The Big Idea: Lavie Tidhar
Posted on November 11, 2022 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in author Lavie Tidhar’s case, a single image he thought of was worth a whole book. Read on to see how his newest novel, Neom, came to be.
LAVIE TIDHAR:
For Neom, my latest SF novel set in the wider world of my Central Station universe, all I had in mind was the image of a robot holding a rose. To find out what the robot was about I started writing, and the result (during the depths of the pandemic) was this short novel, which got me through that rather awful second lockdown.
The big idea here, though, isn’t mine. A few years ago I came across a strange Saudi plan to build a futuristic megalopolis on the shores of the Red Sea. Neo-Mostaqbal (New Future, in a mix of Latin and Arabic), or Neom for short, was backed by a short marketing video and nothing much else, though it came as considerable surprise to me to see it slowly taking shape in reality even as I write this. I have been visiting the Sinai and Egypt for many years, staring longingly across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia – now opening to the world in a limited way, but until recently firmly out of reach – and wondering about visiting.
Neom allowed me to write about places I knew, like the Sinai Peninsula or the town of El Quesir, and of things I only imagine – like those dark entities as large as planets who live in the Oort, or of the curious events that happened on Titan. In between was Neom, in my version a city already old, populated with the small lives of the people whose jobs it is to look after things – cleaners and flower sellers and mechanics, salvagers and shurta officers.
It was Robert Heinlein, I think, who coined the term “future history” to describe that common universe SF writers like to sometimes play with over years of short stories and novels that all share the same background. I have always loved them, from Cordwainer Smith’s majestic Instrumentality to Larry Niven’s Known Space, and long ago, almost by accident, I set to write my own. Every time I think I’ve run out of stories to tell, something new pops up and grabs my attention. The solar system is wide and mysterious and there is so much left for me unexplored. I get to visit the Druze ballooners of Titan and the train drivers of Mars and the strange ships like the Ibn Al-Farid out of Polyport or the Gel Blong Mota that does the Earth to Mars run…
And tying them all is Earth itself – more specifically, my little part of it, the Middle East, long unexplored in science fiction. I like to make the joke that Central Station, my 2016 novel, is the best SF novel set in Tel Aviv – with the caveat, of course, that since it’s the only SF novel set in Tel Aviv it is also by default the worst one. There are a thousand novels set in New York – a fine city by all accounts – but long ago I realised there was no point in me trying to compete with American writers to write about America when I could compete with no one and write about somewhere else.
So this is it. It was a lot of fun to go back to this world for a while, and even as I write this, new stories set in the wider world are appearing in Asimov’s, F&SF and Clarkesworld. I just have too much fun exploring. There are still the Neo-Neanderthals in the Jezreel Valley, the strange sentient trains on Mars, the junk collectors up in Earth orbit and the Boppers on Titan. The future history is the Great Game of science fiction – so who can possibly resist playing it? And, if you do want to check it out, Neom is out now and, ultimately, it just a story about a robot and a rose.
Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Neom: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s website. Follow him on Twitter.
The Old Church
Posted on November 10, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 39 Comments
A brief update on the church: Many of you were wondering what we might call the church, now that it’s no longer officially the Bradford United Methodist Church. We have seen many suggestions, including “Church of the Infinite Burrito” “The Interdependent Church,” “Scalzitology HQ” and “The Scamperbeast Seminary.”
With that said, the church building still does exist in the actual world, and we do eventually plan to have events there, both private and public. We decided we needed to call the place something catchy, and not likely to get us ridden out of town on a rail.
So, folks, please say hello to: The Old Church. Or, if more specificity is needed, The Old Church of (or in) Bradford.
This is a good name because it is literally accurate, non-controversial, and something that can slip into public memory without undue difficulty (“We saw a musical performance at The Old Church”). It’s a good name, I think. Not flashy! But, look, it’s a solid midwestern church building, it could do with a solid midwestern church name.
Note that the real estate corporation we’ve established to handle The Old Church and other holdings is Church of the Scalzi, LLC. That’s a company name, however, not a religious endeavor. We’re not going into that line of work. Just so we’re clear. Again.
— JS
How to Get Signed & Personalized Books From Me For the Holidays, 2022 Edition
Posted on November 10, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 3 Comments
We’ve come to that time of the year again, where folks begin to think about their holiday gift giving, and at least some of you think about books as the perfect gift. Well, they are! But would make them even more perfect is getting those books signed and personalized. Every year I join forces with Jay and Mary’s Book Center in Troy, Ohio, to sign and personalize books so that you’ll have them available to give to the people you love, including yourself.
From today (Nov. 10) through Monday, December 5, you can order books I have written from Jay and Mary’s and I will come in and sign them for you, and then the bookstore will ship them to you (US only). The last couple of years were beset by COVID and/or supply chain issues, but fortunately this year most things seem to be running smoothly. Nevertheless, I strongly encourage you to get your orders in early, so there are no delays in shipping the books to you this holiday season.
Here’s how to do it!
1. Call Jay & Mary’s at their 800 number (800 842 1604) and let them know that you’d like to order signed copies of my books. Please call rather than send e-mail; they find it easier to keep track of things that way. If you have problems with the 800 number, their direct number is (937 335 1167).
