#519 – No Stomach for Old Salad by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont

#518 – Hugo Bump Yourself by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont

We get a history listen and revisit accents. And the clean blade battle is confirmed for WorldCon 2029. Plus our non-spoilery first impressions of She Who Became the Sun.

Why taste in books is like taste in food. Plus, our final thoughts on Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils. And the Ruth-Veronica feud heats up. Also, Tom likes fish sticks. Literally.

We cast The Devils, try to apologize to Ruth, and recall other food-related romantasy. Plus, Veronica has a shameful tequila revelation.

Wesley Chu joins us to talk about The Lives of Tao and Jan is back, so we have loads of news including Locus Award Winners and the British Fantasy Society shortlist. Plus Tom sings. We’re all sorry about that. Also, we almost named this episode The Lives of Wesley Chu until we realized we had already done that in 2014.

Everything is out of context. But we do have interesting thoughts about The Lives of Tao and lots of congrats for the winners and nominees of the Nebulas and more.

We speculate on how James Cameron will make The Devils and whether Frankenstein will be too scary for Veronica. And we further kick off The Lives of Tao.

We discuss the return of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Frank Herbert’s posthumous SFWA Infinity Award, Audible’s AI narration plans and Amazon’s cancellation of The Wheel of Time—while nominating hamburg steak and vegan enchiladas and sharing listener stories from Matt Dinniman’s event. We round out the show with in-depth discussions of The Lives of Tao and Mickey 7.

From Hugo admins resigning over AI panel vetting to the latest award winners and a fresh Murderbot clip—to set the stage for our book club pick. Then we dig into Mickey 7’s Ship of Theseus dilemma, sharing listener takes (yes, even foot‑fetishting AIs) and the questions that keep us up at night.