An hour-long chat with Frank J. Fleming, author of the Superego science-fiction series and senior writer for the satire site, The Babylon Bee.

Websitewww.frankjfleming.com

Twitter@IMAO_

Frank J. Fleming’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Frank J. Fleming is the author of the Superego series of science-fiction novels. He’s also a humor writer for the Babylon Bee, New York Post, and USA Today, and has been a scriptwriter (Love Gov).

Fleming is a Carnegie Mellon University graduate and works as an electrical and software engineer when he’s not writing. He has also been a pioneer in virtual-reality video. He lives in Austin with his wife and four kids. 

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Frank, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I reached out to you because I . . . of course, I encountered you actually through the Babylon Bee. And this may not surprise you because you live in Texas, so you will know that when I say that I grew up in the Church of Christ, the Babylon Bee has humor in there that appeals to me because . . . I’m often passing along, not so much the political stuff, which is funny too, but often the church-related stuff I can pass on to people that I went to school with, I grew up with, and we all get those . . . we all get that satire.

That’s funny. I’ve thought about doing some more specific Church of Christ jokes, but I’m not sure how many people would get them.

Yeah, well, there’s a few of us, but it might not be exactly . . . it might be a bit of a niche audience, I’m afraid.

Yeah.

So, that’s kind of where I encountered you. And then I was following you on Twitter, and then I said, “Hey, you write science fiction.” And I looked that up, and it looked interesting. And I thought, “Well, that’s why I have this podcast.” So, I would reach out, and here you are.

Well, yeah, thanks. I really like talking about my fiction writing. The satire, I think, gets a lot more attention lately.

Yeah. It’s that kind of a world we’re living in at the moment. 

Mm-hmm.

The other thing I didn’t know until I got your bio here was that you’re an engineer and although I am not an engineer, I am married to an engineer. So, I hang out with engineers a lot. My wife, Margaret Anne Hodges, is past president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan. 

Oh, wow.

And so, I’ve hung out with engineers a lot over the years, too.

Yeah, it’s one of my favorite topics, actually. I have lots of strong opinions on different programming languages. It just doesn’t come up as much.

We probably won’t talk much about that. All right. Well, let’s start at the very beginning. I always say that I like to take my guests back into the mists of time—I don’t know how far back that is for you; it’s getting increasingly far back for me—to find out how you got . . . well, first of all, where you grew up and went to school,