Whatever

The Big Idea: David Hamilton Golland

Posted on February 7, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

The very first album I ever bought with my own money was Escape by Journey, so it’s safe to say I had a fondness for the band and its music, both when I was younger and even today. But even for a fan, the journey (small “j”) of the band in American and musical culture, from proggy Santana spinoff to oft-derided AOR stalwarts to beloved-by-generations members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has been remarkable to watch. Historian and fan David Hamilton Golland thought so, too, which is why he wrote a book about it: Livin’ Just to Find Emotion: Journey and the Story of American Rock. Take this trip with him and learn why Golland saw more to the band than just the hits.

DAVID HAMILTON GOLLAND:

I never made it a secret that I’m a Journey fan. A big Journey fan. I went to their concerts, got a vanity license plate that read “JRNYDV” (for “Journey Dave”), and even built a fan website in tribute to the group (journey-zone.com). But as I built an accomplished career as a professional (read: academic) historian, when I finally sat down to write the history of Journey, I figured it would simply be a fun side project. I had a nagging feeling that since someone needs to write their story, it might as well be me. Perhaps I could get it out of my system.

All true, but every book should have an argument, right? A history, even a popular history, should build a case for an idea of some sort. Or was that just my training getting the better of me? 

For many years I had kept my love of Journey on the side, treating it as alien to my real work: researching and writing and teaching the history of civil rights and affirmative action. In other words, I kept my identity as a Journey fan separate from my identity as a historian, even as I built a successful career as a professor, and more recently an academic administrator—the kind who authorizes late course withdrawals and adjudicates grade appeals and raises money for student programs.

Still, there had been earlier signs that these two identities were not so far apart after all. When I was in grad school I scored an interview with Gregg Rolie, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member who was the original lead singer for Santana and Journey. Sure enough, I soon found myself deconstructing and interrogating his words and sentences—exactly what I was taught to do with interviews of Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

When singer Steve Perry left Journey for good in 1998, I was shocked—just like every other Journey fan. But when the band went on with a replacement lead singer, I was less shocked than many—because I knew the group’s history, and I knew that Steve Perry was not the band’s first—nor even second—lead singer. 

Thanks to my training, I had learned to seek a level of objectivity when evaluating the actions of historical figures, even those for whom I would spend exorbitant amounts to see perform—in other words, even those of whom I was a fan. I learned to separate my feelings for the music from my feelings for the person. 

Decades later, at the height of the pandemic, I finally decided to apply my skills as a historian—as a researcher and as a writer—to a Journey book project. Still, I felt certain that the book would lack a thesis, other than “Journey made great music, and here’s how they did it.” As one of my old grad school professors would have asked, “so what?” 

Except the more I read, the more I uncovered, and, frankly, the more I wrote, the more it became clear that I had a thesis after all. A thesis that would surprise pretty much anyone who had ever heard “Don’t Stop Believin.’” A thesis that would surprise nearly everyone who actually worked in or with Journey. A thesis that, frankly, surprised me. A thesis that the story of Journey—once voted America’s most popular band, according to a Gallup Poll—was the story of the re-segregation of popular music.

The thesis shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, I knew full well that rock & roll had integrated popular music. Rock & roll took seed in a time of national optimism following victory in World War II, and flowered during the social revolution of the 1960s, a revolution that also integrated buses, public schools, lunch counters, and “Star Trek.” But with the War in Vietnam, the urban crisis, and stagflation, society sought familiarity in old patterns. The nation saw a backlash against the achievements of the civil rights era. As the hippies, peace signs, and patchouli receded, rock & roll re-segregated, with white fans and musicians gravitating to rock, while Black listeners increasingly rediscovered soul. 

The 1970s saw the rise of progressive rock, glam, and punk, all of which were decidedly coded for the white teenage audience. Disco was an integrated genre, but it was a short-lived phenomenon, immolating famously in a race riot at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. By 1980, white teenagers again yearned for Black music—as they always had, incidentally. But unlike in the 1960s, when they listened to both Black and white artists, now they wanted their music performed by white musicians, macho guitar gods and metal drummers. The difference was that this form of minstrelsy contained no blackface (although it sometimes involved lots of makeup, as with David Bowie, Kiss, and Alice Cooper).

Journey was founded in 1973, at the height of the re-segregation, by two white members of the original Santana band—an interracial group that had stolen the stage at Woodstock and then nabbed the top of the charts with “Black Magic Woman.” In 1978 Journey added Steve Perry—the white second coming of Black soul singer Sam Cooke—and in 1980, pianist Jonathan Cain—a songwriter in the mold of Bruce Springsteen, but with even less awareness of the African-American origins of his style. With those additions, Journey had all the necessary ingredients for success in this era of modern minstrelsy. And you don’t even need to listen hard to find it, for what is the lyric “that midnight train going anywhere” from their most enduring hit if not a modern twist on Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia?”

