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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 I’ve found that while the con which takes place within the walls of a hotel or convention center is always fun, the con away from the con—which takes place when I wander off-site with friends for a meal—can often be more fun. In fact, my love of tracking down good food while traveling the world attending conventions has apparently become so well known that one blogger even dubbed me “science fiction’s Anthony Bourdain.” So after toying for quite awhile with the idea of attempting to replicate in podcast form one of my favorite parts of any convention—good conversation with good friends over good food—it’s finally happening. During each episode, I’ll share a meal with someone whose opinions I think you’ll want to hear, and we’ll talk about science fiction, fantasy, horror, writing, comics, movies, fandom … whatever happens to come to mind. (There’ll also be food talk, of course.) Please note—this will not be a pristine studio-recorded podcast, but one which will always occur in a restaurant setting, meaning that mixed in with our conversation will be the sounds of eating and drinking and reviewing of menus and slurping and background chatter and the servers popping in … in other words, it’ll be as messy as life. And hopefully as entertaining, too. And now … please pull up a chair to the table and get ready to dig in.
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Now displaying: August, 2020
Aug 28, 2020

Join Farah Mendlesohn for tea and scones as we discuss the reasons Robert A. Heinlein resonated with her, how her early and current readings of Heinlein differ, why the science fiction of the '30s was far more politically radical than that of the '40s and '50s, her deliberately controversial comment about Ursula K. Le Guin, the circumstances under which she's more interested in the typical rather than the groundbreaking, that period during the '20s when everyone was fascinated by glands, the one Heinlein book she wishes we'd go back and reread, our joint distaste for fan policing, and much more.

Aug 15, 2020

Polish off prawn pizza with Stephen Dedman as we discuss how the Apollo 11 moon landing introduced him to science fiction, what his father told him which changed his plan to become a cartoonist, the huge difference the Internet made in the lives of Australian writers, his creative trick for getting his first poem published, what acting taught him about being funny in the midst of tragedy, his former job as a used dinosaur parts salesman, the way page one tells him whether he's got a short story or novel idea, how Harlan Ellison became the first American editor to buy one of his stories, and much more.

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