You know how I say that one of the best parts of any convention is leaving that convention for a meal with friends? (A belief, by the way, which eventually caused me to create my podcast Eating the Fantastic.) Well, the meal I had last Friday night during an escape from Capclave with Natalie Luhrs and Aaron and Angela Pound proved my point.

A couple of days before Capclave, I learned that Range—which I’d visited many times before, one of those times being for a meal on a break from last year’s Capclave—would be holding a two-day pop-up by Charleston’s Jeffrey Stoneberger, chef and owner of 2Nixons, which has earned itself quite a rep for its take on Asian street food. And the first of those two days happened to be the first day of the con. So you know I had to be there.

Stoneberger had previously staged at The Fat Duck and Noma, so you wouldn’t expect him to be the sort of chef to turn his hand to ramen and yakitori. But that’s what he’s done. And the food he put before us last Friday proved worthy of that lofty resume.

Here (rather belatedly, and briefly, as it’s been a crazy week) what we were served that night. (more…)

I can’t remember the first time I met Doug Fratz, but I know the first time we were under the same roof—though I don’t think I knew it at the time. It was in 1971, at Phil Seuling’s annual 4th of July Comic Art Convention, and thanks to Mike Zeck, a comics fan turned comic pro just like me, a photo turned up from that day a few years back.

Here we are more than 45 years ago …

That’s me in shadows to the left, in the front row as always, wearing my denim jacket emblazoned with studs and a barely visible “War is not healthy for children and other living things” patch. (Yes, I was a hippie.) And there to the right, half a dozen rows back, is Doug, his hair at the time equally as long as mine, if not longer.

I have no idea what panel we were waiting for when Mike ran to the front of the room and snapped a photo of the crowd, or whether Doug and I actually met that weekend. No matter. We met sometime within the next few years, and I became a constant reader of his fanzine Thrust, which eventually changed its name to Quantum, earning five Hugo nominations along the way. And when it came time for me to edit Science Fiction Age, and later Science Fiction Weekly, he became a frequent book review contributor.

When we last spoke, just a few months ago at the Kansas City Worldcon, we reminisced about Discon II, the 1974 Worldcon which had been the first for both of us. I’d hoped to see him again at Capclave next weekend. Instead, I’ll be taking his place on a panel there about book reviewing, when I’d much rather have been in the audience hearing him talk on the subject. He was a nice guy, an excellent critic, and will be greatly missed.

For more details about Doug, check out his entry at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

In honor of Luke Cage, which debuted today as a Netflix series, and in memory of my young teen years as an annoying fan with a sketchbook, may I present a drawing done for me by Billy Graham, the legendary artist who drew that character for Marvel Comics in the ’70s.

Though I’d eventually come to know Graham as a fellow creator at Marvel, this undated drawing was done long before then, likely in 1972, or at the latest, 1973, back when I was just another pleading kid.

We never got particularly close later during my comics pro years, so he was just an acquaintance with whom I’d have the occasional conversation, but whenever our paths did cross in the Bullpen, he was friendly, and seemed like a nice guy.

I wish he could have seen the character to whom he’d contributed so much get this level of attention, but alas, he died in 1999.

As I told you before, I ate a lot of BBQ during this year’s Worldcon in Kansas City. Unsurprisingly, four of those meals became episodes of Eating the Fantastic. The first of those four, and one of my favorites, was recorded at Danny Edwards Blvd Barbecue. (Danny Edwards’ family, BTW, has been barbecuing in Kansas City since 1938.)

I was joined for lunch there by writer David D. Levine, who won the Hugo Award for his story “Tk’tk’tk,” and whose debut novel novel Arabella of Mars had been published the month more.

We talked about the things being a science fiction fan for so long taught him about being a professional science fiction writer, what it was like contributing to George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards universe after having read the series since Day One, how pretending to live on Mars for two weeks helped him write his newly published novel Arabella of Mars, and much more.

Here’s how you can share the BBQ— (more…)

The latest iteration of Capclave is only 11 days away! So it’s about time I let you know where you’ll be able to find me at this Gaithersburg, Maryland con.

Here’s the programming they’ve assigned me, as well of the names of the co-conspirators with whom I’ll be making mischief.

Well Worn Classics
Friday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
Some science fiction classics are so steeped in the time they were written, they are painful to read now. In some ways, getting the technology wrong is secondary to getting the sociology wrong, as when sexism and racism rear their now-ugly heads. What classic novels show their age but are still a pleasure to read, and which make us wince?
Panelists: Scott Edelman, Barbara Krasnoff (M), Karen Wester Newton, Lee Strong

Reading
Saturday, October 8, 11:00 a.m.