As I continued in my quest to tell the history of this band—to apply the tools of my trade, as I put it, to a genre mostly populated by journalists and memoirists, who usually lack a historian’s perspective—I found more and more evidence to support the thesis.

There was, for instance, the episode of the King Biscuit Flour Hour where Journey performed a variety of Motown and blues classics with African American singers Annie Sampson and Jo Baker, and the integrated Tower of Power horn section. The episode sadly went unaired; someone—probably manager Herbie Herbert—decided that it might cut into Journey’s almost exclusively white fanbase. But they delivered Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I’m Coming” with almost the same soulful verve as the original. 

Then there was the concert they filmed at a local blues club for Soundstage, a series on Chicago’s PBS affiliate WTTW, immediately after opening for the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field. They invited as their special guests blues legends Albert King, Luther Allison, and Pinetop Perkins, who had learned the blues—the original blues—while growing up in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. The African American musicians were trotted out on that Journey stage not because Journey had suddenly decided to become an interracial blues band, but because the artists lent credibility to Journey’s claim to the evolution of the blues—an evolution available only to white artists. Appropriately reverential, the members of Journey gave them their turn on stage. But when their turn was over, it was back to rock—a rock which was more Black-influenced than most in the audience imagined. 

By the way, this is exactly the way a thesis is supposed to emerge. Historians read and research and then draw a conclusion—not the other way around. We listen to the sources. 

And in this case, it was actual listening, as many of the sources were aural. When Steve Perry performed the Journey blues number “Walks Like a Lady” live in concert, he referenced an African-American schoolyard chant “put your hand on your hip, let your backbone slip.” It’s not in the official lyrics. And the hard rocker “Line of Fire,” aimed at Journey’s nearly all-white audience, slyly repurposed the love triangle of “Frankie and Johnnie,” a Sam Cooke hit that told a story that traced back to “Negro Folk” music. 

But one can only take a thesis so far. There are, in fact, several long stretches of the story that don’t seem to have much to do with race, even to my admittedly attuned ears. Sometimes, after all, a cigar is just a cigar. But that’s okay, too. Historians also write as if we’re playing accordions. We expand and contract our storytelling—we speed it up and slow it down—to focus on the portions that matter most. A thesis is not a narrative, but rather a thread that pulls the writer, and the reader, through the story. But it doesn’t substitute for the story itself. 

I think the most important lesson here is not that popular music re-segregated and that popular culture is suffused with America’s troubled history with race. Nor, for that matter, is the most important lesson that every historian should write about a favorite musical act and let the thesis come later. 

No, for me the most important lesson is that if you have an idea for a story you’d like to share, don’t get bogged down trying to fit your writing into formulas you’ve used in the past, and don’t be captured by your own identity. Just start writing—researching, thinking, and writing—and see how it develops.

The results may surprise you.

Livin’ Just To Find Emotion: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author Socials: Web site|Twitter

Bluesky Out of Beta + Various Social Media Thoughts, February 2024

Posted on February 6, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      24 Comments

Bluesky, the microblogging service that I joined last April, is finally out of beta and is no longer invite-only, so anyone who has an interest in joining is now free to do so. Here’s a link to the site; just follow the directions from there. Once you join (if you join), I am pretty easy to find; feel free to follow me there if you like.

Do I suggest you join Bluesky? Well, sure. I left the former Twitter about four months ago now and while I’ve been using Threads and Mastodon quite a bit, Bluesky has been my primary social media hang for most of that time. It’s a generally friendly and fun place to hang out, and while no social media site is perfect, or perfect for everyone, the overall vibe of Bluesky is one I like a lot. It helps that the ethos there when trolls and bots show up is “Don’t Engage, Just Block”; no snarking, no dunking, no pointing out their errors in logic, etc, just immediately blocking them and robbing them of the engagement they crave. The block function on Bluesky eradicates them and their comments entirely from your timeline, which makes it extra powerful. It makes for a much more congenial experience, less prone to obnoxiousness. I like it.

(This will be the cue for some folks to have a handwringing moment about whether blocking is the right thing to do, discourse, echo chambers, blah blah blah, so I want to be very clear about this: I don’t give a shit. You can spend your time online with bots and/or shitty people if you think it’s important and you’re striking a blow for intellectual freedom by doing so. I wish you joy in that endeavor. I’ll be spending my time online with people I actually enjoy.)

