Since 2017 is coming to an end, it seems only right that the final Eating the Fantastic of the year should bring the world to an end as well. And through the miracle of time travel, that’s what you’re going to hear me and Episode 56’s guests talking about—in 1994!

Back in 1991, when I laid out for the publishers of Science Fiction Age the vision I had for that magazine—which I’d go on to edit through the year 2000—I knew that to compete with the existing SF mags of the time, and give readers what they couldn’t get elsewhere, one of the things we needed to do was deliver a science column unlike any published by the competition. So I decided I’d take science fiction writers who were also scientists out to lunch or dinner, then record, transcribe, and condense the conversations for publication.

Earlier this year, I happened to think back to those chats, and it occurred to me:

Eating in restaurants … while discussing the fantastic … with science fiction writers? Isn’t that what this podcast is all about?

So I ran to the basement and dug out the box which contained my old cassette tapes, all the while wondering whether any recordings of those Science Forums still existed, and if they did, whether the sound quality would justify sharing them with you.

Rummaging through that box, I discovered many tapes, and listened first to a recording of my March 1, 1994 lunch with Arlan Andrews, Sr. and  Charles Sheffield at the Bethesda, Maryland restaurant the Pines of Rome. Our subject was the many ways the world might end. I’d transcribed that talk, edited it down, and published it in the September 1994 issue of Science Fiction Age. 

The audio was in remarkably good condition for the three of us not having worn lapel mics, and since we were eating during the discussion—Charles even spoke about his cannoli—it seemed meant to be that our chat should get digitized and repurposed as an episode of Eating the Fantastic. The two of them uttered far too much wisdom for their voices not to be made more widely available. So get ready to slip back more than 23 years in time to hear their fascinating conversation about how the world might end.

Charles Sheffield won the Nebula and Hugo awards for his novelette “Georgia on My Mind” as well as the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Brother to Dragons. He was also a mathematician and physicist who served as a President of both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society. Sadly, he passed away in 2002 far too young at age 67.

Arlan Andrews, Sr. is the founder of SIGMA, a think tank of science fiction authors, a concept which came to him while working at the White House Science Office in 1992, when he realized government technologists and forecasters could use a dose of practical futurism from science fiction writers. After retiring from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico as Manager of the Advanced Manufacturing Initiatives Department, he cofounded several high-tech companies. He’s published more 400 pieces of fiction, fact articles, computer books and opinion pieces.

And I should point out that this episode’s guests did more than take part in the occasional Science Forum for Science Fiction Age—I also published fiction by each of them.

We discussed the end of the world, including the (then) coming millennium and whether that would be thing which took us out (hint: it wasn’t), whether the only way to survive might be for our species to evolve into something more, how strange it is that we worry more about changing the past than changing the future, whether we’re likely to destroy the planet ourselves before nature does it for us, why personal extinction might be all that really matters, whether cryonics will be the thing that saves us, why the process of dying is more frightening than death itself, why aliens coming to kill us is not a likely end, whether even if we do survive the end of the world, we can survive the heat death of the universe, why it makes no difference whether we choose to live as pessimists or optimists, and more.

Here’s how you can share eavesdrop on us— (more…)

Artificial Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky passed away two days ago, which immediately brought back memories of the Science Forum in which he took part in the (gulp!) March 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age.

Those memories proved not to be entirely accurate, as I learned when I thought of digging out the tapes from that session to see if any of the audio would be of a quality worth posting here. (more…)

There were many wonderful moments during last weekend’s Balticon, such as my reading, and the podcast I recorded with Brian Keene (about which more later), but the panel I enjoyed most was Saturday’s “Tales from the Slush Pile,” during which I shared a few intriguing letters I received while editing Science Fiction Age from 1992-2000. (I almost wrote “amusing” rather than “intriguing,” but I was not at all amused by the writer who threatened that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d behave like Carlos the Jackal.)

One of those letters, a response to one of the approximately 800 rejections I was forced to send out each month, was not only my favorite such response, but was so popular with the audience I thought it worth sharing here.

And so, in the video below, you can hear me read the only response to a Science Fiction Age rejection I ever liked … as well as offer a few words of advice.

I wish I could have shared the laughter and applause as well which attended my performance of this letter Saturday night, but as they say, you had to be there.

Back in 1993, once readers had digested a few issues of Science Fiction Age, we wanted to find out what they thought of it. (And we also, as you’ll see, wanted to at the same time nudge them to re-up their subscriptions.)

So out went a questionnaire …

… resulting in a suggestion with which no one could disagree. (more…)

Mike Ashley, who for years has been hard at work on his multi-volume series The History of the Science Fiction Magazine—there have been four installments so far, covering 1926–1935, 1936–1945, 1946–1955, and 1956–1965—is finally into modern times, which includes Science Fiction Age, the magazine I edited from 1992-2000.

That means I spent a few weeks recently struggling to remember all I could about editing the magazine, as well as the planning that went on long before you saw the first issue, which launched at the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando. Luckily, I didn’t have to rely entirely on memories, because when I was trying to convince Mark Hintz and Carl Gnam to choose me as the editor for their as-yet-unnamed science fiction magazine, I proactively prepared an 11-page document analyzing the periodicals market of the day and what could be our place in it, which I presented to them during our second meeting, held September 15, 1991.

