As I prepared to lunch with this episode’s guest, I was startled to realize I’d last interviewed him in 1974—43 years ago! Back then, I was an assistant editor in the Marvel Bullpen, while Marv Wolfman was (among many other things) scripting Tomb of Dracula and editing Crazy magazine, not yet having ascended to the role of Editor-in-Chief. And it was my job to report on his doings for the readers of F.O.O.M., Marvel’s official fan magazine.

Over the course of his career, Marv did a whole lot more than what I talked with him about back then. He went on to script the adventures of many legacy characters for both Marvel and DC, including the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Superman, and Green Lantern, and during that time he also co-created the characters of Blade, Bullseye, Destiny, Nova, and many others. He wrote the Teen Titans comic for 16 years. There’s even more to Marv than that, of course, as you’ll find out when you give this episode a listen.

Our lunch took place on the Sunday of the recent Baltimore Comic-Con when we fled the convention enter for La Tavola restaurant in the heart of Little Italy.

We discussed his horrifying early job as a DC Comics intern destroying (and in some cases rescuing) original art, why he loves the science fiction writer Alfred Bester, how his writing back when he started out was a blend of John Broome and Stan Lee, what he learned from binge-reading 181 issues of Spider-Man before starting to script it himself, what it was like returning to DC after his years at Marvel, why he felt he could write Tomb of Dracula even though when he was handed the assignment he’d never read the Bram Stoker novel or seen any of the movies, his secret to making the Teen Titans seem like actual teens, why he owes his career to Gene Colan, and much, more.

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This completely unpredicted, absolutely unanticipated, and totally unexpected new episode—with horror writers Brian Keene, Lesley Conner, Mary SanGiovanni, Damien Angelica Walters, J.P. Sloan, and Eric Hendrixson—is one I had no idea I was going to record until I was about to record it.

Last week, former guest Brian Keene—who can be heard in Episode 34’s career-spanning conversation—tweeted about an appearance he’d be making at Frederick Community College for a panel discussion on publishing and horror. Since Frederick’s only an hour away, I figured I’d drop by. And at the last minute, as I was about to take off early this past Monday afternoon, I thought—hey, why don’t I record the event?

I wasn’t planning to repurpose it here, but I’d thought Brian would perhaps want to use it for his own podcast, The Horror Show with Brian Keene, the podcast on which I’d appeared back in June 2015 which inspired me to create this podcast. So I grabbed my recording equipment before hopping into my Jeep and heading East.

What happened instead was that after all those horror writers were done entertaining a room filled with creative writing students, and I offered the audio file to Brian, he said—you know what, Scott? Since you did the work of recording the panel, you use it. Which I normally wouldn’t and couldn’t do, because my podcast is, after all, Eating the Fantastic, and not Sitting in the Front Row of a Conference Room Listening to Others Talk About the Fantastic.

But luckily, since the group had planned to grab a bite to eat after their  panel before they hit the road, we did get to chat while breaking bread together. I was able to sit with them at a large round table in the Frederick Community College cafeteria, and as we inhaled salads and stromboli, I pushed them to share some of the brutal truths of horror publishing, the ones they didn’t reveal on the panel for fear of crushing the hopes and dreams of young, innocent, beginning writers. Which I hope you’ll feel is a good enough excuse to justify sharing the panel itself as part of the episode before that meal.

So prepare to join Brian Keene (author of more than 40 novels, and winner of the 2014 World Horror Grand Master Award.), Lesley Conner (managing editor of Apex publications and author of the novel The Weight of Chains), Mary SanGiovanni (author of the The Hollower trilogy, whose most recent novels are Chills and Savage Woods), Damien Angelica Walters (Stoker-nominated writer of the short story collection Sing Me Your Scars and the novel Paper Tigers), J.P. Sloan (author of The Dark Choir urban fantasy series), and Eric Hendrixson (bizarro author of Drunk Driving Champion and Bucket of Face) for an fascinating afternoon as they share what they know about the business of writing and publishing horror.

And what did they discuss in what’s became Episode 53 of Eating the Fantastic?

Lesley Conner explained what most writers don’t realize about first serial rights, and why if you can’t take rejection, you should stop now. Mary SanGiovanni compared your social media presence to singing in your underwear, and revealed the dreadful warning Charles L. Grant shared with her about the writing life. J. P. Sloan recommended the small press, while at the same time recommending you watch out, and also advised to be careful about the illusion of access. Brian Keene passed on the the best writing advice he ever got—from Keith Giffin—and told of the time he was willing to walk away from life-changing money. Damien Angelica Walters shared the ways it never gets easier, and why you need to overcome your fear of saying no. And finally, Eric Hendrixson pointed out why contracts are like a superpower, and sketched the hierarchy of what kind of writing is valuable.

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It’s time to say farewell to Helsinki—and hello to award-winning writer Amal El-Mohtar—in the final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during Worldcon 75. Our meal took place a mere 36 hours after she’d won this year’s Best Short Story Hugo Award for “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” for which she’d also won a Nebula Award earlier in the year.

