Since 2017 is coming to an end, it seems only right that the final Eating the Fantastic of the year should bring the world to an end as well. And through the miracle of time travel, that’s what you’re going to hear me and Episode 56’s guests talking about—in 1994!

Back in 1991, when I laid out for the publishers of Science Fiction Age the vision I had for that magazine—which I’d go on to edit through the year 2000—I knew that to compete with the existing SF mags of the time, and give readers what they couldn’t get elsewhere, one of the things we needed to do was deliver a science column unlike any published by the competition. So I decided I’d take science fiction writers who were also scientists out to lunch or dinner, then record, transcribe, and condense the conversations for publication.

Earlier this year, I happened to think back to those chats, and it occurred to me:

Eating in restaurants … while discussing the fantastic … with science fiction writers? Isn’t that what this podcast is all about?

So I ran to the basement and dug out the box which contained my old cassette tapes, all the while wondering whether any recordings of those Science Forums still existed, and if they did, whether the sound quality would justify sharing them with you.

Rummaging through that box, I discovered many tapes, and listened first to a recording of my March 1, 1994 lunch with Arlan Andrews, Sr. and  Charles Sheffield at the Bethesda, Maryland restaurant the Pines of Rome. Our subject was the many ways the world might end. I’d transcribed that talk, edited it down, and published it in the September 1994 issue of Science Fiction Age. 

The audio was in remarkably good condition for the three of us not having worn lapel mics, and since we were eating during the discussion—Charles even spoke about his cannoli—it seemed meant to be that our chat should get digitized and repurposed as an episode of Eating the Fantastic. The two of them uttered far too much wisdom for their voices not to be made more widely available. So get ready to slip back more than 23 years in time to hear their fascinating conversation about how the world might end.

Charles Sheffield won the Nebula and Hugo awards for his novelette “Georgia on My Mind” as well as the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Brother to Dragons. He was also a mathematician and physicist who served as a President of both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society. Sadly, he passed away in 2002 far too young at age 67.

Arlan Andrews, Sr. is the founder of SIGMA, a think tank of science fiction authors, a concept which came to him while working at the White House Science Office in 1992, when he realized government technologists and forecasters could use a dose of practical futurism from science fiction writers. After retiring from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico as Manager of the Advanced Manufacturing Initiatives Department, he cofounded several high-tech companies. He’s published more 400 pieces of fiction, fact articles, computer books and opinion pieces.

And I should point out that this episode’s guests did more than take part in the occasional Science Forum for Science Fiction Age—I also published fiction by each of them.

We discussed the end of the world, including the (then) coming millennium and whether that would be thing which took us out (hint: it wasn’t), whether the only way to survive might be for our species to evolve into something more, how strange it is that we worry more about changing the past than changing the future, whether we’re likely to destroy the planet ourselves before nature does it for us, why personal extinction might be all that really matters, whether cryonics will be the thing that saves us, why the process of dying is more frightening than death itself, why aliens coming to kill us is not a likely end, whether even if we do survive the end of the world, we can survive the heat death of the universe, why it makes no difference whether we choose to live as pessimists or optimists, and more.

Here’s how you can share eavesdrop on us—

1) Subscribe over at the iTunes store, where you’ll also find all 55 previous episodes.

2) Use the show’s RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss to download the episode to any device you’d like.

3) Or simply use the the embed below to listen right here.

Alas, there are no food pics this time around because—what can I say?—for some reason I can’t quite explain, people just hadn’t yet gotten around to Instagramming our food in 1994.

I hope you’ll return two weeks from now when there will be photos of food—as well as Eating the Fantastic’s first guest of 2018, Sheila Williams, longtime editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.

If you enjoyed this or any previous episodes, please rate the show on iTunes and like it on Facebook, which will bring the show to the attention of potential new listeners … if what my techie friends tell me about social media algorithms are true, that is!

And finally—please consider supporting the show by making a small recurring monthly donation (with perks for all patrons) over at Patreon. This will help subsidize some of the travel, bandwidth, equipment, and meal costs associated with the show—and potentially even increase its frequency. (If that level of commitment’s not for you, or if Patreon’s just not your thing, consider making a one-time donation of any size via Paypal.me.)

Thanks for listening! I hope you’ll be back for more on January 12.