2. Tell them which books you would like (For example, The Kaiju Preservation Society), and what, if any, names you would like the book signed to. If there’s something specific you’d like written in the books let them know but for their sake and mine, please keep it short. Also, if you’re ordering the book as a gift, make sure you’re clear about whose name the book is being signed to. If this is unclear, I will avoid using a specific name.
3. Order any other books you might think you’d like, written by other people, because hey, you’ve already called a bookstore for books, and helping local independent bookstores is a good thing. I won’t sign these, unless for some perverse reason you want me to, in which case, sure, why not.
4. Give them your mailing address and billing information, etc.
5. And that’s it! Shortly thereafter I will go to the store and sign your books for you.
Again, the deadline for signed/personalized books for 2022 is December 5. After December 5 all Scalzi stock will still be signed and available, but I will likely not be able to personalize.
Also, this is open to US addresses only. Sorry, rest of the world. It’s a cost of shipping thing.
What books are available?
CURRENT HARDCOVER: The Kaiju Preservation Society is the current hardcover release. The Last Emperox may still available in hardcover; ask. 2018’s hardcovers Head On and The Consuming Fire may be available if you ask for them specifically. The mini-hardcover of Old Man’s War is also available and is a great format for that book.
CURRENT TRADE PAPERBACK: The Android’s Dream, Agent to the Stars and Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (the 2013 Hugo Award winner), Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (which features a story of mine), Metatropolis (which I edited and contribute a novella to) are available in trade paperback format. There may be hardcovers of these still around if you ask. But each are definitely in trade paperback. There are also probably still trade paperback editions of Old Man’s War that can be ordered if you prefer that format. Also available: Robots Vs. Fairies, the anthology that features the story of mine that was adapted for the “Three Robots” episode of the Netflix animated series Love, Death and Robots.
CURRENT MASS MARKET PAPERBACK: The entire Interdependency series (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire and The Last Emperox) are available, both individually and as a boxed set. The Old Man’s War series of books (Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, Zoe’s Tale, The Human Division and The End of All Things) are available individually, and the first three of those books also come in their own boxed set. Lock In, Head On and Unlocked: An Oral History of the Haden Syndrome (novella) are individually available as well. Fuzzy Nation, Agent to the Stars and The Android’s Dream have recently been moved into trade paperback, but mass market editions are probably still available if that’s your preference. Please note: If you order the boxed sets, if you want those signed you’ll have to agree to let me take the shrinkwrap off. In return I’ll sign each of the books in the box.
CURRENT NON-FICTION: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded (essay collection, Hugo winner), The Mallet of Loving Correction (also an essay collection, this will need to be special ordered as it is a signed limited), Virtue Signaling (a third essay collection, will also need special ordering) and Don’t Live For Your Obituary (a collection of essays about writing, will also need to be special ordered).
AUDIOBOOKS: The Kaiju Preservation Society, The Last Emperox, The Consuming Fire, The Collapsing Empire, The Dispatcher, The End of All Things, Lock In, Head On, The Human Division, Redshirts, Fuzzy Nation, The God Engines, Metatropolis and Agent to the Stars are all available on CD and/or MP3 CD, and Jay & Mary’s should be able to special order them for you. Check with them about other titles, which may or may not be currently available on CD.
Two things regarding audiobooks: First, if you want these, you should probably call to order these as soon as possible. Second, and this is important, because the audiobooks come shrinkwrapped, I will have to remove the shrinkwrap in order to sign the cover. You ordering a signed audiobook means you’re okay with me doing that and with Jay & Mary’s shipping it to you out of its shrinkwrap.
If you have any other questions, drop them in the comment thread and I’ll try to answer them!
— JS
The Big Idea: Steve McHugh
Posted on November 10, 2022 Posted by Athena Scalzi 2 Comments
Author Steve McHugh was in the middle of writing a novel when his newest novel, The Last Raven, decided it needed to be written, instead. Follow along in his Big Idea to see how it started to take shape, and what it ended up becoming.
STEVE MCHUGH:
I wasn’t meant to write The Last Raven.
In 2020, I finished an urban fantasy story I’d started in 2012, consisting of 13 books across 3 series. It had been a lot of work done in a relatively short period of time. I was proud of my work, but I was done with urban fantasy—at least for now.
I was out of contract for the first time in ten years, a completed story behind me, and was utterly unsure what I was going to do next. I originally settled on an epic fantasy that I’d been working on for years.
My brain disagreed.
There are two parts of writing that over the years I’ve come to believe are important to actually getting anything done that’s worthwhile:
- Write what you love. If you don’t care about the book, why should anyone else?
- When you’re writing, your brain will tell you about the new shiny thing. Don’t ignore it, but don’t allow yourself to be sidetracked for too long.
After writing over a dozen books, these were rules that I found necessary to write.
I follow the first in everything I’ve ever written, but on this occasion, I ignored the second one completely.
I was writing my epic fantasy when my brain kept telling me about this new idea. I knew it was going to be urban fantasy, but apart from that, it was just an idea about a man who had been tasked with protecting the people he cared about. A man who had failed in that endeavor leaving him the only surviving member.
