The L.A Worldcon will shortly be opening nominations for the Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. If you’re eligible to nominate, I hope you’ll consider my Eating the Fantastic podcast in the category of Best Fancast.

Last year, you were invited to eavesdrop on 28 conversations with creators of the fantastic. Below are links to all 2025 episodes so you can have a taste and decide whether the podcast — which launched 10 years ago today — is your kind of ear candy. I hope you enjoy your time at my tables!

Split a pastrami sandwich with Martha Thomases in Episode 244 of Eating the Fantastic

Share shawarma with the award-winning Eric Choi in Episode 245 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama in Episode 246 of Eating the Fantastic

Chat and chew with Shannon Robinson on Episode 247 of Eating the Fantastic

Have a Nashville hot chicken sandwich with Robert Greenberger in Episode 248 of Eating the Fantastic

Mangia mussels in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons in Episode 249 of Eating the Fantastic

Rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi in Episode 250 of Eating the Fantastic

Wolf down lamb with Carolyn Ives Gilman in Episode 251 of Eating the Fantastic

Pig out on pork belly with Jarrett Melendez in Episode 252 of Eating the Fantastic

Break for brunch with writer Adeena Mignogna on Episode 253 of Eating the Fantastic

Toast writer/editor Craig Laurance Gidney on Episode 254 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on oysters with Kemi Ashing-Giwa in Episode 255 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into blueberry pancakes with Silvia Moreno-Garcia in Episode 256 of Eating the Fantastic

Devour a seafood tower with Samantha Mills in Episode 257 of Eating the Fantastic

Binge on burnt ends with Aimee Ogden in Episode 258 of Eating the Fantastic

Pig out on pork belly with Curtis C. Chen in Episode 259 of Eating the Fantastic

Rip into a lobster roll with Benjamin Rosenbaum in Episode 260 of Eating the Fantastic

Slurp ramen with Mur Lafferty on Episode 261 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into Cheesy Pav Bhaji with Karen Heuler in Episode 262 of Eating the Fantastic

Tear into tacos with Richard Butner on Episode 263 of Eating the Fantastic

Slurp soup dumplings with Eugenia Triantafyllou on Episode 264 of Eating the Fantastic

Tackle Texas BBQ with John Picacio on Episode 265 of Eating the Fantastic

Polish off pasta with Lara Elena Donnelly in Episode 266 of Eating the Fantastic

Brunch on blueberry pancakes with Natalia Theodoridou in Episode 267 of Eating the Fantastic

Settle in for an Ethiopian feast with Alaya Dawn Johnson in Episode 268 of Eating the Fantastic

Sample samsa with Naomi Kritzer on Episode 269 of Eating the Fantastic

Savor shrimp — and Steve Ditko — with comics writer/editor Jack C. Harris on Episode 270 of Eating the Fantastic

Dish over dumplings with George Gene Gustines in Episode 271 of Eating the Fantastic

I thank you for your consideration!

This time around, I dream of Action Comics #1, consider how the death of Sal Buscema has me thinking of Vinnie Colletta, decide Jim Salicrup will outlive us all, regret my near-miss with Jim Mooney during my honeymoon, remember the time Mike Friedrich threatened to punch me in the nose, and more.

You can eavesdrop on all those memories via the embed below or download them at the site of your choice.

Here are a few images related to a couple of the topics I mention this episode —

What I looked like the honeymoon weekend
I failed to meet Jim Mooney

Jim Mooney’s splash page for Omega the Unknown #7 (March 1997)

Gerry Conway’s thoughts on our first meeting
with art by Alan Weiss

Don Heck draws my Supergirl
from Superman Family #194 (April 1979)

It’s said water flows to the path of least resistance. But do writers? That’s but one of the topics I tackle during my Burmese lunch with the award-winning writer Emily Mitchell.

Mitchell is author of the novel The Last Summer of the World (published by W. W. Norton in 2007), which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award, as well as two collections of short fiction, Viral (published by W. W. Norton in 2015) plus The Church of Divine Electricity (published last year by the University of Wisconsin Press not long before our conversation). That latter collection won the 2023 Elixir Press Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s, The Sun, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the New Statesman (in the UK), Guernica, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Can Serrat International Artists Residency. She serves as fiction editor for the New England Review, and teaches at the University of Maryland.

We discussed why she felt the need to flip the first and last stories of her recent collection, the gaps which can sometimes occur between a writer’s intentions and a reader’s perceptions, the appeal of the ambiguity which comes with open-ended closure, how a writer’s career is defined as much by who chooses to publish them as by what they choose to write, why she loves working in the present tense (and why one of her stories originally published that way shifted to the past tense in her collection), what she learned about writing by being an editor, why leaving out much of what writers know about their characters improves what they choose to put in, her story which required the most drafts (and why), how writing longhand has gotten her unstuck, why it’s important to have many writing projects going at once, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at the Mandalay Restaurant Cafe — (more…)

It’s time for a trip to Baltimore Comic-Con, where I had the chance to chat with comics creator Don Simpson, whose work I’ve been reading for more than 40 years, ever since the first issue of Megaton Man in 1984.

Back at the beginning of that series, it seemed (incorrectly) as if Don’s interest was solely in satirizing the Marvel tropes of my childhood, with characters such as Stella Starlight (the See-Thru Girl) and Bing Gloom (Yarn Man) spoofing Sue Storm (the Invisible Girl) and Ben Grimm (the Thing). But he soon started focusing on the natural outgrowth of the characters rather than limiting himself to metafictionally commenting only on the comics themselves. There was some pushback on that from those who wanted him to stick to the nostalgia game, as you’ll hear us chat about a bit.

He also created the science fiction backup Border Worlds, which eventually expanded into its own comic, as well as Bizarre Heroes, plus underground comics such as Forbidden Frankenstein, that last project under the pseudonym Anton Drek. Don celebrated Megaton Man’s 40th Anniversary last year with two major projects — the 608-page The Complete Megaton Man Volume I: The 1980s  and Megaton Man: Multimensions — with more planned collections forthcoming.

Even those who haven’t been privileged to experience Don through those many comics projects might have encountered him via the illustrations he created for Al Franken’s 2003 bestseller Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

We discussed why he splurged on a special issue of Captain Marvel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, how the business practices of comics affect the artistic side, the way two early visits with artist Keith Pollard taught him he didn’t want to be a Marvel Comics penciller after all, where he feels the Silver Age ended and the Bronze Age truly began, how classic cinema and the auteur theory influenced his creative choices, the lessons he learned from the first few issues of Love & Rockets vs. the unfortunate expectations set up by the first few issues of Megaton Man, how working on DC’s anthology title Wasteland caused him to reinvent himself, what path his publishing life would have taken had Megaton Man been only a one-shot as originally planned, the career differences between Basil Wolverton and Will Eisner, why he’s able to let others play with his characters without feeling proprietary, the alternate universe in which he would have been a Crusty Bunker or one of Romita’s Raiders, how 9/11 caused him to head back to school for a PhD, why he wrote a Ms. Megaton Man prose novel, whether he already knows the final chapter to his comics universe, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Little Italy’s La Tavola — (more…)