Although I do at this point spend a lot of my social media time on Bluesky, I am on both Threads and Mastodon frequently as well, and I find that each scratches a slightly different social media itch. Bluesky is the hangout, Threads is where I talk about politics and social stuff, and Mastodon is where I engage in general nerdery. These divisions are not strict, and I do a little bit of everything on each site (and each get pet pictures and commentary on the writing life), but in general this is how it susses out. When I l first started ramping down my presence on the former Twitter and then stopped posting on it entirely, I assumed that I would end up choosing a single site to take over the role it played in my social media diet. Several months on, I don’t feel like that any more. I’m perfectly content to use three sites for slightly different things, and with slightly different audiences. Is this going to work for everyone? Maybe not, but I’m not everyone, I’m me, and for me, it’s working quite well.

Speaking of the former Twitter, a few months on it surprises me how little I miss it. One part of that is that most of the people I followed on Twitter are now on Bluesky/Mastodon/Threads, so I don’t feel their lack. I didn’t rely on Twitter for news and followed hardly any celebrities there, and those I did have Instagram accounts anyway, so done and done. The other part of it is that the amount of shitty people one has to wade through is much lower away from the former Twitter. I’ve spoken about Bluesky in this regard, but both Threads and Mastodon are better in this matter too. It may not stay this way forever, mind you — Threads had a substantial jump in bots when Europe came online (hello, Russian bot factories!), and I imagine now that Bluesky is opening up, we’ll see more there too. But they at least feel more manageable, not the least because the “Don’t Engage, Just Block” ethos exists on those sites as well.

As a creative person needing to tell people what I’m doing, I did have concerns about how (ugh) marketing my personal brand would be affected. Several months on, I needn’t have worried. I had more followers on the former Twitter than I have on Bluesky/Threads/Mastodon combined… for now, and by not as much as you might think: 194k on the former Twitter vs. about 130k on B/T/M combined. It seems to me that more of the accounts on the newer services actually have a real person behind them, who is signing in and using the service. Engagement feels good on all my post-Twitter services. Also, it took 15 years to peak at 200k followers on Twitter; all the followers on Bluesky and Threads, and about a third of them on Mastodon, have arrived since last April. There’s momentum there. The former Twitter feels eminently replaceable for career purposes.

I don’t ever plan to go back to the former Twitter; for my purposes the only thing it’s useful for now is as a honeypot for existing and aspiring fascists. Easier for the FBI, and the rest of us, if they all stay there. I don’t hold it against the non-fascists who stay on the former Twitter, because they still have their communities there and moving everything is a real pain in the ass. That said, now that Bluesky is out of beta, Threads has 130 million users, and Mastodon has been Mastodonning for eight years now, there really has never been a better time to leave the former Twitter. Make the leap if you want to. Wherever you land, people will be there.

And wherever else you go — see you there.

— JS

An Adorable Impediment to Writing

Posted on February 5, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      17 Comments

Spice is a lovely kitty, but my keyboard is also one of her favorite places to hang out. I don’t know how much time you spend typing around a cat, but I can tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

That’s all I have for you at the moment. Spice is currently napping in the cat tree. I have to make up for a little bit of lost time on the novel.

— JS

An Interview With Me on Nashville Public Television

Posted on February 4, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      7 Comments

From when I was in town for the Southern Book Festival. We talk about Starter Villain and the writer’s life in general. It’s twelve minutes, so not too long. I hope you like it.

— JS

My Music Production Setup, 2024

Posted on February 4, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      19 Comments

Yesterday I posted a picture of my current music composition setup here and on Bluesky, which prompted requests by music nerds to go into detail about the hardware and software I’m currently using. All right, then, fellow obsessives, strap in, we’re gonna geek out for a bit. If you’re not one of these obsessives, then here is a picture of a cat, and you are otherwise excused:

For everyone remaining, here we go:

Computer: It’s the new MacBook Pro M3 Max I bought a few weeks ago, which I talk about extensively here, so I won’t go into any great detail about it now. If you won’t click over to the other piece, suffice to say it has all the bells and whistles and is generally ridiculously overspecced for what I’m currently using it for, which is fine, because that means I won’t have to get another computer for several years (knock on silicon).

When the M3 is in my basement studio, it’s paired up with a 27-inch LG LED 4K monitor that was upper-middle specced when I got it three or so years ago. I knew I was going to be using it primarily for music stuff, which does not generally need high refresh rates or awesome color fidelity, so it’s pretty unremarkable. I got it mostly to have enough real estate to do stuff in the DAW. Speaking of which:

Digital Audio Workstation: That’s the program you use to make the music, whether by playing it into the program live, programming it in or by using samples. There are several different types of DAWs out there in the world, and I have tried several, including Ableton Live, Reason, Bitwig, Reaper and Studio One. The one I end up using as the “daily driver” for my music production, however, is Logic Pro, from Apple.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that, while most DAW makers offer an inexpensive cut-down version of their software for people to try out (Apple’s Garageband software, which comes free with its computers and portable hardware, is their version), the fully-featured versions of the software can cost hundreds of dollars, either upfront or through a subscription. Logic Pro on the Mac is, for now, anyway, a one-time purchase of $200, which undercuts most (but not all) of the other DAWs.