Lucas Rurik was the man’s name.
As I usually do, I made notes about the new shiny thing, meaning to get back to the book I’d been working on as soon as I’d gotten the new shiny thing out of my system.
A month later, I had 20,000 words written on The Last Raven, and had extensive notes on world building and character arcs. I had a spreadsheet detailing characters, places, magical abilities, anything I needed—trust me, it’s a lifesaver.
By this point I was officially all in. This was what I was going to work on: Lucas Rurik, a man who had died during The Second Punic War and had come back as something much more than human. One of the riftborn. The rift, a place of incredible power and beauty linked to our own world. These were the two central parts to the story I wanted to tell.
Lucas needed redemption more than revenge. He needed to feel like he was capable of doing the right thing. A man still confident of what he could do, but not confident that he could do it and keep people safe.
Lucas was, and don’t tell anyone else this because I get the impression that writers aren’t meant to find any part of writing easy, really easy to write. His story, his personality, they came quickly with very little hair pulling out on my part. It was like he’d always been in my brain and just needed the excuse.
The rift… well, the rift was different. It was a place where people all through history lived together in something approximating harmony. But it was also a place of great danger of monstrous creatures that roamed the lands, and very human desires for riches and power.
And Lucas could move between the rift and earth at will.
The rift required history, it required a story of its own, it was, in many ways, its own character. That was somewhat new to me. In previous books they’d also been set on earth, or in mythological realms that were known to many. Creating a place from scratch with thousands upon thousands of years of history, with its own religion, its own politics, its own currency, was… actually it was awesome.
But as I wrote more and more worldbuilding, it did something quite unexpected, it changed Lucas too. It was like pulling on one stretched the other. Relationships were forged, and broken, which in turn gave me more history about the rift, more places, more people. I’ve never quite had anything like that before with a person and a place. Normally it was a person’s relationship with other people, but this was that and also with a place.
I think at this point, I restarted the book with all the knowledge I now had about the people and world. About how they interacted with earth and the rift, about how the riftfused—anyone affected by the power of the rift—remained hidden from humans for so long, and why they had revealed themselves. About how that changed everything. There was so much new stuff that I’d worked on that restarting was necessary, if a little daunting.
Anyone who has ever gotten tens of thousands of words into a book and then restarted, knows the pain that decision comes with. But while it can be painful, from the ashes of that original story came The Last Raven, the first book in a series, and a story I loved to tell. And all that from an idea I’d originally dismissed. Turns out my muse—whatever that is—knew better.
The Last Raven: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
A Week of Working Out
Posted on November 9, 2022 Posted by Athena Scalzi 35 Comments
Last week, my dad and I got Planet Fitness memberships. I have never been a member of a gym before, unless you count the YMCA, but I never actually worked out at the YMCA, I mostly just accompanied my grandma to go swimming sometimes.
Anyways, we got our memberships, and today marks one full week of going and working out together! So I wanted to write up my impressions on the gym so far and my experience with working out for the past week. Not necessarily like a review of Planet Fitness specifically, but just how it feels to go to a gym and be in that sort of environment in general. Because it’s pretty unfamiliar territory for me, and I’m willing to bet it’s a daunting place for many of you, as well.
I knew upon getting my membership that I wanted a professional to make me a workout plan. I wasn’t about to go in there and pretend like I knew what I was doing on those machines, and I definitely wasn’t going to just go grab some dumbbells and go right for it. The good news for me is that having a membership means that you can talk to their trainer and consult with them about your goals and they’ll put together a regimen for you to follow.
The way I thought the consultation would go and the way it actually went were pretty different. I was expecting to express my goals to her, and then she would just tell me what machines I should be using or if I should be doing more cardio than weights, yada yada. But it ended up being more than that. After I told her my goals, both long term and short term, she started by creating a five day regimen for me and wrote everything down in a packet.
Day 1, upper body. Day 2 and 4, core + cardio. Day 3, lower body. Day 5, total body workout.
Each page of the packet is a different day, and then all the machines/exercises I’m supposed to do are listed alongside how many reps and sets to do. Then, she took me around to every machine and not only showed me how to use them correctly, but helped me figure out what weight I should be doing on all of them, and wrote that weight down in the packet alongside the reps and whatnot.
She was immensely helpful, and I had previously been worried that I wasn’t going to know how to use the machines she recommended, so I was pleasantly surprised when she showed me how to do every single one. It made me less afraid that I’d look like a fool doing my exercises. I’m sure we’ve all seen photos of, and probably laughed at, people using gym equipment wrong, and I did not want to be one of those people.
So, that took care of a large chunk of my anxiety regarding exercising in front of others. It’s still pretty difficult, and I know it’s a big reason why a lot of people don’t go to the gym. They feel like everyone is looking at them, or they don’t want others to see them sweat, get red in the face, breathe hard, etc. I know that’s how I feel, at least. But honestly, this past week has proved that what they say is true, no one is looking at you. I never once felt like anyone was looking at me funny, or judging me, or doing more than just barely glancing my direction because human eyes are naturally attracted towards movement. Everyone is honestly just focused on themselves and their workouts.
