What’s in a name? For Ciel Pierlot, quite a bit. In this Big Idea, find out how names matter, in worldbuilding and in Pierlot’s novel Bluebird. CIEL PIERLOT: One of the earliest concept… | Continue reading
The entire review is here (subscription required), but for those of you without subscriptions, just know that the review calls the novel “an escapist delight” and also that it may be th… | Continue reading
And for the third straight year, I’m indifferent enough about the whole affair not to write up an official prediction of who will win in all the major categories! I’m sorry, I used to b… | Continue reading
Because, honestly, where else would you want to be? Today was another day filled with contractors at the house and lots of little offline things that added up and then the next thing I knew, the da… | Continue reading
The Big Idea of 51 is really quite memorable… or is it? Author Patrick O’Leary is here to shed light on his potentially unforgettable concept. PATRICK O’LEARY: The trouble with bi… | Continue reading
In 2021 we had made plans to have our bathrooms renovated, majorly in the case of our bedroom suite bathroom, and in a more modest fashion for the hallway bathroom Athena and any guests we might ha… | Continue reading
She loves chasing and catching snowballs. Which is great, because all her other balls are currently buried under several inches of snow in the yard. We’ll find them in March, probably. Until … | Continue reading
Another week down. And a pretty good one for me, I have to say. Hope it was the same for you. Have a fabulous weekend, okay? — JS | Continue reading
The snow has mostly stopped falling, and while there is a lot of it, the worst thing to happen (for us, anyway) was a vehicle momentarily getting stuck in the driveway. It was quickly freed and par… | Continue reading
Yes, I’m part of JoCo Cruise 2022. I’m very happy and excited about it. And you say, but, Scalzi, haven’t you heard of this COVID thing going around? Well, in fact, I have, but as… | Continue reading
Well, it is a storm, and once it started snowing (sometime in the wee hours of the morning) it hasn’t once stopped, so the accumulation is real and substantial, and the wind is pretty whippy … | Continue reading
What does it mean when a cat sees his shadow on Groundhog Day? Not a damn thing, and even if it did, it’s not like the cat would tell you. They only divulge that sort of information on a R… | Continue reading
Early on, Rosiee Thor learned an important fact about the world, and who it impacts, and why — a fact that years later became integral to the creation of their novel, Fire Becomes Her. Here t… | Continue reading
I’m not 100% sure what the clouds were doing tonight, but it was more than a little ominous. Although as I understand it the real bad weather is later in the week, when we’re going to g… | Continue reading
I suspect it’s due to WordPress doing an update and that wreaking a little havoc with the mobile site version. I’m looking into it now. Update: I have the mobile version porting into a … | Continue reading
Posting here for archive purposes. In an email, I was asked, given the rise of book bans in schools/libraries, if it made sense for me/other authors to ask publishers to stop sending our books to a… | Continue reading
Because you can never have too much Stylophone in your life, the Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra’s new album, Stylophonika, produced in part by, of all people, Tony Visconti. Their t… | Continue reading
January is hurtling to a close, but before we get there: A new stack of books and ARCs sent to the Scalzi Compound! What here do you want to take into February with you? Share in the comments. | Continue reading
Chad Orzel is one of my favorite explainers of scientific concepts, and in his new book A Brief History of Timekeeping, he covers one of my favorite topics: Time. But the story of time isn’t … | Continue reading
Tor asked me if I would have a use for extra ARCs and I allowed I might; I have some people I need to slip them to. That said, I suspect at least one will come up for a contest here, uuhhhhh, soon.… | Continue reading
I mentioned on Twitter today that this song from Encanto makes me tear up, not because I see myself in it but because I see any number of women I know in it — specifically, the hyper-competen… | Continue reading
In today’s Big Idea, author Sarah J. Daley lets you in on a secret for how to create a badass character, like she has in her novel Obsidian. All you have to do is break some stuff first. The … | Continue reading
Actually, it might be his official CEO portrait. Honestly one can never tell with my cats these days. They are all very ambitious. As for me, it’s nice to know that if this writer thing falls… | Continue reading
And they hope you are doing well. I’m taking a mini vacation with Krissy over the next couple of days and can’t guarantee I’ll update until Monday. I might! But then I might not. … | Continue reading