The second reason is that it is in fact very well-featured, especially for someone like me for whom music-making is a hobby, not a profession. There are other programs that do certain things better (Ableton Live, for example, is the preferred DAW for live performances, while Pro Tools and Cubase, as I understand it, are the industry standards for professional music production in the studio), but as a jack-of-all-trades program, it’s very solid. It’s (reasonably) easy to get started in and just use, but if you want to dive deeper there’s a lot more there too.

A third reason is that, as Apple’s own product, it’s supported very well across Apple’s hardware. For example, you can use a program on the iPad to help control Logic Pro on your Mac; the iPad can also be used as a MIDI controller, which I find helpful when I’m away from my desk. Additionally, Apple has released a version of Logic Pro specifically for the iPad (this one is a subscription: $5 a month, I think), and you can work on a project on one and then port it to the other to continue working on it, with some limitations.

Finally, Logic Pro comes with its own extensive set of instruments, effects, samples, MIDI loops and other goodies, so that even if you never buy third-party plugins or samples, you will still have a hefty amount of fair-to-excellent synths and sounds to work with. Logic Pro is not alone in this — nearly every DAW ships with its own set of plugins, instruments, et al — but again, for a one-time $200 buy-in, that’s a better-than-decent value.

While Logic Pro is my daily driver with DAWs, I do use other ones from time to time, notably Ableton Live and Studio One, which are available on PC as well as Mac, so I have them on my Windows box for when I want to sketch something out in my office. Ableton also has arguably the best controller on the market, the Push, which I have been coveting, so that is also a reason I keep Live around; the Push is designed specifically to integrate with it. I also have Reason, but I mostly have it for the Reason Rack, a set of plugins I can use in Logic. If you are a PC-only person, you can’t get Logic Pro in any event, so Live, Studio One, Bitwig or some of the other DAWs are going to be your play.

Input Devices: If you’re using MIDI instruments, and you want to get your live performance into your DAW, you need something to play in order get it down. When I’m in the basement, I primarily use two controllers for this: the Novation Launchpad X, and the Theoryboard from Irijule. In both cases, you tell the controller what key you want to play in, and then the controller sets itself up so that it’s near-impossible to hit any bum notes. The Theoryboard also sets you up with a few dozen chords in the key which you can access with a single button press.

This is awesome, so long as you stay in one key and/or are doing a song with no key changes or chords that are not strictly speaking in the general key of the song. When that happens there are workarounds, but not simple ones. The Launchpad X can also serve to launch loops and do other editing/processing stuff, both in Logic Pro and in Ableton Live, which is cool but also something I almost never use. The problem here is me, clearly.

I also have a couple of other input devices with more traditional keyboards: Two Roli LUMI keyboards (they are small and connect with magnets to become one larger keyboard), and an Akai MPK Mini Plus. These mostly live upstairs in my office, where I use them with the PC if I don’t want to walk to the basement.

Live Instruments: But what if I want to connect an actual live instrument into my DAW and play it into whatever I am recording? I do this less often than you might think, but it does happen from time to time. For that, I have a Universal Audio Volt 2 Audio Interface, which is pretty basic and also does the job perfectly well for my own needs. It has two inputs, one of which is dedicated to my microphone (a RØDE NT-1), and the other for any instrument I need to plug in, including guitar, bass or ukulele. Detailing the stringed instruments I have is a whole other post, so I’ll skip that for now, but I will say that at the moment most of the live guitar I port into my recordings comes out of my Acoustasonic Telecaster, because it’s versatile, and because I have it on hand. I don’t typically run the guitar through an amp or effects pedals; I have enough virtual versions at this point to do the job well enough.

For listening to my stuff I have a pair of perfectly adequate Presonus Eris studio monitors, which are small because I’m sitting literally a foot and a half from them and they don’t need to be any bigger, or louder. I have 54-year-old ears, I don’t need to give myself a scorching case of tinnitus.

Plugins and Software Instruments/Effects: If you’re not happy with the virtual instruments and effects that ship with your DAW, you can buy more, either as one-off purchases or as part of a subscription. Be warned that a) you can buy a whole bunch without stopping to realize what you’ve done, b) that adds up to a whole lot of money, quickly. When Logic Pro boots up it tells me I currently have about 1100 plugins at my disposal, not counting the ones native in the software. This is a ridiculous amount and more than almost anyone would need, ever, including me. Please don’t do what I have done. Also, please note that Logic Pro (and Ableton Live, Studio One, Reason, etc) come with some really excellent instruments and effects; please exhaust their possibilities before picking up a bunch of other plugins.

That said, a lot of the plugins I have come as part of a larger bundle or subscription, where for one (not small) price and/or continuing subscription, you get a whole bunch of instruments, effects and (depending) loops and samples. Because I apparently have more money than sense at the moment, I have several of these — again, far more than I need, don’t be me.

