Happy New Year! As 2021 begins, Eating the Fantastic will continue acting as if we’re living in the world we deserve rather than the one we got, and break bread — albeit remotely — with those we would have met in the flesh at various conventions which unfortunately had to cancel their in-person incarnations. This episode, I invite you to join me at the table with writer/editor/publisher Ian Randal Strock as we pretend the recent Capclave had actually happened as a mass gathering rather than virtually.

Ian — who may be the person with whom I’ve appeared on more panels than any other — is currently the owner, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Gray Rabbit Publications and its speculative fiction imprint, Fantastic Books. He began his genre career by working at both Analog and Asimov’s magazines for six years, starting out as an editorial assistant, and rising to be Associate Editor.

He left to launch his own magazine of science fiction and science fact Artemis, which he edited and published for four years. He’s twice won the Analog Readers Poll — both for his short fiction and a science fact article. He’s also quite a history buff, having published The Presidential Book of Lists, Ranking the Vice Presidents, and other political titles.

We discussed what he said upon meeting Isaac Asimov which caused the Grand Master to refuse to write him a limerick, why he prefers The Princess Bride novel to the movie, the reason his father advised him not to name his publishing company after himself, why the 1,000-word short story is his natural length, the question editor Stan Schmidt asked before purchasing his first story for Analog, the essay which so thrilled him he felt compelled to start his own magazine, the most difficult aspect of running your own publishing company, why ending a story too late isn’t as great a sin as starting one too early, how his fascination with presidential trivia began in the bathroom, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)

I learned an interesting data point about the new paperback edition of my short story collection These Words Are Haunted from Fantastic Books publisher Ian Randal Strock, who was selling copies of same at Readercon as well as my science fiction collection What We Still Talk About.

According to Ian, people walking by his table would be attracted to the cover of These Words Are Haunted and pause to pick it up—those monstrous green letters really pop, don’t they?—only to then put it down again and instead buy a copy of What We Still Talk About. By the time the con was over, he’d sold only a single copy of the former, but he’d sold out of the latter!

This does not totally disappoint me. The cover did its job, getting copies of the book into the hands of potential readers. That this time around, those potential readers were more interested in science fiction than horror doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success. A sale is a sale. At a different sort of convention, those figures will likely be reversed.

Coincidentally, while I was at Readercon, I received a photo from the artist who’d provided the zombie font which appeared on the cover of the book as part of Chris Kalb’s final design—Memo Angeles.

Memo lives in Veracruz, Mexico, and I worried that the copy I’d sent him might not survive the vagaries of international mail, but as you can see, it did. Noting Memo’s expression as he holds the book, however, I’m not entire sure he did!

I know, I know. Readercon’s more than a week behind me in the rear-view mirror, and I’m only just now getting around to posting my final video from the event. It violates Edelman’s Rule of Convention Reporting, which requires that all write-ups, photos, and videos be shared as contemporaneously as possible, to increase the schadenfreude of those who couldn’t make it.

But you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’m hopeful this last bit of video will allow you to do so.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to capture this 10:00 a.m. panel, since Saturday night’s dinner (which I promise I’ll tell you about next) didn’t have me getting to sleep until around 2:30 a.m. But I forced myself awake because, hey, Readercon only comes around once a year, and it would be shame to surrender a panel to fatigue. So here’s “Books That Deserve to Remain Unspoiled,” featuring Jonathan Crowe, Gavin Grant, Gayle Surrette, Kate Nepveu, and Graham Sleight. Their mandate was—

In a 2013 review of Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed, Stephen King stated, “While I consider the Internet-fueled concern with ‘spoilers’ rather infantile, the true secrets of well-made fiction deserve to be kept.” How does spoiler-acquired knowledge change our reading of fiction? Are some books more “deserving” of going unspoiled than others? If so, what criteria do we apply to determine those works?

And here’s the panel itself!

After an hour of schmoozing and signing more books (for the first time ever, an equal number of copies of my zombie and science fiction collections were sold this weekend; zombie usually win), I attended David Shaw and B. Diane Martin’s presentation on the science of ice cream, which included—samples! (more…)