We chose one of the city’s oldest seafood restaurants for our lunch—Sea Horse, which has been in operation since 1934. And it’s lasted that long for a good reason! We enjoyed the food and the ambiance so much I returned a few days later for dinner with my wife during our post-Worldcon stay.

Amal’s stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and Apex. Her stories “The Green Book” and “Madeleine” were finalists for the Nebula Award in 2011 and 2015 respectively, and “The Truth About Owls” won the Locus Award in 2015. She won the Rhysling award for Best Short Poem in 2009, 2011 and 2014, and in 2012 received the Richard Jefferies Poetry Prize.

We discussed the importance of female friendship, the first poem she wrote at age 6 1/2 (which you’ll hear her recite), how Charles de Lint helped her get her first bookstore job, the importance of welcoming newcomers into the tent of science fiction and fantasy, what she learned about empathy from Nalo Hopkinson, the only time she ever cosplayed, which book made her a writer, why Storm is her favorite member of the X-Men, the delicious magic of honey, the difficulties of reviewing books in a field where everybody knows everybody, and much more.

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It’s time to head back to Helsinki for the fourth episode recorded during the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, following up on Johanna Sinisalo, Chen Quifan, and Xia Jia.

This time around, you get to listen in on my lunch at Mero-Himal Nepalese Restaurant with Karin Tidbeck during the penultimate day of the con. Tidbeck writes fiction in both Swedish and English, and debuted in 2010 with the Swedish short story collection Vem är Arvid Pekon? Her English debut, the 2012 collection Jagannath, was awarded the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts William L. Crawford Fantasy Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her novel debut, Amatka, was recently released in English.

We discussed the serious nature of Live Action Role-Playing games in Nordic countries, the way pretending to be a 150-year-old vampire changed her life, how discovering Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics made her forget time and space, the most important lesson she learned from the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing Workshop, how she uses improvisational exercises to teach beginning writers, why Amatka grew from a poetry collection into a novel, what made her say, “I’m not here to answer questions, I’m here to ask them,” and more.

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It seems like only yesterday I asked Sarah Pinsker to be my guinea pig for the first episode of a new podcast. Can it really be time to for me to invite you to eavesdrop on the 50th episode of Eating the Fantastic?

Amazingly—yes, it can!

Here we we are, more than 20 months later, and those of you who’ve followed my journey have listened as I’ve shared at times full meals—at times a donut, during my two lightning–round episodes—with more than 75 guests. And the feasting’s not over yet!

This time around, I’m inviting you to join me and my guest for lunch during Worldcon at Parrilla Española, the oldest Spanish restaurant in Helsinki.

And who is this episode’s guest?

Xia Jia, whose short stories have been published in Nature, Clarkesworld, Year’s Best SF, Science Fiction World, and many other venues. She’s won five Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction as well as six Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese. But her science fiction skills have been visible on more than just the page, because she directed the 2007 science fiction film Parapax, in which she also acted, appearing as three different identities of the protagonist across parallel universes.

We discussed how reading science fiction gave her the courage to take risks; what it means when she says she writes not hard SF, nor soft SF, nor slipstream, nor cyberpunk, but “porridge sci-fi;” why Ray Bradbury matters so much to her; the challenges of writing in Chinese, writing in English, and translating from one language to the other; our mutual love for Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler; how The Three-Body Problem changed the perceptions of science fiction in China, why she has faith she’ll eventually get to Mars, and more.

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Early one morning during the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, I met Chinese writer Chen Quifan for breakfast at Café Engel, a restaurant located in a 1765 building which was originally a pipe factory. We ate by a window which looked out on Helsinki Cathedral, built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

Chen Qiufan has published more thirty stories in venues such as Science Fiction World, Esquire, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Interzone, and F&SF. His 2013 debut novel, The Waste Tide, was praised by Liu Cixin as “the pinnacle of near-future SF writing.” He’s the most widely translated young writer of science fiction in China. He has won Taiwan’s Dragon Fantasy Award, China’s Galaxy and Nebula Awards, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award with Ken Liu.

We discussed why his favorite character from all of science fiction is Mr. Spock, what kept him going during the seven years between the sales of his first and second stories, the reasons H. G. Wells is a genius, why he believes science fiction is the greatest realism, the differences in reading protocols between Chinese and non-Chinese readers, why he hopes his own upcoming science fiction movie will defy his prediction there’ll be many bad SF movies to come in Chinese cinema, and more.

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Now that Readercon is over for Eating the Fantastic—you’ve already listened to the James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel episodes recorded there, haven’t you?—it’s time to head to Helsinki for the 75th World Science Fiction Convention.

I managed to record five episodes while in Finland, with the first being lunch at Kaarna Baari & Keittiö, which advertises itself as serving Finnish food with a Scandavian twist. I must admit, though, that I’m not familiar enough with either of those cuisines to know exactly where they’d converge on a culinary Venn diagram. I do know, however, that the food was excellent, and I was so impressed with what my guest and I ate there I later returned for dinner with my wife.