Of these several bundles/subscriptions, the one I regularly get the most value from is from Arturia; specifically whatever is the most recent iteration of their V Collection of instruments and/or FX Collection of effects and sound shapers. These collections are the opposite of cheap! And also, I use the instruments and effects they offer nearly every time I make something, so I’m getting some real use out of them. If you can’t splurge on these collections, consider Arturia’s Pigments synth, which is a whole lot of great-sounding presets and super-nerdy customization options for $99.

I also have Native Instruments’ most recent Komplete bundle, which ranges in price from “expensive” to “are you kidding me right now,” depending on which you get (guess which one I got), and which I am of two minds about. On one hand, there are some genuinely amazing instruments, sounds and effects in there. On the other hand, NI’s “Kontakt” platform, which most of its virtual instruments runs through, undeniably sucks: It’s difficult to navigate, hard to control, and is as likely to crash my Logic Pro project as it is to work in it. I’d be more of a fan if Kontakt wasn’t such a pain in the ass.

Subscription plug-in bundles I have include ones from Waves, Plugin Alliance and iZotope (the latter two owned by Native Instruments, but not part of its Kontakt platform), as well as Antares (better known as the Auto-Tune company), Minimal and Reason. They’re all good! Although most people would probably be fine with just one as a subscription. That’s because most offer a bunch of plugins whose purpose overlaps with plugins in other packages, but each have a few that I use regularly that makes it worth it for me. iZotope, for example, has some excellent mastering plugins, while Minimal’s Current instrument (that’s its name) is a synth, effects box and samples service all in one. I also have an account with Splice, which offers literally millions of loops, samples and MIDI presets to play with. This is not an exhaustive list, merely what’s coming to me off the top of my head.

Once again, I am overspending on plugin bundles and subscriptions, and I do not recommend you be me. The world is full of excellent free and really-cheap plugins if you hunt for them, and again, whatever DAW you decide on very likely comes with a complete suite of instruments, effects and samples/loops that will keep you busy for a while. If you can splurge, but only a little, I recommend the Arturia bundles. They will keep you happily occupied. If I were going to suggest a plugin subscription bundle, I would probably lean toward Waves, as it has the widest range of plugins, or Minimal’s Current, since it puts everything into one virtual box. But this is where looking around and doing your own comparison shopping for what you need and can afford will pay off.

Oh, and, two one-off plugins I really like and use a lot at the moment: CUBE, a “morphing” synth from Lunacy Audio, which has some extremely cool sounds, and Transit, from Baby Audio, which is a stealth effects box posing as a very specific type of plugin (I also really like Baby Audio’s BA-1 synth, whose cute interface belies its capabilities).

And that’s where I am with music production here in February of 2024. If you have any additional questions, chuck ’em into the comments and I will try to get to them.

— JS

And Now, a Cover of The Boss For Your Weekend

Posted on February 3, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      5 Comments

I mentioned earlier today that I had incorporated the new MacBook into the basement music studio, and having done so, I decided to run it through its paces by doing a quick cover. And thus: “I’m On Fire,” written and rather more famously performed by Bruce Springsteen. Among any other thing, it has the virtue of being short, and easy to play along to. I played in the piano part mostly live, with minimal futzing around with the performance on the backend, and, uhhh, I think you can tell. Which is fine. I don’t mind some imperfection here and there.

Springsteen has nothing to worry about, but I like it. Enjoy.

— JS

The New Music Room Setup

Posted on February 3, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      4 Comments

I finally got around to bringing the new MacBook down to the basement to get it set up to make music, and took the opportunity to update a couple of other things, namely the USB-C hub, and connecting the iPad to the Mac to act as a command surface for Logic Pro. It’s very colorful! And who knows, maybe I’ll end up making more music as well.

One advantage this setup has over the previous one is that the MacBook is portable, so when the basement gets too cold — a not unfrequent situation here in the depths of winter — I can take the project I’m working on upstairs or wherever else I need to go. The little Mac Mini that was previously at the heart of the set-up was pretty much stay-put. Also, now I have an additional screen to work with. More visual real estate is good.

If you’re the anthropomorphizing sort, don’t worry about the Mac Mini, it will be pressed into service elsewhere in the house. It still has a lot of life left in it. But from now on, the music you hear out of me will be coming out of this setup. No pressure for me!

— JS

New Music: “Ascenders”

Posted on February 3, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

This is the first piece of music I’ve put together on my new Mac, and it’s a long, gentle ambient piece which feels (to me, anyway) as if it’s in the continual process of lifting; thus the name. Perfect for spacing out and staring into the night sky. Enjoy.

(Photo credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/A. Smith. Used under Creative Commons 4.0 license. I edited the photo to add text and saturate the colors. See the original here.)