I say all this as a person that looks around a lot. I don’t know why I look around so much. When I’m walking on the treadmill, I just glance all over the room constantly, and this has led me to see that literally no one is looking at me. People don’t care about you as much as you think they do.
All in all this first week, I was definitely nervous to be in a gym environment and afraid of being judged and all that, but that’s really not the case and I feel a lot better now.
Aside from the anxiety, how does the first week feel physically?
The answer is: not amazing.
Getting started can be demoralizing. When you realize just how out of breath you get from running, or the fact that you can’t even do one push-up, it can make you want to never try again. I can’t hold a plank or a wall sit for longer than ten seconds, I do the lowest weight possible on the shoulder press machine, I feel my heartbeat in my ears when I run for all of two minutes. It makes me feel bad about myself, and about my limitations.
But I won’t get better unless I try. I have to try to do a push-up if I ever want to be able to actually do one. I have to try to hold a plank for as long as I can, and try to complete all three sets of triceps curl. I can’t just sit around and hope that one day I will magically be able to go up the stairs in my own house without dying, I have to work to make that true. And while it sucks, waiting for that magic day sucks more.
So here’s to many more weeks of crunches and planks, many more weeks of bicep curls and leg press, and many more weeks of trying.
-AMS
The Big Idea: Emery Robin
Posted on November 8, 2022 Posted by Athena Scalzi 1 Comment
It is not what we take with us when we die, but what we leave behind. Author Emery Robin goes into some detail about this in their Big Idea for their newest novel, The Stars Undying. Read on to see what kind of things end up getting inherited by those we leave.
EMERY ROBIN:
What if someone was going to live forever?
Many religions hold that, in some form, people do: that the soul is immortal, and lives after corporeal death in another world. Other stories suggest that some piece of the dead continues on this plane—ghosts and shades, preserved in spirit while their bodies decay. Others describe how the dead can become more powerful than they were in life: cursing descendants, interceding with God or gods for aid, or even becoming objects of worship themselves.
Alexander the Great ordered that, after his death, his followers should bury him in a temple of Zeus Ammon. Already, in life, he had begun demanding that people prostrate themselves before him as the Greeks did before gods. In death, he intended to be known as Zeus Ammon’s divine son.
When he died, his friends disobeyed him. On its journey to Macedonia, Alexander’s corpse was hijacked by his general Ptolemy and brought to Egypt, where Ptolemy founded his own kingdom over the bones of Alexander’s conquests. Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, Egyptians worshiped Alexander for centuries. But Ptolemy and his descendants were also worshiped: as chief priests to the Alexander-god, as Alexander’s heirs, and eventually as gods themselves. A cult arose around Alexander—a cult whose beliefs were only possible because Alexander himself was not alive to stop them.
Everyone is going to die. The world is built on this. Human histories, from the military to the marital to the economic, construct themselves around questions of who will inherit the world when its current owners are gone. Even nations rely on it: monarchy, in its most basic definition, is a government in which changes in power can only occur through human death. No tyrant or dictator, no matter how terrible, will ever outlive all of the people he ruled.
Cleopatra VII, whose story I retell in my space opera The Stars Undying, was the last queen of Egypt. She was also its last Ptolemaic ruler, its last Greek ruler, and the last heir to Alexander the Great. It is said that her first lover, Julius Caesar, once wept at a statue of Alexander. By age thirty-three, he said, Alexander had conquered the world. Yet he, Caesar, had done nothing yet that would make him so glorious—so famous—so immortal in human history.
In The Stars Undying, my world’s Alexander the Great invents a miraculous new technology: an artificial intelligence which replicates the brain-pattern of a human being so thoroughly that, at the moment of his death, he can upload his soul into its circuits. He calls this computer the Pearl of the Dead. When he dies, this universe’s Ptolemy proclaims the Pearl a god, and himself its Oracle. He passes it on to his children, down and down for three hundred years, until it reaches Gracia, my Cleopatra.
The Pearl of the Dead fascinates my Julius Caesar, Commander Matheus Ceirran, himself already a galactic conqueror. What power did it bring that past conqueror, he wonders? What power could it bring him? But for Gracia, the Pearl is not just a symbol of strength. It is an ancestor and an object of faith. It is something she must struggle for, and then struggle with. It is an inheritance, and when she chooses to bear it, she is confronted with a decision we must all make: how to shape the world through the way we carry our ghosts.
What we inherit from our dead is never only material. It is names, languages, religions, values. It is expectations, responsibilities, fears, dreams. We inherit trauma; we inherit memory. We inherit the consequences. We inherit the stories of who we are, and the stories of what we may be. We cannot choose what they are made of, our inheritances. We can only choose whether to accept them.
I wanted to retell Cleopatra’s story because I adored Cleopatra herself: her brilliance, her charm and humor, her determination, her refined taste, her impeccable sense of mess and drama. But I wanted to tell it as science fiction because, in Cleopatra, I saw a person who had spent her life living with a ghost on her shoulder.
Alexander was Cleopatra’s god. He gave her glamour and legitimacy; he gave her a cult representing her family and her kingdom. But he was also a man, and a man her ancestor had already betrayed. He was a conqueror who the growing Roman Empire respected more than it respected her. Caesar longed to live up to Alexander’s shadow, but Cleopatra needed more. She had to shape that shadow—to transform Alexander’s ghost—into something entirely her own.
