{"id":36454,"date":"2025-01-17T09:16:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=36454"},"modified":"2025-01-17T09:16:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T14:16:49","slug":"eric-choi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2025\/01\/17\/eric-choi\/","title":{"rendered":"Share shawarma with the award-winning Eric Choi in Episode 245 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I plucked Eric Choi<\/a>‘s short story \u201cFrom a Stone\u201d out of the slush pile to publish in the September 1996 issue of Science Fiction Age<\/em>, and our paths have unfortunately rarely crossed since. When he popped by my kaffeklatch during the Glasgow Worldcon<\/a> last year, that was probably the first time we\u2019d had the chance to chat face to face in decades. So when I heard he planned to also attend Capclave<\/a> in Rockville, MD, where I\u2019m a regular, I took that as a sign.<\/p>\n

Choi was the first recipient of the Asimov Award (now the Dell Award) for his novelette \u201cDedication.\u201d He also won the Aurora Award for his short story\u00a0“Crimson Sky,”\u00a0and a 2023 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History\u00a0for his novelette \u201cA Sky and a Heaven\u201d. His short story collection Just Like Being There<\/em> was published in by Springer Nature in 2022. He edited the anthologies The Dragon and the Stars<\/em>\u00a0with Derwin Mak in 2010 (winning a 2011 Aurora Award in the category of Best Related Work) and Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction<\/em>\u00a0with Ben Bova in 2014.<\/p>\n

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He’s\u00a0also an alumnus of the International Space University.\u00a0 Over the course of his aerospace engineering career, he’s worked on a number of space projects including QEYSSat (Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite), the Meteorological (MET) payload on the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station, the RADARSAT\u20111 Earth-observation satellite, and the MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) payload on the Terra satellite. In 2009, he was one of the Top 40 finalists (out of 5,351 applicants) in the Canadian Space Agency\u2019s astronaut recruitment campaign.<\/p>\n

We discussed what William Shatner’s Captain Kirk might sound like dubbed into Cantonese, the wonders of fan-run science fiction conventions, how the Asimov competition gave him the courage to make his first submission, what it was like co-editing an anthology with the great Ben Bova, the accident that gave birth to his first short story collection, why his claim never to have experienced writer’s block comes with a footnote, his moving memories of the Columbia accident as experienced at the Kennedy Space Center, the Richard Feynman quote he shared throughout the pandemic, why the first Harry Turtledove story he read wasn’t written by Harry Turtledove, his unfortunate introduction to The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can join us for lunch at Rockville’s Lebanese Taverna <\/a> — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — or wherever<\/a> you choose to consume your podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 244 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen via the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply use the embed below.<\/p>\n