— JS

New Books and ARCs, 2/2/24

Posted on February 2, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      14 Comments

A groundhog poked its head out of a hole and declared that there was at least six more weeks of reading, and then presented me with this stack of new books and ARCs. Which of these books would you like to take with you into February? Share in the comments!

— JS

Don’t Call It a Sellout

Posted on February 2, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      41 Comments

Yesterday Vox published a piece by Rebecca Jennings entitled “Everyone’s a Sellout Now,” about the nature of the marketing and promotion creators are required to do these days to get their work out into the public sphere, in a world where creative work makes less for nearly everyone who makes things, and where nothing seems to last. In a time where every creator also has to be their own media personality, with a TikTok and Instagram presence, who even has time to be an actual creator anymore, the piece asks, and it is a fair question.

I felt a wave of nostalgia reading the piece; this same piece could have been written twenty years ago, during the heyday of the “blogosphere,” when the first wave of celebrity bloggers were getting their first books out there in the world, while still being chained to the daily grind of writing on their sites and hoping that their already-existing blog audiences would somehow convert into paying customers. It could also have been written any time between now and then, because Patreons and Kickstarters aren’t exactly new any more, and before TikTok, the current (and honestly a little long in the tooth now) arbiter of What The Kids Are Into, there was YouTube and Vine and Twitter and Snapchat and Facebook and MySpace and so on, all requiring constant attention and performative authenticity, and all being an exhausting grind to maintain. This is so not new, he said, on his blog where he’s written for 25 years, despite blogs being positively antediluvian at this point.

(Nor was it new even in blog times, but let’s leave stories of authors and musicians selling their self-published/pressed books and music out of the trunks of their cars, and having to be their own press agents calling newspapers and radio stations from gas station pay phones, in the dust of the 20th century for now.)

But! The fact that this story is not new does not minimize the endless wheel of online self-promotion creators have to do today, nor should it minimize the challenges creators have today getting their work seen in a system where it feels like putting your art out into the world is often like chucking it down a hole and hoping enough people see it flashing by before it settles forever into the darkness. Jennings’ piece is less about discovering a new and lamentable aspect of being a creator as it is This Year’s Model of the story — the contours are largely the same but the differences in details matter, and are worth knowing about.

We are also brought again to the consideration of what “selling out” means in an era where “artistic integrity” means you’re likely to make no money at all, instead of the very little money you might otherwise get. Jennings’ piece talks to artists today about what “that “selling out” means, and at least one of them comes to the conclusion that it is “an outdated, privileged, and intensely unrealistic attitude.”

And you know what? That creator is 100% not wrong. It is outdated and privileged, and in the US generally comes out of a very specific moment of post-war American prosperity when young people briefly set themselves in opposition to the capitalist system and shied away from anything that whiffed of its taint, before surrendering to it wholly under Reagan (yes, yes, hashtag NotAllBoomers). That ethos later got a boost via punk, which had offshoots well into the 00s (hello, emo!). It was a very durable shibboleth, manifesting mostly in music but also in writing and other fields.

It’s a nice idea if you can afford it, or, alternately, don’t mind being poor all your life. Most people can’t and wouldn’t choose to be, respectively. And even in its heyday it was only moderately adhered to; for every celebrity who could afford to be choosy about how they marketed themselves, there were others who could not, or, alternately, saw no contradiction between their artist selves and their moneymaking selves. These days, when the amount of money made from creative work is relentlessly squeezed by others in the chain, and there are more of them squeezing than ever before, that contradiction is less and less immediately apparent.

There is another to me more insidious aspect of “selling out” as an epithet, which is that for decades now it’s suggested that understanding the business of your creativity was somehow a bad thing, and something to be wary of. In my own field, this has meant decades of watching predatorial creeps lurk around every part of the publishing chain to take advantage of writers, who internalize this nonsense and end up saying things like “no one does this for the money” like that’s somehow a virtue, instead of evidence of a broken system. It’s no better in other creative fields. We all stand to die of exposure.

“Selling out” for me means a very specific thing: It means doing things for money (or power, influence, etc) that go against your own personal set of ethics and values. I have been offered — recently, even! — opportunities to make money that go against my ideals; I’ve turned them down. I also recognize that for most of my professional life I have been in a position where turning down stuff I find questionable is easier for me than for other people. If I say “no” to something, I don’t have to worry about whether my electricity is going to be cut off, or I’m going to be able to make rent. My line of accountability is higher than I would hold it for others (within reason: Don’t ever be a fascist for pay, y’all, or, in point of fact, be a fascist at all).