Joining me this episode was Johanna Sinisalo, who was one of this year’s Worldcon Guests of Honor. Her first novel, Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi (Not Before Sundown) won the Finlandia Prize for Literature in 2000 and the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial award in 2004. Her novel Enkelten vert (Blood of Angels) won the English PEN Award. She was a Nebula Award nominee in 2009 for “Baby Doll.” Her novel Auringon ydin (The Core of the Sun) recently won the 2017 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. She has won the Atorox award for the best Finnish-language SF short story seven times.

We discussed what she learned in advertising that helped her be a better writer, how Moomins helped set her on the path to becoming a creator, why she held off attempting a novel until she had dozens of short stories published, the reason the Donald Duck comics of Carl Barks were some of her greatest inspirations, the circuitous way being an actor eventually led to her writing the science fiction film Iron Sky, and more.

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The second episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded while on a meal break from this year’s Readercon—which occurred the day after my dinner with James Patrick Kelly—was with award-winning science fiction writer John Kessel. We had lunch by the water on a warm sunny day at Bay Pointe Waterfront Restaurant in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Kessel’s latest novel, The Moon and The Other, was released in April from Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. He’s a two-time Nebula Award winner, first in 1982 for his novella “Another Orphan,” then in 2008 for the novelette “Pride and Prometheus.” He set a new record with that second award, in that the 26 years between the two was (at the time) the longest gap for a winner in Nebula history. His short story “Buffalo”—one of my all-time favorites in or out of genre, and one which I reread often—won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 1992.

We discussed why he suddenly has two novels coming out within a year two decades after his last one, how attending the 1969 St. Louis Worldcon changed his life, the ways in which his objections to “The Cold Equations” and Ender’s Game are at their heart the same, his early days attempting to emulate Thomas M. Disch, the time-travel short story he couldn’t whip into shape for Damon Knight, which author broke his 26-year Nebula Awards record for the longest gap between wins, the secret behind the success of his many collaborations with James Patrick Kelly, and more.

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During last year’s Readercon, I recorded four episodes of Eating the Fantastic—one-on-ones with Resa Nelson, Jeffrey Ford, and F. Brett Cox, plus the extremely popular Donut Spectacular, which featured 12 donuts and 15 guests in a beautifully anarchic lightning-round episode. This year, however, I’d only planned to record two—which was a good thing, because hardware malfunctions ended my attempt to record with John Kessel just as we began, sending me scrambling around Massachusetts in search of replacement equipment.

I was able to locate a new H4n Zoom digital recorder in time for dinner with this episode’s guest, James Patrick Kelly, and my Friday breakfast with John was rescheduled to come off as a Saturday dinner instead, so all’s well that ends well, but still … I could have done without that kind of heart-stopping terror.

When I’d asked Jim which kind of cuisine he’d prefer for our chat—because as you may have noticed, I do try to keep my guests happy, the better to loosen their tongues for you—he admitted to a weakness for Fettuccine Carbonara. That led us to Quincy’s Gennaro’s Eatery, which didn’t have Fettuccine Carbonara on the menu, but as the place served both Tortellini Carbonara and Fettuccine Alfredo, that seemed close enough.

James Patrick Kelly is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer who recently published a career short story retrospective as part of the Centipede Press Masters of Science Fiction series. And had I not been turned down by the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1974, I might have shared a dorm room with him! (But don’t worry. I was accepted in 1979.)

We discussed the reason he needed to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop twice—and why the rules were then changed so no one could do it again, the suggestion Kate Wilhelm made that saved one of his short stories, why his reaction to comics as a kid was “Marvel, yes, DC, feh,” how the science fiction field survived the Cyberpunk/Humanist wars of the ‘80s, why he takes an expansive view of fanfic, how Cory Doctorow inspired him to enter the world of podcasting early, what allows him and frequent collaborator John Kessel to work together so well, his advice for how writing 10 endings to a story in progress will help writers find the right ending, and more.

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I returned home yesterday from my trip to Helsinki, where I attended the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, but news of what I did there and with whom will have to wait, for today is all about the Nebula Awards weekend which took place in Pittsburgh earlier this year.

There, I brunched with A. Merc Rustad at DiAnoia’s Eatery, which in December was voted one of the best new restaurants of 2016 by Pittsburgh magazine, and was included in Eater‘s list of the city’s hottest new restaurants. And who can resist fried dough filled with nutella?

A. Merc Rustad has published fiction in Lightspeed, Uncanny, Shimmer, and other magazines, and their short story “How To Become A Robot In 12 Easy Steps” was included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. They were on that weekend’s Nebula ballot in the short story category for “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door,” which is included in their debut short story collection So You Want to Be a Robot, described by Publishers Weekly as “unmissable.”

We discussed some terrible writing advice which messed with their head and the way they got over it, how the Redwall series by Brian Jacques turned them from a reader to a writer, why some fan fiction doesn’t get the fan fiction label while other fan fiction does, the reason the animated television series Beast Wars: Transformers was such a major influence both professionally and personally, why they almost destroyed their Nebula-nominated story “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door,” the secrets to assembling a short story collection, and more.

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