In telling Cleopatra and Caesar’s story, a story about the famous dead and about a very famous death, I needed to deal with immortality, and I needed immortality to be magnificent. Death is the worst thing there is. It is the unbearable rift in this world. It is not forgivable, and to end it would be something spectacular. And immortality is terrible, too. In The Stars Undying, immortality could not flinch from this. It could not equivocate. It could not be half-good or half-evil, any more than death itself. It needed to be all horror, all miracle, all tyrant, all god.
What if someone was going to live forever? What would we inherit from them? How would it force us to carry our ghosts, dead and living? If, under a monarchy, death is the only way the world can change, what would you do if you were made to live with a king who never died?
The Stars Undying: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s website. Follow them on Twitter.
Good Morning, Lunar Eclipse
Posted on November 8, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 12 Comments
I actually got up early for you!
And apparently it’s going to be the last lunar eclipse until 2025, and who knows what will happen between now and then, so, happy I woke up for this.
In the US, it’s election day. US citizens, please vote if you have not done so already. Thank you.
— JS
Sunset Clouds, 11/7/22
Posted on November 7, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
I missed the actual sunset, because I was busy not looking out a window, but these clouds immediately after are still something else.
Big day in the US tomorrow, folks. If you haven’t already voted early, remember to vote. It matters. It actually always matters, mind you. But this year feels pretty significant. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you again tomorrow, too.
— JS
A Very Silly Workaround to Verify the @scalzi Account on Twitter is Actually Me, John Scalzi
Posted on November 6, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 33 Comments
Because the blue check mark on Twitter is now a symbol of subscription status, rather than being a symbol that Twitter has verified that an account is held by the person it purports to represent, I offer the following, with apologies for the occasional use of the third person, and with informational bits up front and editorial in the back:
Hello! This is just to note, from author John Scalzi’s personal site (note the scalzi.com URL), which has been around since 1998, and which has verifiably been under his control that entire time, that “@scalzi” is the correct and official Twitter account for John Scalzi. Please note that “scalzi” here is spelled correctly and with no substitutions (for example, no capital “i” where the “L” is in the word), nor are there any additional characters in the name or after it, including underscores or numbers.
Please also note that Twitter allows users to easily change the “name” of their account, but not so easily the account handle (the part with the “@” in it), and never to an existing account handle, so always check the account handle to see if my or any other account is being spoofed. See the illustration below:
Note also that the icon/avatar of an account (the image that accompanies the name and account handle) can be changed at will and may be used to intentionally confuse/spoof/troll people.
Again, always check the Twitter handle to confirm the identity of the account. In my case, “@scalzi” is the correct and official John Scalzi account.
Also:
That should do it.
As of this writing (November 6, 2022) the “@scalzi” account has a blue check mark on it, but given the decision by the current Twitter management to make the blue check mark a symbol that one has subscribed to Twitter Blue, rather than a symbol that the account is verifiably held by the person it purports to be, that blue check mark may disappear off my Twitter account at any time, thus the need to have outside verification that the “@scalzi” account is the official account of John Scalzi, author.
(As a matter of disclosure, I will note that prior to this whole set of nonsense, I was a subscriber to the “Twitter Blue” service from the time it had become available, because I wanted access to some of its capabilities, including the “undo” and “edit” functions. I may or may not continue to be a subscriber to it, depending on its value proposition to me.)
As of this writing, it is my understanding that the blue check mark symbol will be available to Twitter Blue subscribers without verification that the person is who they purport to be (aside from the extremely basic and unreliable method of making sure the payment for the subscription goes through). Therefore, there are two things to remember, with regard to Twitter, at this point:
1. There no longer exists any verifiable method from Twitter itself to confirm an account holder is who they purport to be.
2. The blue check mark symbol should no longer be considered trustworthy in terms of identity, even on accounts which displayed it previous to its association with the Twitter Blue subscription.
Both of these are incredibly important. The first of these means (counter to the marketing of Twitter Blue’s takeover of the blue check mark) that Twitter is now extremely unreliable as a source of news and information, more than it already was. Where the blue check mark was a first-line prophylactic against disinformation (at the very least, you knew the account was who it said it was), it now falls entirely to the user to confirm the source as well as the information. Many Twitter users won’t, and those who traffic in disinformation know that. Twitter used to know that, too.
The second of these means that even if currently verified users keep their checkmarks (as legacy holdovers or because they subscribe to Twitter Blue), the symbol has become useless for verification purposes because the blue check’s meaning has been changed. Twitter users moving forward have no way of knowing from Twitter itself when the blue check mark was granted to the user, and thus, whether it signifies “verified user” or “subscriber.” When in doubt (which for most people will be always), one should assume the blue check now means “subscriber.” If the rumor that current verified Twitter users will have a grace period to subscribe to Twitter Blue or else lose the checkmark is true, then in a few months the blue check mark will only mean “subscriber” anyway, with no association to verification.
