I wasn’t able to make Ray Nayler‘s launch event last month for his new novella The Tusks of Extinction at D.C.’s Lost City Bookstore, but we were able to get together for lunch just a few days later — and you can join us at the table.

Nayler is the author of the Locus Award-winning debut novel The Mountain in the Sea, which was also a finalist for the Nebula Award and the L.A. Times Book Awards’ Ray Bradbury Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. He began publishing speculative fiction in 2015 in Asimov’s, and since then, his stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Vice, Nightmare, and other magazines. His story “Yesterday’s Wolf” won the 2022 Clarkesworld Readers’ poll, and the same year, his story “Muallim” won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award, his story “Father”, in French translation, won the Bifrost readers’ award, and his novelette “Sarcophagus” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

In addition to his speculative fiction, Ray has published in many other genres, from mainstream literary fiction to comics. Those have appeared in Ellery Queen, Crimewave, Hardboiled, Cemetery Dance, Deathrealm, Queen’s Quarterly, the Berkeley Fiction Review, and other journals. He’s also a widely published poet, with work in the Atlanta Review, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Weave, Juked, Able Muse, Sentence, and many more. He is currently Diplomatic Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy at The George Washington University.

We discussed how his time living outside the U.S. helped him become a better science fiction writer, why he feels the greatest effect of having written The Mountain in the Sea was a culinary one, the reason we agree our favorite part of writing is rewriting, the sad results of his accidental Facebook experiment, whether his mammoth memory behavior is based on scientific facts or is purely speculative, why we’ll likely never be able to truly resurrect extinct species, how changes in culture can affect evolution, the train trip where he received career advice from a stranger he didn’t realize was Neil Gaiman, why we aren’t totally in control of our writing destinies, how he’s haunted by the ghost of an alternate version of himself, plus much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our lunch at Hilo Poke and Sushi — (more…)

Most episodes of Eating the Fantastic are recorded during my travels on the convention circuit, but I also occasionally harvest conversations when it’s the guests who are doing the traveling, coming to my neck of the woods on book tours or to lecture at a local library or museum. My chat this time around came about because I was able to grab dinner with one of the participants of Baltimore’s Charm City Spec reading series before the most recent installment.

Jo Miles is the author of The Gifted of Brennex trilogy, which began with Warped State, continued in Dissonant State, which was released the week before our get-together, and finishes up in Ravenous State, which will be available February 20th. Jo’s short fiction has been published in magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, as well as in the anthologies Little Blue Marble, Game On!, Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Defiance in Victory, and others. Their story “The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea Fish” in Strange Horizons was nominated for a WSFA Small Press Award. Jo is a graduate of the Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox writers’ workshops.

Oh, and by the way — the ebook of Warped State is currently on sale for $2.99 in celebration of the upcoming release of Ravenous State.

We discussed how what began as a short story blossomed into a trilogy, the way to juggle multiple points of view and keep them balanced, the science fictional precursors which helped them create their sentient ship, how to properly pace the arc of a burgeoning romance, the importance of making sure a redemption arc feels earned, the way their mandate for writing optimistic science fiction came to be, the differing ways we were each affected by the pandemic, how the Taos Toolbox workshop teaches writers to break down the beats of their stories (and why that terrifies me), plus much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Tamber’s Restaurant — (more…)

That time of year has rolled around again, and earlier today, the Glasgow Worldcon opened 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 take my 2023 short story publications into consideration — but I’d also like you to consider my Eating the Fantastic podcast in the category of Best Fancast.

Last year, I invited listeners to eavesdrop on 26 meals with amazing creators, as well as one of the show’s lightning-round donut episodes, something which I’d sadly been unable to pull off since 2019. (You know why.)

Below are links to all 2023 episodes so you can have a taste and decide whether the podcast — which I launched in February 2016 — is your kind of ear candy. I hope you enjoy your eavesdropping!