I didn’t share the whole thing with Mike, nor will I share it with you—perhaps someday—but here are two excepts you might find interesting. So let’s go back more than 22 years, back to when I was hoping to persuade a couple of guys I’d only met a few days before to let me edit a new science fiction magazine for them. (A magazine which was their idea to begin with, but only a vague idea, as when they’d advertised in the Washington Post for a part-time editor they knew very little about the field, only that they perceived SF to be an underserved niche.) (more…)

With Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, beginning in Chicago just a few days from now, here’s a flashback to the 54th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A.con III, which took place in Anaheim, California. Life sure was a lot different back in 1996.

I’d been editing Science Fiction Age for four years by then, and was about to take over as editor of Sci-Fi Entertainment as well.

Sovereign Media was flying high, with a booth promoting those two magazines plus Realms of Fantasy, and as you can tell from my smile, I was having a blast. Because in addition to the pure joy I was having editing SFA, that was also the year I’d gotten my first Hugo Award nomination for Best Editor.

There’d be three more nominations to come, but the first was somehow the sweetest.

Here’s hoping you get to make some sweet memories of your own next weekend!

One thing Science Fiction Age could do during its run that no other science fiction magazines could—since it was a large, full-color publication—was include a six-page gallery each issue, usually focused on the work of a single artist. It was inevitable that the visionary Jean Giraud, better known (well, to some) by his pseudonym Moebius, would be one of those artists.

Giraud, who passed away earlier today of cancer, was a part of the magazine from the first issue. Though we never commissioned original artwork—he was out of our league in terms of paying for anything new out of our budget, so I’d go through his vast portfolio of existing work in attempts to match up pieces with stories that suited his spirit—I enjoyed working with him.

Check out the gallery below from our September 1996 issue as you—as we all—mourn the great artist today.

(more…)

I’d have shared a Science Fiction Age rejection slip with you long ago as part of this series if not for the fact that even though thousands of them passed through my hands during the eight years I edited the magazine (I was seeing 8,000-10,000 stories per year), I apparently didn’t save any for my records. So I had to wait for one of you to dig up a copy.

As you can see, it was certainly one of the wordier rejection slips out there.

Thanks to Brad Torgersen for taking the trouble to find this.

I’m going to write this post without digging into my old journals, notes, and memos, so I may end up being off on some of the dates, a point I want to get out of the way first thing. But the spirit of what I’m about to share with you is true, and I want you to hear it today even though I don’t have the time for that. I may someday write something longer and more detailed on the subject with all the i’s dotted, t’s crossed, and details revealed, but for now, this will have to do.

I edited Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000, but what very few people know is that I almost quit before the first issue ever appeared. (Or perhaps it was during the space between the first and second issue. I can no longer be sure without doing that research I mentioned.) And the reason for my possible resignation is a short story that’s just gotten published in the September/October issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a story which you’re only finally getting a chance to read nearly two decades later than you should have.

Sometime during 1992, before the first issue of Science Fiction Age was published, I read a submission titled “Anise” from writer Chris DeVito. I loved it, and sent out a contract immediately. If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, or if the name does mean something to you, but you only know Chris as the editor and publisher of the magazines such as Fuck Science Fiction or Proud Flesh, well … I still feel guilty about that.

Because “Anise” was NOT published in the second or third issue of SFA. Instead, the publishers overruled my decision due to the story’s explicit sexual content. I was told that maybe we could publish it a couple of years down the road, but not during the first year or two of our existence, when the chain stores were still paying close attention to the magazine’s content.

I was furious. (more…)

I’ve been thinking about exploding cows for the past couple of days, and of how I should finally share in some permanent way that long shaggy dog (shaggy cow?) story of mine. I’ve shared it several times to crowded rooms at conventions, but that’s as far as it’s gone.

What has me recalling those unfortunate bovines right now is The Collected Stores of Jack Williamson Volume Eight, which showed up in the mail this week.

When I began flipping through the book, what first caught my eye were the two Science Fiction Age covers printed on the inside front and back covers, which made me smile. Then, looking to see what was written about the stories reprinted from those issues, I got a little choked up, because I discovered that Jack had spoken to me from beyond the grave.

Since Jack died several years ago, I’d assumed that any story notes would have to be written by someone else, but no—Jack had known the contents of this volume so far in advance that he’d been able to write about them in 2005. And this is the final sentence of his passage about having “The Firefly Tree” published in Science Fiction Age:

It was the first of mine that Scott Edelman bought for Science Fiction Age, a great magazine while it lived.

Thank, Jack. That means a lot.

After reading that, I set the book aside for a bit, pleased by Jack’s kudos. When I picked it up again, it was to read Connie Willis’ introduction. I expected to see her love for Jack shining through, but what I didn’t expect to find were exploding cows.

Yes. Exploding cows. My exploding cows.

First Connie mentioned in passing that some of the difficulties those of us who visited Portales faced in getting there were “floods, blizzards, and exploding cows.” But in the next paragraph, discussing those of us who’d made multiple visits to the Jack Williamson Lectureship series, she got more explicit, saying that I personally had returned:

” … in spite of the fact that one time, he not only witnessed a wreck between a train and a truck full of cattle, but ended up on a smoke-filled plane which had to make an emergency landing.”

Which got me to thinking—I’ve told the tale of this adventure before crowds many times at cons, once with Connie on my lap as if she were a little girl being told a bedtime story. So isn’t it time I told it to you?

I think i should. But how? I can’t decide whether to simply write it out as a blog entry here, record a podcast, or create a YouTube video so you can see me as I recount that crazy day. I’m not sure when I’ll get the time to do any of those things, but when I finally do, which do you think it should be?

Let me know.

[BTW –this is my first attempt to post here from my iPad as opposed to my laptop, so if you’re reading this — it worked!]