To wrap up this year's Reader Request Week, quick answers to questions I didn't otherwise get to: Stephanie Brown: I’m sensing we’re at a major global change point: the virus, global warming, immigration, Trump & lots of major governing problems in the world—all coming to a head … | Continue reading
The questions you folks asked this week about writing, answered briefly: Target: The Last Emperox (and the rest of the series) read to me as much more in “your” voice, or at least more similar to how you write on Whatever than your other books. Asides, turns of phrase, sarcasm ar … | Continue reading
The number of actual physical books that have comes to the Scalzi Compound has slowed to a trickle (because the people who work in warehouses have largely been at home, and reasonably so!), but some books have still made their way in. Here are the ones that have arrived in the la … | Continue reading
Another one of those "post now, refer people to later" entries. I've written about this before regarding specific instances, but it's nice to have something general to point people to. So, it turns out I know, and am friends (or at least I have been friendly) with, people who are … | Continue reading
Juan Preciado asks: What does it mean to be dead? For the person who is dead, not much! Because they are dead. They are no longer thinking about anything or doing anything or being anything, other than dead. Dead is a state of not; there is very little meaning in not. When I am d … | Continue reading
Let's get musical! Keith asks: Cover songs: The deity’s gift to humanity or an abomination unto said deity? What makes a good one? Any that you particularly love or hate? I personally love a good cover song, and there are cases where I prefer the cover to the original, either bec … | Continue reading
Yup, pretty much sums us up at the moment. I think this might be my favorite picture of the two of us in a while. | Continue reading
And I'm talking about which books I'm reading, which books I think fit the current moment, whether books should be consider guilty pleasures, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Curious? Of course you are! Here's the link to the piece. Enjoy! | Continue reading
Troy Gordon asks: Do you ever hold back in your criticism of other artistic endeavors (movies for instance) out of fear or apprehension that it will open your own work to hostile/non constructive criticism and exclude you from future opportunities? You are successful and obviousl … | Continue reading
Get out your comic books: Author Tone Milazzo is thinking about the super humans that populate our popular culture, and how they relate to the themes of his new book, The Faith Machine. TONE MILAZZO: It took me decades realize some pretty obvious things about superheroes. For exa … | Continue reading
Go, team! Kevin Sims asks: What are your views on professional and amateur sports? Do you have a favorite sport/team? You’ve created a fictitious sport in the Locked-In universe and one of the characters from those books was a legendary basketball player, but I’ve never read a bl … | Continue reading
We are all searchers of truth -- some more than others. Dan Moren is thinking about the truthseekers in this Big Idea piece for his new novel, The Aleph Extraction. DAN MOREN: Truth is a binary concept: either something is true, or it isn’t. Or is it? As a certain Jedi Knight—and … | Continue reading
Allison asks: What is it like being a cisgender straight man? I ask because I’m a trans woman who spent 50+ years living (or at least trying to live) according to the assumption that I was a man, but could never make any sense of the men around me. I couldn’t figure out why they… | Continue reading
Who are we, really? Or as dchotin asks: My grandmother used to say that as she grew older, she didn’t change, she just became more the way she was. I’ve always thought there’s a lot of truth to that – people don’t really change as they grow old, but aspects of their personalities … | Continue reading
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1259825243830603777 This question, from (and here I assume this is a WordPress error rather than the actual name, but even so) g2-772325788f49f5257c84be1c8310f9d7: To a long-committed healthful foodie, your apparent diet is quite horrifying. How … | Continue reading
It's time for this year's Reader Request Week! Let's dive right in, and why not dive into the deep end? GB Miller asks: I think over the years you’ve made your political beliefs quite crystal clear. Have you ever legitimately considered/agree with any viewpoint that came from the … | Continue reading
In addition to being my birthday, today is Mother's Day, which gives me all the pretense I need to show off this portrait of Krissy, who is, after all, a mom. And a very good one, if I do say so myself. Also, I'm pretty happy with this new camera. | Continue reading
You know what, 50 was a pretty good year overall. Not for the world, sorry; for the world the last 366 days have been a bit shit, and while I'm not really responsible for any of that I still regret that we all had to slog through that. But for me -- pretty reasonable! I… | Continue reading
You may recall that some time ago I had felt out of shape and was unhappy with it. After hitting a high weight of nearly 200 pounds, and also feeling tired walking up stairs, I set a goal of getting down to 170 pounds. With regular exercise and calorie counting, I hit that goal l … | Continue reading
I'm going to use this intro part of this Big Idea piece to say that the cover of The Down Days, by Ilze Hugo, is probably my favorite book cover of the year. To date! There might be a better one down the line! But I suspect not. And now here's the author to tell… | Continue reading
This upcoming week I have almost nothing scheduled, either in the real world or online, which honestly is a first for me in a real long time. I could just take a break, but where's the fun in that? So: It’s time for the annual Reader Request Week, in which you pick the topics I w … | Continue reading
Just playing with the new camera some more. | Continue reading
Start with cinematic dreams and stellar ambitions, and what do you get from there? For Laura Lam, you get Goldilocks, her new novel. She's here to tell you how it all came together. LAURA LAM: I love astronaut films. Gravity. Interstellar. The Martian. Armageddon. Ad Astra. The M … | Continue reading
I think the new camera is gonna do just fine. Have a good evening, folks. | Continue reading