Feast on French toast with Ron Marz in Episode 189 of Eating the Fantastic

Lunch on Laotian food with Cory Doctorow in Episode 190 of Eating the Fantastic

Collaborate over breakfast with Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni in Episode 191 of Eating the Fantastic

Get crabby with writer Jennifer R. Povey in Episode 192 of Eating the Fantastic

Polish off a Polish meal with Walter Jon Williams in Episode 193 of Eating the Fantastic

Settle in for arancini with Annalee Newitz in Episode 194 of Eating the Fantastic

Savor sea food with Theodora Goss in Episode 195 of Eating the Fantastic

Share crispy spinach with Sheree Renée Thomas in Episode 196 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on fish and chips with the prolific Robert Jeschonek in Episode 197 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch on mahi mahi with L. Marie Wood in Episode 198 of Eating the Fantastic

Dip into durian ice cream with William Shunn in Episode 199 of Eating the Fantastic

Join J. Michael Straczynski for breakfast on Episode 200 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into a baconless BLT with Jordan Kurella in Episode 201 of Eating the Fantastic

It’s time for a ramen reunion with my 1979 Clarion classmate Rhondi Salsitz in Episode 202 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into baklava with Charlie Jane Anders in Episode 203 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on Fettuccine Alfredo with Howard Bender on Episode 204 of Eating the Fantastic

Chow down on crispy pickled cucumbers with Lisa Morton in Episode 205 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch on a monstrous fish sandwich with Michael Bailey in Episode 206 of Eating the Fantastic

Join Hildy Silverman for a Georgian feast in Episode 207 of Eating the Fantastic

Relive Capclaves past and present during Eating the Fantastic’s lightning-round Capclave Donut Carnival

Dine on oxtail stew with Lauren Beukes in Episode 209 of Eating the Fantastic

Chat and chew over fried calamari with Michael Marano in Episode 210 of Eating the Fantastic

Binge BBQ with the legendary Mike Gold in Episode 211 of Eating the Fantastic

Polish off a Peruvian lunch with Alex Shvartsman in Episode 212 of Eating the Fantastic

Snack on spanakopita with Neil Clarke in Episode 213 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on crab fried rice with Nina Kiriki Hoffman in Episode 214 of Eating the Fantastic

Join Pat Murphy for lunch at “the single best restaurant in the world” in Episode 215 of Eating the Fantastic

Thank you for your consideration!

Welcome to the last of four Eating the Fantastic episodes coming to you from the recent World Fantasy Convention weekend in Kansas City, following my chats with Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Pat Murphy, and Izzy Wasserstein. And why end my trip with a single guest when I can have two?

Gary K. Wolfe is a science fiction critic, editor, and biographer who’s had a monthly review column in Locus since December 1991. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2006 for the book Soundings: Reviews 1992–1996, and again in 2011, for the book Bearings: Reviews 1997–2001. Over the years, he’s won the Eaton Award from the Eaton Conference on Science Fiction, the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and the British Science Fiction Association Award for nonfiction for the previously mentioned Soundings: Reviews 1992–1996. He’s also (among many other things) edited two wonderful volumes for the Library of America — American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956 and American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958.

Jonathan Strahan is a nineteen-time Hugo Award nominated editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He’s won the Aurealis Award, the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism and Review, the Australian National Science Fiction Convention’s “Ditmar Award”, and the Peter McNamara Achievement Award. As a freelance editor, he’s edited or co-edited more than sixty original and reprint anthologies and seventeen single-author story collections and has been a consulting editor for Tordotcom Publishing and Tor.com since 2014, where he’s acquired and edited two novels, 36 novellas, and a selection of short fiction. Strahan won the World Fantasy Award (Special – Professional) in 2010 for his work as an editor, and his anthologies have won the Locus Award for Best Anthology four times (2008, 2010, 2013, 2021) and the Aurealis Award seven times. He has been Reviews Editor at Locus since 2002.

As the reason I’m with both of them is — together, they’ve been cohosts of The Coode Street Podcast since May 2010, which had 640 episodes live the last time I looked, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast ten times, winning once.

We discussed why The Coode Street Podcast is “the Cheers of podcasts,” the foolish statement made during their first episode which meant there had to be more, the identity of the guest who was most resistant to appearing on their show, the reason the podcast made Paul Cornell want to run, the different interviewing techniques necessary when having conversations with the voluble vs. the reticent, the white whales whom they could never snare, how to make sure we’re speaking to more than just our own generations, their advice for anyone who wants to launch a podcast, the way to avoid getting canned responses out of guests, how their conversational methods have changed over 13 years, whether critiquing books or rejecting stories has ever affected relationships with a guest, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Chef J BBQ — (more…)

It’s time to return to the World Fantasy Convention for a third culinary conversation from Kansas City following my dinners with Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Pat Murphy The guest you and I will be breaking bread with this time around is Izzy Wasserstein, who’s published fiction in Analog, Apex, Lightspeed, Fantasy, Fireside, and many other magazines, plus such anthologies as A Punk Rock Future, Resist Fascism, Future Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk Tales, Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die, and more.

