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Eating the Fantastic

I’ve been going to science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comic book conventions since I was 15, and Eating the Fantastic—a 2026 Hugo Awards finalist—attempts to replicate in podcast form one of my favorite parts of any convention—good conversation with good friends over good food. In fact, my love of tracking down that good food while traveling the world attending conventions has apparently become so well known one blogger even dubbed me "science fiction’s Anthony Bourdain." Chatting with my guests over over plates of food in restaurants relaxes them, and relaxes me as well. Food's been doing that for thousands of years, helping make conversations more intimate than they would otherwise be. Tongues are loosened, and through a strange magic, we’re no longer merely host and guest, but just a couple of friends having a meal. And though some ambient noise survives the processing, what remains in that "you are there" background is a small price for the much better picture you’ll get of my guests than otherwise. So consider it a feature, not a bug. During each episode, I'll share a meal with someone whose opinions I think you’ll want to hear, and we’ll talk science fiction, fantasy, horror, writing, comics, movies, fandom … whatever happens to come to mind. Now please pull up a chair to the table and dig in!
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Now displaying: July, 2019
Jul 19, 2019

Slurp matzoh ball soup with Will Eisner Award-winning writer/editor Mark Evanier as we discuss the lesson he learned watching Stan Lee write one of his famous Bullpen Bulletins pages, how his first sale to <em>Laugh-In</em> magazine led him to believe he could make it as a professional writer, the lunch at which Jack Kirby swore him to secrecy about quitting Marvel, the inker Kirby would have chosen if he was allowed to choose only one (and why it wouldn't be Vince Colletta), his stupefied reaction when Sergio Aragonés placed the original art for the first issue of <em>MAD</em> in his hands (and how Mark later stupefied Jerry Lewis), whether he can imagine a world in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could have ironed out their differences, and much, much more.

Jul 5, 2019

Join comics legend Gerry Conway for lunch in L.A. to learn how the comics business has always been dying and what keeps saving it, why if he were in charge he'd shut down Marvel Comics for six months, what it's like (and how it's different) being both the youngest and oldest writer ever to script Spider-Man, the novel mistake he made during his summer at the Clarion Writers Workshop, why he's lived a life in comics rather than science fiction, what caused Harlan Ellison to write an offensive letter to his mother, the one bad experience he ever had being edited in comics (it had to do with the Justice League), the convoluted way <em>Superman vs. Spider-Man</em> resulted in him writing for TV's <em>Father Dowling Mysteries</em>, how exasperation caused him to quit his role as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief (while I was out of the Bullpen on my honeymoon), how he'd have been treated if he'd killed off Gwen Stacy in today's social media world, and much, much more.

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