Either way, and to repeat: The blue check mark on Twitter no longer means what it did. Its meaning has changed from “This account is verifiably this person” to “I pay money for Twitter.” The current management of Twitter wants potential subscribers, and current verified users, to believe the blue check mark confers status in itself, rather than for what it previously represented. Anyone who rushes to subscribe to Twitter in order to receive the status benefit of the blue check mark, however, should be prepared for value of the mark to decrease dramatically as the new meaning of the mark comes to the fore.
(Two side notes here: First, anyone planning to subscribe to Twitter Blue for certain other features, such as priority placement in replies and searches, should be aware the priority placement will mean nothing if you’re muted or blocked, so thinking that $8/month will give you license to be a jerk will just mean you’re wasting $8; Second, if “Twitter” continues calling its subscriber check mark “verification,” and trying to position it as such, someone should probably file a lawsuit alleging deceptive trade practices.)
I am not planning to leave Twitter in the near future — thus, the need for this note — and I may choose to continue to subscribe to Twitter Blue, which means I may continue to have a blue check mark on my account. The blue check means only that one is a subscriber, and no other meaning should be attached to it, either for my account or any other. It certainly doesn’t mean “verification” anymore. Verification on Twitter no longer exists. You take your chances on who and what you find there. Unless they just happen to be able to, say, point to their own Web site of a quarter-century’s standing, or can point to verified standing on other social media (I’m verified on Facebook, as an example).
But this is a very silly workaround that not everyone has, and it’s ridiculous that the current Twitter management has now made something like this the best way to verify that an account on their service represents who it purports to. Twitter should know better. Perhaps it does, but it just doesn’t care. And that is something to be aware of, too.
— JS
Yes, Queens
Posted on November 5, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
I’ve been playing with the AI art generator Stable Diffusion, and one of the things it lets you do is use a photo for reference. So I went ahead and popped in a couple of pictures of Krissy to see what would come up, and as a text prompt used various iterations of “queen” and other references. The pictures that came out don’t look like Krissy (nor did I expect them to, I had the setting for fidelity to the originating photo set to low), but they do look cool. What they mostly do is make me wonder which artists the AI was trained on, and if I can hire them to do some work for me.
Because, of course, that is the thing: These AI generators have been trained on various artists, many if not most still alive and producing work. I’m happy, for the purposes of my own amusement, to play with these art robots and see what comes out, and show off the results on my non-commercial outlets. But when it comes time to commission art for paid work, or for the house, or wherever, it’ll also be time for me to pay up for actual living humans making art. Support actual humans, folks! You might be one yourself, after all.
— JS
Where I Am Online
Posted on November 4, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
Because of the recent acquisition of Twitter by Elon “I overpaid” Musk, people are wondering where on the Internet I am, just in case they abandon that service forever. So, here is where you can find various online iterations of me, more or less in the order I use them. Click on the name of the service/site to go to my presence there.
Whatever: My blog. You’re on it right now. It’s been running since 1998 and has seen the launch and demise of at least three generations of social media. When in doubt, you will always find me here. In addition to visiting it directly, you can also subscribe to it via RSS, email, and WordPress’ reader function (if you have a WordPress account). Please visit regularly and/or subscribe!
Twitter: As of this writing, the place I’m at the most, when I’m not here. We’ll see if that continues.
Facebook: This Facebook page is primarily for news and updates relating to my career. I have a personal page on Facebook, which is not difficult to find, but I strictly limit “friending” on that to people I know in the real world in one way or another. The page linked here, however, is open to everyone.
Instagram: I post pictures here, about once a week.
Flickr: I also post pictures here.
Ello: More pictures, these slightly more arty on average than at those other two photo places, posted somewhat infrequently.
Metafilter: Reasonably frequent commenter, vary rare article poster.
LinkedIn: I’m here but rarely post (like, once a year or so).
Mastodon: This is a “federated” Twitter-like social network. I post here infrequently but may increase posting if Twitter really goes down the tubes.
Reddit: I comment here occasionally and have posted, like, five times in 15 years.
YouTube: A really random collection of videos I’ve put up over the years. I update sporadically at best.
Tumblr: Mostly just a repeater for my blog.
I have author pages at Amazon and Goodreads. I am also on Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music and other music services because I have music out.
I have accounts on other social media services, but those are mostly placeholders to hold my name. If I’ve posted anything at those places, it is usually a picture of a cat.
I will update this post from time to time, when necessary or desirable.
— JS
New Books and ARCs, 11/4/22
Posted on November 4, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
A very fine stack of new books and ARCs this week, including some nice limited editions from Subterranean Press. What here is calling to you? Share in the comments!
— JS
A Couple of Days With the Pixel 7 Pro
Posted on November 3, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
So far I like it! But what I’ve really noticed about it is how little I’ve had get used to it. With every other iteration of the Pixel I’ve had there was always some significant bit of software, hardware or user experience that called attention to itself and I had to build into my use of the phone, for better or worse. This time around, I swapped the data from my Pixel 6 Pro, signed into my most-used apps and proceeded as nothing had changed. Everything worked right out of the box, in a way I was used to, and didn’t require additional fiddling.