Many of those stories have been collected in her marvelous short story collection All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her poetry collections include When Creation Falls and This Ecstasy They Call Damnation. Her forthcoming debut novella These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart will be released by Tachyon in March, and you should preorder it right now.

We discussed the way Sarah Pinsker sparked her lightbulb moment, why it’s important for her to learn your chosen D&D character, which Star Trek: The Next Generation characters caused her to take her first stab at writing, the change she’d make in her life if she were independently wealthy, why we both miss those paper rejection slips from publishing’s pre-electronic days, the disconnect between the way we feel about certain stories of ours and how readers respond, the most important gift she was given by the Clarion writing workshop, our perverse love for second-person present-tense stories, how surprised she was when she sold a story to Analog, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue — (more…)

2023 is almost over, but before the year ends, surely you have room for one more Eating the Fantastic meal — especially since it’s at what Calvin Trillin once called “the single best restaurant in the world.” Join me at Arthur Bryant’s BBQ for the second conversation coming to you from the Kansas City World Fantasy Convention, following last episode’s dinner with Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

My guest this time around is Pat Murphy, who won the Nebula Award for her 1986 novel The Falling Woman, plus a second Nebula the same year for her novelette, “Rachel in Love.” She also won the Philip K. Dick Award for her 1990 short story collection Points of Departure, and the World Fantasy Award for her 1990 novella, Bones. For more than 20 years, she  and Paul Doherty cowrote the recurring Science column in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1991. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve known Pat for a loooong time, and I can tell you exactly how long — we met on September 4, 1980, more than 43 years prior to the conversation you’re about to hear. If you want to learn exactly how and why I can pinpoint that date, well, the episode will reveal all.

We discussed the part of Robert A. Heinlein’s famed rules of writing with which she disagrees, why she felt the need to attend the Clarion writing workshop even after having made several sales to major pro markets, the occasional difficulties in decoding what an editor is truly trying to tell you, the importance of never giving up your day jobs, why she can’t read Dylan Thomas when she’s working on a novel, the differences between the infighting we’ve seen in the science fiction vs. literary fields, what we perceive as our personal writing flaws, a Clarion critiquing mystery I’ve been attempting to solve since 1979, the science fiction connection which launched her career at the Exploratorium, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Arthur Bryant’s BBQ — (more…)

The year’s almost over, but here at Eating the Fantastic, October’s World Fantasy Convention has only just begun.

The first of four conversations I brought back for you from Kansas City is with Nina Kiriki Hoffman, who aside from having sung the earworm “Feelings” with me more times than I can count, has either won or been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the HOMer award from CompuServe, the Endeavour Award, the Mythopoeic Society Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award.

She won the 2008 Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “Trophy Wives,” and her novel The Thread That Binds the Bones won the Bram Stoker Award for first novel. Other novels include The Silent Strength of Stones (a sequel to The Thread That Binds the Bones), A Fistful of Sky, and A Stir of Bones. Her novella ‘”Unmasking,” published in 1992 by Axolotl Press, was a finalist for the 1993 World Fantasy Award. Her novella “Haunted Humans” was a finalist for the 1995 Nebula Award for Best Novella and on the same ballot as her novelette”The Skeleton Key,” shortlisted for Best Novelette.

We discussed the way a ghost story which left her wanting more led to her taking her writing more seriously, her early reactions to reading Robert A. Heinlein and Ursula K. Le Guin, how the Clarion workshop convinced her she could have a career as a writer, the way she wanted to grow up to be a combination of Ray Bradbury and Zenna Henderson, what she learned about characterization from Samuel R. Delany while at Clarion, the major difference she saw between the horror and science fiction communities during the early days of the Internet, how my perception of the arc her career was affected not by what she wrote but by what she sold, the lesson Ellen Datlow taught her which she passes on to her students, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop — (more…)

It’s time to return to the Rockville, Maryland convention Capclave for a second episode of Eating the Fantastic, following my Peruvian lunch with Alex Shvartsman. This time around you’re invited to dinner with Neil Clarke, who’s best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld magazine, launched in October 2006. Clarkesworld has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once).

