Another year has gone by, but more importantly, another month has gone by, and so I’m once more gathering together the dreams of a previous month to see whether poetry can be made by rubbing them together.

In December, I attempted to achieve Satori via a gumball machine, smuggled a Nerf ball up my nose, was eaten by zombies, visited my wife in a Mexican prison, and more.

Take a look below and see whether these dreams make any more sense grouped together like this than they did one day at a time.

DECEMBER 2013

I dreamt George Plimpton had gathered the members of my writers group and was teaching us an intricate dance we were to perform later.

 30 Dec

I dreamt I bought a pastry I’d never had before while wandering streets of a foreign country, hated it, but found nowhere to throw it out.

 29 Dec

I dreamt I was late for an already begun ukulele parade and was struggling into a uniform which included a medal the size of a dinner plate. 

29 Dec

I dreamt a goat was following me, and when I sat on a bench and cracked open my laptop, it pressed up against me and wouldn’t let me work.

 29 Dec

I dreamt my wife and I tried to cross a massive intersection — 16 lanes in each direction! — and got trapped in the middle dodging semis.

 28 Dec

I dreamt I wandered a mall with my mother, and she was moving so fast I couldn’t keep up with her. Which should have told me it was a dream. 

28 Dec

I dreamt I found a shop at the mall that was set up like a yard sale, selling old mags and comics. A child took my hand and wouldn’t let go.

 27 Dec

I dreamt my wife was in the hospital, and when she began vomiting, a nurse ushered me from the room because that was making her contagious.

 27 Dec

I dreamt I visited @Scalzi, was amused by his four toddlers. He showed me his Classics Illustrated collection while we waited for pancakes.

 27 Dec

I dreamt I was in a spooky funhouse, moving through the dark rooms in reverse, pushing past and annoying those who were doing it correctly.

 27 Dec (more…)

Though I visited Chicago for all three Next restaurant meals last year—The Hunt, Vegan, and Bocuse d’Or—I sadly have no plans to return in 2014. That has nothing to do with a lack of desire, but rather, a recognition that with my recent change in employment, some things had to go, and travel to Next, while resulting in lifetime peak meals, was one of those somethings—especially since we won’t be canceling our trips later this year to either Easter Island or the London Worldcon.

But that doesn’t mean I’m still not intensely interested in what Grant Achatz, Dave Beran, and Nick Kokonas have in store. The next Next menu—Chicago Steak—is currently being served to friends and family in advance of its debut to the public, and yesterday Achatz teased us by tweeting a pic of the menu.

First time serving actual food. FOH training night. @dcberan @mknorth @JTomaska pic.twitter.com/eyDJqZAg2R

— Grant Achatz (@Gachatz) January 4, 2014

He followed that today with a pic of the steaks as they’ll be presented to diners. (more…)

Since all the cool kids seem to be doing self-promotion this week, I might as well do it, too. So here are my awards-eligible stories that saw print in 2013. It was a light year for Scott Edelman fiction, with only two stories coming out.

“The Trembling Living Wire” appeared in Psycho-Mania! (note that the exclamation point is part of the anthology’s title), and is a contemporary horror story inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Israfel.” It’s approximately 8,500 words long.

(more…)

Last year, we celebrated the end of 2012 by flying to Vienna, watching Die Fledermaus on New Year’s Eve at the Wiener Staatsoper, and eating lots of goulash, Wiener Schnitzel, and apple strudel mit schlag. Our plans to say farewell to 2013 were much less ambitious, and this time didn’t require passports.

Our favorite local restaurant, Bryan Voltaggio’s Range, was turning itself that night into a supper club at which you could buy a table from 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., plus they were importing the Blue Vipers of Brooklyn for entertainment.

This was their announced menu.

As we were to learn on New Year’s Eve itself, there were other dishes not revealed in advance.

We wrangled three other couples to join us, rented a hotel room at the Embassy Suites which shares the Chevy Chase Pavilion location with Range, and looked forward to a fun night … which as it turned out, marked more than just the change of one year to the next, but also ended up demarcating a major change in my life after more than thirteen years.

And our expectations were fulfilled. It was a fun night. See? (more…)

2013’s over, and as I told you yesterday, 2014 will be very different. But before fully letting go of last year, let’s take a look at which 10 posts here were read most.

It turns out that five of the top posts were about food. Who knew that so many people would want to read recountings and see pics of my favorite meals? But surprisingly, it turns out you do.

The top 10 posts, in descending order, are …

I hate it when that happens!

WTF? Why is Isaac Asimov’s face being used to shill in a Huffington Post ad?