This was both gratifying — Hey! Everything just works! — and also a little sad for the nerd in me. I don’t mind a little fiddling with a new bit of kit and figuring out all the new stuff. Falling into rhythm with my new phone this quickly makes me wonder what I’m missing. But maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it. The Pixel 6 Pro, because it had a new design and processor (the first-gen Tensor chip) experienced some hiccups right out of the box and real growing pains as it went along. The Pixel 7 Pro, so far at least, has none of these. It’s hit the ground running.
To be clear, there are newish things about the Pixel 7 Pro, many of them having to do with the camera: The telephoto lens now goes to 5x, and the way the camera juggles between its optical and digital zooms (through a combination of cropping and using the three back lenses in conjunction) means the zoomed-in pictures tend to be sharper than they were before. The wide-angle lens is notably wider-angled, and the main lens now also features a “macro” mode which lets you get closer to smaller objects (see below photo of a fly on a gourd). There are also new camera tricks, including a new “unblur” mode that works pretty well, at least for the one photo I’ve used it on so far, of one of my cats.
My experience with the camera so far is that it actually does take better photos than the Pixel 6 Pro, which is largely down to new tricks with computational photography and the updated chipset, since the actual camera sensors are, to my understanding, largely the same as last year’s. But that’s Google for you: fiddle with the software until you get something new. That’s why I upgrade every damn year, so this not me faulting them for it. The cameras on the Pixel are best of class, and photography is important to me. My only minor complaint about the camera this year is that the “macro” mode is a bit finicky (and turned on when I was trying to take a night photo in fog, which was weird). I figure that will get tweaked as we go along.
Aside from the cameras, all the newish stuff on the P7P is cosmetic (the weather bug on the landing screen has slightly more detail, which is nice) or involves things I haven’t had the opportunity to use yet, like always on captioning, or most of the stuff relating to making phone calls; like so many people these days my actual phone call volume has dropped to something close to zero. That said, the Pixel phone call management experience really is the best out of any cell phone; it screens, it blocks, it sits on hold for you, it offers transcriptions, so on and so forth. For as little as I use my phone for phone calls, I always appreciate the Pixel when I do.
Other notes: Face Unlock has returned to the Pixel line, but I don’t have it turned on, because I find it not especially secure, and because the fingerprint unlock, not great on the P6P, is greatly improved here. Early observation about the battery life suggests it’s marginally better than I got on my P6P, but then it’s a new phone, it should have at least slightly better battery life than a phone with a one-year-old battery. The design of the P7P is sleeker and prettier than last year (I have a Hazel colored one, and the metal camera bar and rail is really nice looking), but the whole thing is still made of slippery-ass glass; I slapped a case on the thing immediately because otherwise I probably would have already dropped it several times. The P7P is still a honkin’ big phone — it’s about the dimensions of the P6P, which was also honkin’ big. I’m not a huge fan of phone this size; size-wise my favorite Pixel phone was the 5, which fit my hand perfectly. But after a year with this form factor, I’m more used to it.
I had been on the fence about upgrading this year because the Pixel 7 Pro was likely to be an incremental upgrade rather than a substantial one, and I didn’t know whether those increments would add up for me. I don’t think that people who have, and are perfectly happy with, a Pixel 6 Pro or any other recent phone, should upgrade, unless like me they have slightly more money than sense, and like new shiny objects. Largely speaking, last year’s Pixel is more than fine, especially now when they have most of the software bugs sorted out.
For all that, I am certainly happy with the upgrade so far, and if you are in the market for a new Android phone, it’s difficult to see how you might do better than the Pixel 7 Pro. Other people have noted this in other reviews and I’ll repeat it: This year’s iteration feels like Google hitting its stride with the Pixel line. And for me, so far, it’s a new phone that doesn’t feel like a new phone, just a better phone. And that’s actually pretty good.
— JS
The Big Idea: Lavie Tidhar
Posted on November 3, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi
Another year, another anthology: doesn’t editor and author Lavie Tidhar have other things to do with his time? No! (Well, maybe, but not to the exclusion of this.) Turns out, he’s on a mission, and that mission has resulted in The Best of World SF: Volume 2. Here’s Tidhar to explain.
LAVIE TIDHAR:
The Best of… what?
World SF, you say? Didn’t you write about this for the Big Idea last year?
You mean, they actually let you do a second volume?
And if so… why?
These are all legitimate questions. Being an annoying individual with a certain stubborn streak (or godly pig-headedness, if anyone still worships Moccus, the Celtic boar-headed god), I annoyingly decided, long-ago, to make a place for myself in English-language science fiction despite the obstacles. Those being, not even having English as a first language (it turns out – shock – English just isn’t that hard), growing up far away from America or Britain, and basically having no place in an industry that was approximately 130.5% dominated by American writers.
And, having more or less done so, I picked up the mantle of the old, discarded, “World SF” group that was set up primarily to let said American writers have drinks with their Soviet counterparts back in the days when we still had to worry about a nuclear war (oh, wait…), and proceeded to try and make something happen.
No one, of course, was remotely interested. But I somehow still managed to put out five small-press anthologies (The Apex Book of World SF), and run the World SF Blog for four years, which, I think, brought together a small community of international writers and enthusiasts.
Regardless. This was a long time ago, and in all that time I kept knocking on publishers’ doors (metaphorically speaking, as they don’t like you actually showing up in person), and being told no. Something, I am glad to say, publishing is still very good at!