Actively marketing yourself and your work, and setting up creative camp where the money is: that’s doing business. It is not inherently “selling out.” Anyone who suggests otherwise can go fuck themselves. It already sucks for most creatives that they have to spend so much of their time doing everything around creativity rather than the creative stuff, the stuff that gives other people joy, and the stuff that they want and need to sell to keep on doing more of it. Saddling that aspect of their lives with a cultural judgement that is at this point decades out of date, and promulgated by generations who gleefully voted for decades to shred the social net, is some real bullshit. No one today deserves that added to their karmic load.

It’s never been easy to make money as a creative. Creatives have always had to hustle. Most of the work to make a name has always fallen to the creatives themselves; other help mostly comes in after the fact, if at all. Creatives deserve to have an opportunity to make a living from what they do, however they can manage to do it. There’s a lot about being a creative in this era that is terrible, in terms of being able to make that living. But if one aspect of it is that it finally kills dead the concept of “selling out” just for trying not to starve while you make your art, then that’s a silver lining, not to be discounted. It’s not selling out to live.

— JS

Smudge Defends the Natural Order of Things

Posted on February 1, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      17 Comments

“I’m not eating the dog food because the dog food tastes good. It’s dog food. It’s complete trash. I’m eating the dog food because the dog needs to learn her place.”

Yes, Smudge eats the dog food from time to time. Yes, the dog seems confused about this. But she also doesn’t get in his way. That said, Charlie will happily push Smudge out of the way if she thinks he’s about to get a treat that she’s not going to get. She gives as good as she gets, is what I’m saying.

— JS

Starter Villain on the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List; Vote in the Locus Award Poll

Posted on February 1, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      9 Comments

It was a pleasant thing to wake up this morning and discover that Starter Villain is part of the Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List, the magazine’s annual list of what it considers to have been the best published work in the fields of science fiction/fantasy/horror in the last calendar year. It’s in the category of science fiction novels, alongside a gallery of other frankly tremendous work from friends and peers. I couldn’t be happier to have my my book alongside theirs.

The Locus reading list is a lead-in for a poll that Locus also runs annually, and the votes of that poll lead to the finalist lists of the yearly Locus Awards. Anyone can vote in these awards (here’s the page to get started), so if you’re of the mind to cast a ballot, please do so. Being a finalist and possibly winning an award makes any writer’s day.

With that said, I will note that I won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel just last year, with The Kaiju Preservation Society. While I certainly wouldn’t stop you from listing Starter Villain in your poll responses if you found it worthy, I also strongly encourage you to be considering the other many excellent works and authors in my category who deserve recognition for their very fine work in 2023.

Thank you, Locus! And if you vote in the poll this year, thank you too.

— JS

Today in What the Hell is This

Posted on January 29, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      68 Comments

Is it a seed pod? An alien ship? Will I go to sleep and whatever was in here will hatch and take my place in the universe? I took this picture a couple of days ago and honestly it’s been haunting me ever since. I’m open to guesses, is what I’m saying.

— JS

Glasgow Worldcon Commits to Hugo Process Transparency

Posted on January 27, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      40 Comments

The folks at the Glasgow Worldcon, which is this year’s Worldcon, have officially opened up the nomination process for this year’s Hugo Awards, and in the emailed press release announcing the opening of the process (mirrored on social media), it has tucked in this paragraph, with an important note at the end, which I am highlighting for emphasis:

The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We encourage all eligible members to nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favourites from 2023. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations. At that time we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.

Given that there was a decided lack of transparency at the previous Worldcon for the disqualification of several potential Hugo finalists, which has caused quite the fracas online and in fandom, this is a positive and necessary step on the part of the Glasgow Worldcon in order to restore confidence in the Hugo voting process. I’m very happy they did it. This one sentence does a lot of work, and it’s good work to see.

It is also a significant departure from how things have been done before. Previously, Hugo voters (and the world in general) would generally learn of withdrawals and disqualifications with the release of the Hugo voting statistics on the night of the awards. Exceptions have happened before, usually when someone who has withdrawn from voting consideration announces it of their own volitation, but as a tradition the Worldcons themselves would hold off official notation of such things until the awards were given out.

That worked, until it didn’t. And as it has stopped working, a change was necessary. One side effect of this may be that there will be fandom chatter about who has voluntarily withdrawn from consideration and why, which might make those who withdraw feel like they have to explain their reasonings. They shouldn’t have to, unless they want to. But after this last year, in terms of actual ineligibility decided by the administrators of the Hugos, it will be clarifying to know earlier than later why something has been ruled ineligible. Prior to 2023, the reasons for disqualification have tended to be fiddly technical reasons relating to the category. I fully expect a return to this standard starting with this year.

Also, and for the avoidance of doubt, I fully expect that Glasgow will run the Hugo voting in a manner that is above reproach. It’s been commented by others, not unfairly, that Glasgow should not be punished for the sins of the previous Hugo administrators, and I quite agree with this. This isn’t about assigning blame to Glasgow or punishing them, or any future Worldcon. It is recognizing that, for reasons fair or otherwise, it falls to this year’s Worldcon to assure everyone that their votes count, and will be fairly and accurately counted. They’re making those assurances, in a calm and matter-of-fact way. That’s appreciated, and important.

