I’m just back from the 80th World Science Fiction Convention — and I suppose I should point out it wasn’t my 80th Worldcon. Though I’ve been attending cons since I was 15, I’m not that old. Chicon 8 was merely — merely! — my 36th.

And I’ve brought back conversations for you with Wesley Chu, Carol Tilley, Eileen Gunn, Michael Swanwick, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Tim Waggoner. But what I haven’t brought back — at least as of this morning — is a case of COVID-19. Which as far as I’m concerned is a miracle, considering my anxiety levels going into the con.

But before we get to any of those six conversations, I’d like you have lunch with Max Gladstone. Max is perhaps best-known for his Craft Sequence of fantasy novels which began in 2012 with Three Parts Dead, continued in 2013 with Two Serpents Rise, and so far consists of six volumes, which considered as a whole were nominated for a Best Series Hugo Award. His interactive projects include the Choice of the Deathless and Deathless: The City’s Thirst, which both take place in the world of the Craft Sequence. With previous guest of the podcast Amal El-Mohtar, he wrote the internationally bestselling This is How You Lose the Time War, which was published in 2020 and won the Hugo, Nebula, and Ignyte Awards. Gladstone also created the Serial Box series Bookburners, and the interactive television series Wizard School Dropout. His most recent novel, Last Exit, was published in March.

We discussed what a Godzilla movie has to tell us about the way future art will likely deal with the pandemic, our differing ideas over what we mean when we say we’ve written another draft of a story, how we’d be willing to dispense with the art inspired by tragedy if we could only skip the tragedy as well, the differences between his early and final drafts of Last Exit, how to make us care equally when writing from multiple points of view (and how doing so could cause the reader to trust the writer even more), what it is about science fiction that attracts dystopias, how our dreams have changed due to COVID-19, what we get wrong when we write about civilizations lasting thousands of years, and much more.

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Here’s what we chowed down on as we chatted —

Max’s chicken taco, carnitas taco, and carne asada con queso taco
from Tenoch Mexican in Somerville, Massachusetts

Scott’s Barbacoa
from Fiesta Tapatia in Martinsburg, West Virginia

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Please join me next time, when you’ll be able to eavesdrop on the first of my meals from the Chicago Worldcon — which involved a visit with writer Wesley Chu to his favorite Chicago brunch spot so we would chat about his new novel The Art of Prophecy, which was released a mere weeks before our conversation.

Thanks for listening!