Interesting video above on a study from Volvo about when, from a total production and use point of view, its electric cars become less of an overall emissions burden than their most-equivalent inte… | Continue reading
If only you knew the power of the dark side — or at least, entertained, the possibility that there’s more complexity to it than frequently advertised. Cassandra Rose Clarke delves into … | Continue reading
Wrote this up on Twitter just now; archiving here for posterity. Because this is a Twitter thread, please note that the very first graf below is referring to the screen cap of text below it. So, I … | Continue reading
I believe I’ve noted before that one of the big problems with being mostly bald is the thinner your hair is, the shorter it needs to be to look reasonably good. I am at point where “rea… | Continue reading
In life, we make choices, and we have to live with them. But as Gwynne Garfinkle details in this Big Idea for Can’t Find My Way Home, maybe sometimes the choices we make have consequences eve… | Continue reading
Those clouds look hardly ominous at all! Actually, what’s really ominous is that they have not budged for hours. They’re just lurking there to the south. We’ll see if they make a … | Continue reading
From time to time, people who wish to comment on science fiction and fantasy will choose to typify the current state of the genre in a way that suits their rhetorical needs, often creating a new-an… | Continue reading
First off, it doesn’t really feel like a Coen Brothers movie, probably because it isn’t: for the first time Joel Coen has put out a movie without his brother Ethan either in the produce… | Continue reading
I’ve been asked a couple of times about how we’re doing and how we at the Scalzi Compound are dealing with the current Omicron wave of COVID infections out in the world. The short versi… | Continue reading
Author Ron Walters knows a true thing: that which truly terrifies you can also inspire you, if the stars align correctly. For Deep Dive, they did, and now Walters is here to tell you which fear hel… | Continue reading
If for some reason you can’t see/read the photo above, this is what it says: John Scalzi’s THE KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY, where, on a parallel earth, kaiju — the massive Godzilla… | Continue reading
On one hand Charlie knows perfectly well she’s not allowed up on the furniture in my office (or indeed anywhere else in the house). On the other hand, she looks darn cute all curled up like t… | Continue reading
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but those who do learn from history get to play the changes with it for their own work. Just ask Jacey Bedford, who uses a lesser-k… | Continue reading
It even has a sun pillar! Which we often get here in winter, with ice crystals in the atmosphere and all. I hope you like it, and that it was a perfectly serviceable Monday. — JS | Continue reading
Also, as it happens, tomorrow is the 14th anniversary of Zeus showing up at our garage door on what was, if memory serves, one of the coldest nights of that winter, and meowing piteously to be let … | Continue reading
A new year, and a new stack of books and ARCs that have arrived at the Scalzi Compound. Anything here intriguing you here in the first week of January? Share in the comments! — JS | Continue reading
Because after today’s other weighty topics here on the site, I figure this dude’s fuzzy butt might be a good counterbalance. And I’m not wrong! — JS | Continue reading
Photo by Blink O’Fanaye with additional photoediting by me (I made it black and white). Used under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC 2.0). Click on photo to be taken to the original. If ther… | Continue reading
Many of you have been asking about how my semester away from the blog went, and today I’m here to finally quell the curiosity! Right up front I’m just gonna say: I blew it again. Old ha… | Continue reading
“Automated Customer Service,” from Love Death + Robots, Vol. 2 on Netflix, for which I wrote the script and the underlying short story on which the script is based. The is eligible for … | Continue reading
Even though I will not see a penny from it: More seriously, enjoy and remember to pre-order the book, if you have not yet already. Every preorder equals a tasty snack for the pets! Roughly, I mean,… | Continue reading
Now that the holidays have been packed away and we are back into the swing of things, I know that some of you have had an interest in how I manage my work days. The answer to this varies, largely d… | Continue reading
From earlier today, presented here for archival purposes, and also, you know, to make the the point that people are often very confidently wrong about things. The subject at hand is whether I prett… | Continue reading
Well, this is not a bad way to start the new year: A positive review of The Kaiju Preservation Society in Library Journal, the last of the four major publishing trade magazines to report in on the … | Continue reading