WARNING: Once seen, this photo of me cannot be unseen

Sneak peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Bocuse d’or menu

Sneak peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Vegan menu

My Vegan meal at Next was so good I’m going to have to eat it twice

Reliving our magnificent meal at Vienna’s Steirereck im Stadtpark

A Sunday visit with “Mirthful” Marie Severin

Another reason I love Dave Gibbons (and continue to hate Roy Lichtenstein)

1st peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Vegan video

Also — Happy birthday, Dad. I still miss you., which was posted way back in 2011, continued to be read by so many thousands of you in 2013 that it would have made the top 10 were I allowing in earlier years. As I told you back in March, the Internet sure does miss its father.

Stick around and see what I pontificate about this year!

Way back on August 15, 1995, my life changed, only I didn’t know it at the time. That’s because on that date, Craig Engler launched Science Fiction Weekly, which a few years later he would sell to the SCI FI Channel. And a few years after that, over the Labor Day weekend in 2000 at the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention, he gave me the chance to take over from then-editor Brooks Peck.

Here’s how I looked that fateful weekend as I considered the offer, having tried to contact my wife so any decision to leave my then-current job at Satellite Orbit and sign on for the gig would be a joint one. I was wondering … will this Internet thing last? (Hey, it was a very different online world back then.)

Well, it has lasted, and I’ve worked for what’s now called Syfy for more than 13 years, editing Science Fiction Weekly, then SCI FI Wire, and for the past few years, Blastr. (And a print magazine for a while there, too.) But though the Internet and Syfy and Blastr go on, I do not, for today those 13+ years come to an end.

Today marks my final day working for Syfy. It was an amicable parting, but it means I’ll begin 2014 looking for new worlds to explore, both as an editor and a writer.

In my first Science Fiction Weekly editorial back in October of 2000, I explained who I was and why I thought I deserved to be there. (more…)

Sean Howe, author of the wonderful Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, uploaded a recording to YouTube today of Stan Lee speaking at Princeton in March 1966.

There’s a ton of fun stuff you’ll want to hear, such as the boos that erupted when Stan mentioned Steve Ditko’s departure from Marvel and the cheers that arose when he brought up the Silver Surfer.

Plus there’s plenty of ammo for Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby partisans, such as when Stan called Ditko a “peculiar guy” who’s “a little eccentric,” and said that he hadn’t “spoken to this guy for over a year,” or when he talked about how surprised he was when the Silver Surfer turned up in the Fantastic Four, an event which had caused Stan to ask, “Who’s this naked nut running around?”

But what most piqued my interest, and caused me to consider a question I should have asked long ago but for some reason never thought to, was Stan’s explanation of the Marvel method, which begins at the 17:35 mark.

(And don’t worry—the audio quality picks up after the first few minutes.) (more…)

Soon, nearly every story I wrote for Marvel Comics (save for a Master of Kung Fu, all issues of which I believe are in limbo due to rights questions with the Sax Rohmer estate) will be back in print. That’s because on June 24, 2014, Marvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel Volume 5 will be published, collecting my seven-issue run of the space-born superhero Mar-Vell, bookended by a few issues created by others.

Here’s the cover, which uses art from Captain Marvel #50, in which I separated Mar-Vell and Rick Jones.

And here’s an alternate cover, which I believe is for those who’d prefer their volume to carry the numbering system of the complete Marvel Masterworks run, rather than that of the individual title. (more…)

The Santa Claus wars aren’t anything new.

An editorial in the January 1898 issue of The Nickell is “grieved to find itself in opposition to certain learned and eminent divines of the Presbyterian church in the matter of the existence of Santa Claus.”

Apparently, those divines felt the concept of Santa was bad for children, because “it distracts their attention from the sacred character of Christmas Day.”

Check out the complete editorial, in which the editorial board advises, “do not try to belittle a saint whose ministrations give joy.” (more…)

I often share about food here, and I often share about my early years in comics, but I don’t think I’ve ever before shared anything at the intersection of those two topics. It isn’t a Venn diagram with much, if any, overlap, so this may be a first.

Danny Crespi, who was Marvel’s assistant production manager when I worked there in the mid-’70s, gave me his recipe for spare ribs, which he said were “as good as the ribs as the Lotus Eaters.” Here’s Danny as he appeared in the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention program book.

Danny was one of the nicest guys in the world, even though when Mike Esposito, who was doing art corrections in the Bullpen back then, grandiosely said, “In six months, I’ll be running this company,” Danny quickly quipped, “Yeah. Into the ground.” (more…)