-researched one-on-one conversations which make up most of this podcast’s ear candy, I opt for total anarchy, plopping myself down in a heavily trafficked area of a con with a dozen donuts and chatting with anybody who’s game to trade talk for sugar and grease. It’s totally spontaneous, as I never know to whom I’ll speak until they pass by and their eyes light up at the sight of a free donut.

In 2016, you were invited to eavesdrop on the Readercon Donut Spectacular, in 2017 the Balticon Donut Extravaganza, and last year the Nebula Awards Donut Jamboree. Now it’s time for the StokerCon Donut Spooktacular!

Late Saturday night, I sat down with an assorted dozen from The Donut Conspiracy in Grand Rapids accompanied by the usual sign explaining the setup, and found no shortage of willing guests.

Join us as Michael Bailey describes his novel inspired by a fire which turned his home to ashes in seven minutes, Geoffrey A. Landis shares about the Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper horror story he published in the science fiction magazine Analog, Brian Keene explains why he chose last weekend to finally reappear at an HWA event, Wile E. Young tells why he thinks of the Road Runner whenever a story gets rejected, Anton Cancre reveals which guest that weekend earned most of his squee, and Wesley Southard offers his schtick for selling books when stuck behind a dealers table at a con.

Plus Erik T. Johnson gives an unexpected (but perfectly logical) answer when asked about one of the perks of StokerCon, Patrick Freivald looks back on how his horror career began via a collaboration with his twin brother, Josh Malerman recounts how he replaced readings with full blown Bird Box interactive performances and how an audience of 85-year-olds reacted, Asher Ellis shares how the Stonecoast MFA program made him a better writer, Kennikki Jones-Jones discusses her Final Frame award-winning short film Knock Knock, Eugene Johnson celebrates his Bram Stoker Award win that night for It’s Alive: Bringing Your Nightmares to Life, and much, much more!

Here’s how you can dig into those donuts with us— (more…)

Join me for lunch at the World Science Fiction Convention. No, not this year’s San Jose Worldcon, which won’t happen until August. Or even last year’s Worldcon in Helsinki. But the 1993 San Francisco Worldcon!

Here’s how we’re going to do that …

Late last year, I repurposed a Science Forum I’d recorded for Science Fiction Age magazine on March 1, 1994 into Episode 56 of Eating the Fantastic. You got to hear Charles Sheffield and Arlan Andrews, Sr. chatting over lunch at an Italian restaurant about the many ways the world might end. But for this episode, we’ll be going even further back into the past.

On September 1, 1993, I shared lunch during the San Francisco Worldcon with not only Andrews and Sheffield, but Gregory Benford and Geoffrey Landis as well. I thought it would be fun to bring together working scientists to have them discuss over a meal everything wrong (and a few things which might be right) with how their profession is portrayed in science fiction.

I no longer have any idea which convention hotel restaurant we gathered in for our recording session, but we were definitely eating—as you’ll be able to hear for yourself when a sizzling platter of something called a “Laredo” is put in front of us and we worry about whether it’s safe to eat without burning ourselves.

An edited transcript of this conversation was published in the January 1994 issue of Science Fiction Age. So who were this quartet of scientist/science fiction writers when we recorded this Science Forum 25 years ago? Here’s how I described them in that issue—

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics working at the University of California at Irvine, who has also written over a dozen SF novels. Arlan Andrew, Sr. is an executive at a national laboratory, who has worked in the White House Science Office in both the Bush and Clinton administrations. A longtime SF reader, Geoffrey Landis has long looked at the role of the scientist both as an experimentalist and as an SF writer. Charles Sheffield holds a Ph.D in theoretical physics and serves as Chief Scientist for the Earth Satellite Corporation.

And I should add that during my years editing Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000, I published short fiction by each of them.

We discussed how Gilligan’s Island gave TV viewers the wrong idea about scientists, the ways in which most science fiction isn’t actually science fiction at all, but rather engineering fiction, what’s wrong with portraying scientists as if they’re any different than non-scientists, why Stephen King’s The Stand gave such a negative picture of science and technology, the dangers of letting governments control science, why real science, like real art, is work, the reason scientists need to be more aggressive about the ways in which they’re portrayed, and more.

Here’s how you can share some of that sizzling “Laredo” with us— (more…)

Artificial Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky passed away two days ago, which immediately brought back memories of the Science Forum in which he took part in the (gulp!) March 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age.

Those memories proved not to be entirely accurate, as I learned when I thought of digging out the tapes from that session to see if any of the audio would be of a quality worth posting here. (more…)

I’ve been working so hard all week (and this weekend, too) that I’ve been forced into silence here since Saturday. But since three things equal a post, how about we let these pics stand in for my week?

First, a lovely pic Irene snapped of me with Geoff Landis and Mary Turzillo at my favorite local dim sum restaurant, New Fortune. While on their way to Maryland for a scientific conference, Geoff and Mary swung through West Virginia Saturday night and had dinner at the Edelman-Vartanoff homestead, followed the next day by shumai over in Maryland, which Irene and I ran over to share.

It was good to play catch-up outside of the madness of a convention.

Next up, a pic of that shows old Marvel pal Bill Mantlo, whose medical woes were recently reported on at length, in far happier times. I published it in the December 1974 issue of Marvel’s official fan magazine, FOOM. It was part of a strange idea I had of running baby pictures of artists and writers, and while everyone else turned in the real thing, Bill came up with this.

And that’s how I’d rather remember him. (more…)