There’s more to be done, but much of that will have to wait for the WSFS business meeting, which generally takes place at the Worldcon, which this year happens in August. For now, this press release is a good step, and smart messaging.

And with that said, if you can nominate in this year’s Hugo Awards, please do. I’ll be doing so.

— JS

The Feedly Hiccup

Posted on January 26, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      18 Comments

Which is not the name of my next band but is a problem people have noticed with the RSS feed when they use Feedly, which is that for whatever reason posts from here arrived not in a timely fashion but in bunches. Why? I have no idea why, and for the moment at least it seems to be an issue exclusive to Feedly (although if you’re using an other RSS reader and are having the same problem, let me know).

I’ll put in a service ticket about it with WordPress and see if they know what the issue is. But for the moment at least, it seems to be a Feedly issue, not a WordPress issue. We’ll see if it can be sorted.

— JS

New Books and ARCs, 1/26/24

Posted on January 26, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      23 Comments

January is heading toward the door, but there’s still time for another stack of new books and ARCs that have come to the Scalzi Compound. Any titles here you would like to take into February? Share in the comments!

— JS

In Which I Am Absolutely No Fun For Anyone Until, Like, May

Posted on January 26, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      11 Comments

In the last week or so I have received five queries about showing up to online book clubs and four requests for podcast appearances, and while it is genuinely delightful to be wanted — thank you! — my schedule for the first few months of 2024 is already packed with real world/online appearances, travel, several writing gigs and also a novel which needs to be in on May 1.

So this is me declaring scheduling bankruptcy until May 6 at the earliest (I will need to sleep for several days after turning in a novel). If I have not already officially added you to my schedule, which you will know by me having said to you “Yes! You are on my schedule!” in an email, then I’m afraid the answer is no, or at least “not now.”

And since I know this will also result in a bunch of folks sending me an email right now asking to get on the schedule for May: Hey, could you check in with me in the second half of April instead, please? By then I will know where I am with the novel and whether I will need to beg my editor for an extra week or whatever, and I don’t want to schedule myself for anything if I’ve got the last several thousand words of a novel hanging over my head. Any appearance I would be doing would be having me dazed and probably a bit snappish. Nobody wants that (or maybe they do, but I don’t). So get with me later, please.

I do apologize, particularly to the people to whom I already said “check with me later,” just to kick the can down the road again. I promise it is not me trying to avoid you in particular. The problem we both share is that the person who handles my schedule is doing a shit job of it, and also, is me.

— JS

40 Years of Writing

Posted on January 24, 2024    Posted by John Scalzi      32 Comments

Today is apparently the 40th anniversary of the debut of the Macintosh computer, which is interesting in itself, of course (all the tech sites have their “what does it all mean” articles about it up, here’s one of them), but the anniversary of the Mac also means that this year is the 40th anniversary of me writing fiction. I wrote my very first stories on Ezra Chowaiki’s Macintosh computer, and he had one of the first series of Macs made. As soon as he got it, there I was hanging out in his room, typing on it. He would go asleep with me typing, and would wake up with me typing. I’m not sure why Ezra was so tolerant of me taking over his computer, but I’m glad he was.

Mind you, I probably could have figured this out on my own, without the reminder of the 40th anniversary of the announcement of the Mac. The first half of 1984 (40 years ago, check the math, I’m old) coincided with the second semester of my freshman year in high school, which is when John Heyes, my English composition teacher, assigned three sections of his class to write a story about a gift. That was my official first ever short story, and, as I always mention when I tell this tale, I was the only kid in those three sections to get an “A” on the story, which led me to the epiphany that I should be a writer, because I was apparently good at it, and literally everything else was hard. Good thinking, 14-year-old me! You nailed that one.

I would like to think that after 40 years of writing, I do the gig a little better than I did when I was 14 years old, but looking back at those first stories it’s also pretty clear to me that some of the particular things I do with writing were baked in right from the beginning. Take the opening paragraph to “Best Friends,” that first story: “Well, if this has taught me anything, it’s not to get sick. I got sick for three days, and the world changed.” That’s an extremely solid opening, especially from a 14-year-old doing it for the first time ever. Grabbing them from the first line is apparently in my storytelling bones.

Less than a decade after writing that opening, I was working as a professional writer, writing movie reviews and opinion columns for a newspaper. Twenty one years after that, my first novel was out. Now it’s 40 years and there are dozens of books and millions of words. And it all started on Ezra Chowaiki’s Mac.

And now I have a new Mac! It’s funny how it all ties together, and funny how time flies.

— JS