Literary Inspirations
Saturday, October 8, 1:00 p.m.
What author’s works have influenced, inspired and even just amused the panelists.
Panelists: Scott Edelman, J. J. Smith, Lee Strong, Joan Wendland

Biggest Mistakes Made by Beginning Writers
Saturday, October 8, 3:00 p.m.
The panel will discuss both writing and promotional mistakes: How writers have screwed themselves over and killed their chances of making it in the publishing world by doing easily preventable things.
Panelists:Scott H. Andrews, Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, Scott Edelman, Bjorn Hasseler, Hildy Silverman

Plus—I hope to record a few new episodes of Eating the Fantastic during the weekend.

Hope to see you there!

Just as I foretold, I spent Friday and Saturday participating in the Baltimore Book Festival. And I even have proof. See?

My name on the program board at the Science Fiction Writers of America tent!

I took part in four programming items—here I am (in a photo taken by Sam J. Miller) with Lara Elena Donnelly as I pontificate on Friday’s “The Future of Science Fiction & Fantasy” panel.

I had a great deal of fun hanging out with friends and interacting with readers, so much so I regret I didn’t stay on for today’s third day of the festival. And as usual, a lot of the fun took place outside the confines of the official event itself. (more…)

I was reading the December 1916 issue of The Scoop (as one does), a magazine “written by newspaper men for newspaper men,” which is filled with fascinating anecdotes about the way the world was for journalists 100 years ago, when I came across a reminder that the technology we think of as essential often … isn’t.

A full-page ad which appears on the back cover decries the fact Congress appropriated funds for continued mail delivery by pneumatic tubes in New York City, but failed to do the same for Chicago. According to the ad (which is unsigned, so is apparently more of an editorial), there were 10 miles of two-way, eight-inch tubes running under Chicago at the time which delivered 8,000,000 pieces of mail daily.

In response to the idea that mail should instead be delivered by trucks rather than pneumatic tubes, the question is asked, “If we are going backward, why not get a wheelbarrow?”

“Any change,” insists the author of this piece, “would be calamitous.”

Well, here we are, a century later, and that calamity never came.

Which makes me wonder … what technology do we hold dear today, and insist we could not live without, will a century from now seem as quaint as pneumatic tubes do today?

During Readercon, you got to share Thai food with Resa Nelson, eat a full Irish breakfast with Jeffrey Ford, and down donuts with a parade of 15 writers, editors, and fans. Now it’s time to say farewell to Readercon with a visit to The Lobster Stop in Quincy, Massachusetts for (what else?) lobster rolls … and F. Brett Cox.

Brett co-edited (with former Eating the Fantastic guest Andy Duncan) Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (which featured a story about Randy Newman by yours truly!), and has had fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews appear in Eclipse Online, War Stories, Century, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Postscripts, and many other venues. He’s also hard at work on a book-length study of Roger Zelazny for the University of Illinois Press.

Over lobster rolls, we talked of the debate we witnessed between Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison in 1974 at our joint first Worldcon, how the Connie Willis story “A Letter from the Clearys” made the scales fall from his eyes, why George Saunders is his “favorite contemporary American short story writer,” and more.

Here’s how you can grab a seat at the table— (more…)

I visited yesterday with a friend who’s winnowing down his book collection, and as we reviewed what remained on his shelves, we reminisced about those we’d both read a long time ago, including favorites by the likes of James H. Schmitz and Harry Harrison. He loved them so much he couldn’t bear to part with them.

But there was one book he was hanging on to not because it was so good, but because it was so bad.

He called Vanguard to Venus, by Jeffery Lloyd Castle, the worst science fiction novel he’d ever read.

I’d never heard of the 1957 novel or its author, but one thing was clear—whatever the quality of the words between the covers, the book’s back cover blurb was one of the best I’d ever read.

Check out its bold claims, including an ALL CAPS pronouncement that science fiction is “an exciting and imaginative NEW FORM OF LITERATURE that is attracting literally tens of thousands of new readers every year.”

How could you not love a blurb like that?

I hate eating in hotel restaurants, but never more so than when I’m trying to record an episode of Eating the Fantastic.

Not only does the food there tend to rise only to the level of the merely edible (if you’re lucky), but breakfast during a convention means many interruptions as the usual tablehopping occurs, with people popping by to say hi. Plus you get no sense of place, as one hotel restaurant is pretty much like another, especially when it comes to breakfast.

So when it came time to seek out a good setting in Quincy, Massachusetts to chat during Readercon with six-time World Fantasy Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer Jeffrey Ford, whose new short story collection A Natural History of Hell was recently published by Small Beer Press, I looked for something off-site and more authentic.

And found it in McKay’s Breakfast and Lunch. When I read a review about “a popular townie joint” that served food which was “simple and straightforward (no creme brulee French toast or maple ganache cinnamon bread here),” I knew I’d discovered a spot with some character. So that’s where I took Jeff.

We talked about how being edited by Jennifer Brehl made him a better writer, what it was like to be taught by the legendary John Gardner, why he admitted “I don’t really know dick about science fiction or fantasy,” and much more.

Here’s how you can join us— (more…)