Continuing to not let COVID-19 fracture the community I’ve been a part of for the past 50 years, I invite you to join me for another nibble which would have taken place during CoNZealand had the pandemic not forced the 78th World Science Fiction convention to go virtual.

I’d previously made plans to chat and chew with three guests on the ground in Wellington, but since that proved impossible, I decided to go virtual, too, urged on by my Patreon supporters. And so, during my previous two episodes, you were able to eavesdrop as I dined with Lee Murray in New Zealand and Stephen Dedman in Australia. This time around, we’re off to Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England for tea and scones with Farah Mendlesohn.

Farah was a Hugo Award finalist this year in the category of Best Related Work for her book The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and had previously been nominated in that category for The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, and On Joanna Russ. She won a Hugo (with Edward James) in 2005 for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, as well as a World Fantasy Award in 2017 for Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, which she wrote with Michael M. Levy.

She’s also edited anthologies, including Glorifying Terrorism, Manufacturing Contempt: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction, which she created to protest laws introduced by the British Government she saw as restricting free speech. She was the chair of the Science Fiction Foundation from 2004-2007, served as President of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts from 2008-2011, and is currently an Associate Fellow of The Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy.

We discussed the reasons Robert A. Heinlein resonated with her, how her early and current readings of Heinlein differ, why the science fiction of the ’30s was far more politically radical than that of the ’40s and ’50s, her deliberately controversial comment about Ursula K. Le Guin, the circumstances under which she’s more interested in the typical rather than the groundbreaking, that period during the ’20s when everyone was fascinated by glands, the one Heinlein book she wishes we’d go all back and reread, our joint distaste for fan policing, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation —

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts — where I hope you’ll also download a few of the 125 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 are the scones we each ate with our teas —

Farah’s Sage Scones
with vegan cream cheese and rose petal jam

Scott’s Scones
with cherry preserves and cream

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 —

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Finally — because of Eating the Fantastic’s unique niche — that is, on-the-road restaurant interviews, to which I’ll return as soon as the pandemic allows — 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 use 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.

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Thanks for listening. Stay safe out there!