Neil himself is also an eleven-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor-Short Form (winning twice), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and recipient of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award from SFWA. In the seventeen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, stories that he’s edited have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, Stoker, and various other awards.

He also  edits Forever — a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His latest anthology, New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction (co-edited with Xia Jia — who was a guest of this podcast way back in Episode 50 — and Regina Kanyu Wang), was published in July.

We discussed how Clarkesworld was born (and what he wishes he’d known back when the magazine launched), the motivation behind his unrivaled response times, the irresponsible impact of AI on science fiction and what he’s doing to help ameliorate it, how he proactively analyzes submission data to make sure he receives stories from diverse voices, the differing effect of the pandemic lockdown on first time vs. established authors, why it’s hard for people to sell him a time travel story, his problems with Star Trek‘s transporter, the true meaning of rejections, why reading science fiction in translation is so important, Lester del Rey’s prophetic warning about the provincialism of U.S. fandom, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Mykonos Grill — (more…)

This episode serves up the first of two conversations I captured last month during Capclave in Rockville, Maryland. My guest this time around is Capclave regular Alex Shvartsman, with whom I’ve pontificated on many panels over the years.

Shvartsman is the author of the new fantasy novel Kakistocracy, as well as The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani’s Crown (2019). More than 120 of his short stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, Fireside, Weird Tales, Galaxy’s Edge, and many other venues. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction in 2014 and was a three-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction. His translations from Russian have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov’s, Analog, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere.

He’s also the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects series of humorous SF/F, as well as a variety of other anthologies, including The Cackle of Cthulhu, Humanity 2.0, and Funny Science Fiction. For five years he edited Future Science Fiction Digest, a magazine that focused on international fiction. And on top of all that, he’s one of the greatest Magic: The Gathering players ever, ranking way up there in tournaments from 1998-2004, something I hadn’t known about him even though I’ve known him for years.

We discussed how intimations of mortality got him to start writing fiction, what he learned as a pro player of Magic: the Gathering which affected his storytelling, why he set aside his initial urge to write novels in favor of short stories, which U.S. science fiction writers are more famous in Russia than their home country, the reason his success as a writer and editor of humor came as a surprise, why he feels it’s important to read cover letters, the secret to writing successful flash fiction, his “lighthouse” method of plotting, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at La Canela, a Peruvian restaurant which has long been popular with Capclave attendees — (more…)

The pros who attend Baltimore Comic-Con tend to be so tightly programmed it’s nearly impossible for me to spirit anyone away to chat and chew during the con itself. So I’m extremely pleased I was able to convince the legendary Mike Gold to head out for dinner the night before the con began.

Gold entered the comic industry as DC’s first public relations manager. But as I was astounded to discover, he did some PR earlier than that — as the media coordinator for the defense at the Chicago Conspiracy trial, acting as the intermediary between the press and the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, when he was only a teen.

After DC, in 1983, he launched First Comics, where he edited Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg, Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus, Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar, Mike Grell’s Jon Sable Freelance, and many other classic series. Then after his move back to DC in 1986, he edited such titles as Legends, The Shadow, The Question, Action Comics Weekly, Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Blackhawk, and others.

In 2006, he co-founded ComicMix, and in 2011, he received the first Humanitarian Award from the Hero Initiative. And — since he’s five years older than I am — meaning I would have read Fantastic Four #1 at age six, and Mike at eleven, five years counting for a lot back then — I enjoyed digging into our differing perspectives about the early days of comics.

We discussed the way his hiring at DC Comics was all Neal Adams’ fault, how the guerrilla marketing he learned from Abbie Hoffman helped him quadruple direct market sales, the Steve Ditko Creeper cover which sent a not-so-secret message to publisher Carmine Infantino, why editor Murray Boltinoff compared Marvel Comics to the Beatles (and not in a good way), which staffer was “the most disgusting human being I’d ever met in my life,” how First Comics was born, his secret weapon for getting creators to deliver their work on time, our differing contemporaneous exposure to Fantastic Four #1 (and how his related to Merrick Garland), the way an off-hand comment led to a classic John Byrne comic, how the comic book field is like a donut shop, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Heritage Smokehouse — (more…)