It's the new Nikon d780. And it's a beaut. "But, Scalzi," I hear you say, "Why did you choose that one when [insert your favorite recent camera] is clearly the best one?" Well: 1. Because I like, and am used to, shooting with Nikons. Switching over to some other brand would requi … | Continue reading
In the aftermath of writing his latest novel Spiked, author Jon McGoran found the reality of the moment catching up with the future of his fiction in ways he didn't expect... and in ways that gave him food for thought. JON McGORAN: One of the things that has drawn me to science f … | Continue reading
I noted here, I believe, that recently my dSLR, my Nikon d750, basically crapped itself, most likely from a faulty mirror mechanism. This wasn't entirely a surprise to me -- it had developed a hiccup several months back where the first photo after being turned on was a black rect … | Continue reading
We've reached the "Take Arty Black and White Pictures of a Telephone Pole" stage of the quarantine, so, you know, well done us. * And just how was this week in quarantine, Scalzi? I mean, oddly enough, it was... fine? Not terrible, not great, and I've gotten to the point, I guess … | Continue reading
Right on time. We had April showers all last week. Here's to a lovely May. Also, my pal Matthew Ryan dropped a new cover song today. It's a striking version, well worth the listen. Enjoy. https://youtu.be/RXt75wCJh1g | Continue reading
For his new novel The Human Son, author Adrian J. Walker decided to get into a different mindset entirely. A very very different mindset. ADRIAN J. WALKER: Human beings make terrible decisions. I wrote The Human Son in the shadow of Brexit, so I know what I’m talking about. Don’t … | Continue reading
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1255608435418312706 And in case you don't have Spotify, here's the playlist in YouTube form: https://youtu.be/e_DgcNclUfI https://youtu.be/MEl0Chq36lc https://youtu.be/4iDM9Ng_r8k https://youtu.be/doTitxvv_CM https://youtu.be/z3cc68K52bg https:// … | Continue reading
It's the "kaleidoscope" setting on a camera app I was playing with. Yeah, that'll stick with you when you're trying to get to sleep tonight. Oh, and just for good measure, here it is in black and white: Sweet dreams! | Continue reading
If we're lucky, we don't come to close to thing that might terrify us. A.J. Hartley did not have that luck, and the encounter he had informed what would become his latest novel, Impervious. A.J. HARTLEY: How do you make fantasy out of real life horror? It happened 51 weeks ago, m … | Continue reading
Characters these days often have extraordinary abilities that make them seem almost more than human. The protagonist of S.L. Huang's new novel Critical Point has one. It may not be the one you expected. S.L. HUANG: So, I’m a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd. By middle school, I had … | Continue reading
Thoughts on six weeks of quarantine (so far): * I had a really good week last week, with The Last Emperox hitting a bunch of best seller lists and some other good things which I can't talk about yet falling into place, and aside from that life at home continuing on in a generally … | Continue reading
Those of you who remember when we first got Zeus might, like me, be a little amazed he is now the senior cat of the Scalzi household. But it turns out he wears the title well. Also, he still takes a pretty grand photo, from time to time. | Continue reading
When it became clear that for this tour I'd be doing all my events from my office, I went out and got a fairly nice webcam for streaming and whatnot. But it turns out that it plays only fitfully with my computer and also that my sound card kind of hates it. So this is… | Continue reading
Because I have them! And this is my site, where I can talk about them! In no particular order: * I'm still a little stunned by where Emperox ended up on the NYT list. Bluntly and honestly speaking, given the global pandemic, which makes the getting of books rather harder than it … | Continue reading
So, there is this: And also, there is this: And in case you can't see that, The Last Emperox is #6 on the New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Seller list, and #14 on the USA Today Best Seller list. The NYT list is looking at new fiction specifically; the USA Today … | Continue reading
Now that The Last Emperox has been out for a full week, I think it's time to open up a place for people who have read the book to be able to discuss it without worrying that they will spoil the plot points for others, so for the next few days at least I will… | Continue reading
Because I'm not patient enough to do this over 30 days. It's a list that features a different mood/idea/whatever for each of 30 days, and then I added an extra one, because some months have 31 days. Let's go through the whole thing at once, shall we? 1. A song you like with a col … | Continue reading
This labradoodle showed up in the yard yesterday and I got to play with it a little bit while its human loitered a socially responsible distance away. It was adorable. And yes, before you ask, we're thinking about getting another dog sometime soonish. Not this one, cute as it is. … | Continue reading
https://youtu.be/Via5hHmZzNM?t=420 There's about seven minutes of hold music at the beginning; you can forward to the 7 minute point in the video where the event actually begins. There's a couple minutes of announcements and then I start blathering, and I go on for about an hour. … | Continue reading
It's Krissy's birthday today, and it's one of those round number ones: She's 50 now, which is kind of wild to think about. It means (among other things) that she and I have been married for half of her life now, and have known each other and been in love for even longer than that … | Continue reading
Doing a little thing on the Twitters. Enjoy. (If you can't see it, hit that link.) https://twitter.com/nprscottsimon/status/1251273187322589185 | Continue reading
Not Sugar's most dignified moment, but it makes for a striking picture. Hope your Thursday is going well, folks. | Continue reading
I'm a big proponent of reminding people to take Amazon ranking numbers with a grain of salt, for all sorts of reasons. With that said, they can be a fun if distorted mirror to get an idea where one's sales might be. And at the moment, The Last Emperox is: #1, #3 and #40 New… | Continue reading
If you're reading this, then The Last Emperox, my latest novel and the conclusion to the Interdependency Trilogy, is now out in the US and Canada in hardcover, eBook and audiobook editions (UK folks: You have two more days for the UK print edition). I'm happy to say the book has … | Continue reading