{"id":38808,"date":"2026-04-24T08:58:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=38808"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:58:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:58:55","slug":"farah-mendlesohn-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2026\/04\/24\/farah-mendlesohn-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Feast on a Full English breakfast with Farah Mendlesohn in Episode 280 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first of five conversations I captured across the pond in Birmingham during Eastercon was an Eating the Fantastic reunion, because Farah Mendlesohn <\/a> last appeared on the podcast on Episode 126<\/a>. Back then, we discussed their newly released book The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein<\/em>, which I was pleased went on to receive a Hugo nomination for Best Related Work.<\/p>\n

This time around, you’ll get to hear us discuss their newest work, Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore<\/em> (Luna Press), which I hope will be recognized with its own Hugo nomination next year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Farah’s a seven-time nominee for the Hugo Award, winning (with Edward James) in 2005 for\u00a0The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction<\/em> (Cambridge University Press).\u00a0Farah also won a World Fantasy Award in 2017, which they wrote with Michael M. Levy. They\u2019re also the author of Rhetorics of Fantasy<\/em>\u00a0(Wesleyan University Press), On Joanna Russ<\/em>\u00a0(Wesleyan), The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction<\/em> (McFarland), Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children\u2019s Literature<\/em> (Routledge), and Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English<\/em> Civil Wars (Palgrave Macmillan).<\/p>\n

We discussed whether their Hugo-nominated Heinlein book changed the conversation about that author, if there’s such a thing as an inverse of The Suck Fairy, why it might be wrong to chat about The Female Man<\/em> while nibbling on toast, the reason Russ’s novel took so long to get published, the probable purpose of the self-critique within the book, the difficulties in communicating with cross-cultural metaphors, why The Female Man<\/em> is a version of The Christmas Carol<\/em>, the reason the book isn’t Postmodernist but Modernist, why I failed to pick up on the novel’s Jewishness,\u00a0what surprised them most during their rereading of the novel, the reason\u00a0Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ<\/em> was so painfully hard to write, and much more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you can join us at Chris’s Cafe<\/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 279 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