One publisher, however, acted very oddly and, one could say, irrationally, and after about three years of me being annoying about it, gave me the keys to the kingdom. As it were. Or rather, the chance to put together The Best of World SF: Volume 1, an anthology so magnificent and so ground-breaking that the science fiction world embraced it with never-seen-before enthusiasm and gave it its highest honours – I mean, mostly ignored it. As was not entirely unexpected, going by previous experience.
So that might have been the end of it, only we did very distinctly put Volume 1 on the cover, perhaps foolishly. And if you do that then, American fandom’s endearing indifference aside, you kind of have to do a Volume 2.
Which, I am glad to say, we did!
I’m incredibly pleased with this book, I have to admit. 175,000 words of some of the best recent science fiction from around the world? Yes, please! This time including no less than nine original stories to go alongside my choice reprints. It’s not quite a traditional Best Of anthology, but it’s pretty unique. And, I think, good! Is it a Big Idea? I think so! But mostly I think this is a showcase for some of the exceptional new writers working in speculative fiction today, some writing in English, some translated, from China to Brazil and from Iraq to Uganda.
Should this join Volume 1 on the shelf of every science fiction reader in the world? Well, I’d like that! They’re handsome books, especially if you shell out for the hardcover edition. But the e-books are cheap and the first volume’s out now in a handy paperback. Why not take a chance on some writers new to you? They’re all pretty great.
And, if you don’t, well – you can’t blame me for trying!
The Best of World SF: Volume 2: Amazon US|Amazon UK|Barnes & Noble|Waterstones
Visit the editor’s site. Follow him on Twitter.
That Whole Twitter Thing: Further Thoughts
Posted on November 2, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 65 Comments
Now that we’re several days into the Elon Musk era of Twitter, some additional musings on how we got here and where we’re going. In no particular order:
1. Elon Musk did this to himself. There’s an old quip about how to make a small fortune in publishing: Start with a large fortune. Well, certainly Musk has a large fortune — the largest in the world, if we’re talking valuation rather than actual liquidity — and he’s about to make it smaller, because Twitter is worth nowhere near the $44 billion or so that he paid for it. Certainly Musk realized that almost immediately, which is why he tried to back out of the deal as soon as he made it.
The (former) board and shareholders realized it, too, which is why they absolutely, positively would not let him back out. From their point of view, Musk was their patsy, their stooge, their pigeon in a confidence game that let them cash out while Musk was left holding the bag. Twitter hardly ever made money as it was; now with the debt Musk has to service on an annual basis, it’ll probably be underwater for a long, long time.
But, look, no one made Musk do this. No one made him decide to become Twitter’s largest stockholder, no one made him make a ridiculous offer for the service, no one made him make that offer at what was basically a locked-in high price with little to no way of backing out gracefully if the financials did not add up. Musk, high on his own presumed genius and fashy-flirting worldview (and possibly also just high, period), was playing to his right-wing cheering squad of simpering fanboys when he decided to buy the place, and didn’t think through the consequences. So now he’s got himself a social media service and no clue what to do with it. Which is actually a thing we should underscore:
2. Elon Musk has no idea what he’s doing with Twitter. Both Musk’s frothy bootlickers and ardent haters think the dude has some sort of master plan for the service and that he’s bought the place to turn it into a fascist-friendly sinkhole that he can push democracy into (this being a bug or feature, depending on one’s own tendencies). And maybe, left to his own rich-white-dude-libertarian tendencies, he would have done. But the thing is, there’s no money in social media that way. Elon Musk may be an authoritarian-frotteuring bore, but the majority of the heavy users of Twitter (i.e., the ones generating content) are vaguely-to-solidly lefty, and the companies who advertise on the service don’t want to have their ads served next to an orgy of bigoted utterances by shitty people. Musk’s deal for the service has left him with something like a billion dollars in debt to service on an annual basis. He’s not going to do that with an exodus of high-profile users and no ads.
And this is before the various governments all over the world weigh in on what’s acceptable content on social media platforms. The EU has already made it clear to Musk they will take a dim view of him turning the service into a Nazi clubhouse, US politicians are looking to revisit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which largely immunizes platforms from the legal repercussions of the speech of their users), and other countries will have their own bones to pick on this score. Thanks to Musk owning other companies that are vulnerable to government pressure and punishment (Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink among them), anything he does with Twitter that displeases governments can also have an effect on his other businesses.
Remember what I said earlier about Musk being left holding the bag? This is the bag! He’s got to find a way to make incredibly disparate constituencies — users, advertisers, governments — happy, and still make enough annually to service his debt. Doing all this was hard enough for the previous Twitter regime, and they didn’t have either the amount of debt servicing Musk has, or the additional business vulnerabilities he does.
How will Musk do this all? He doesn’t know! Neither does anyone else! But of course it’s no one else’s problem, now; he’s the sole director of the place. At the moment, he’s trying to suggest that raising the price of the Twitter Blue subscription scheme and tying verification to that is going to do something useful for him, which it probably won’t, since tying verification to payment is not a great idea, and Twitter Blue is — and I can say this as a subscriber — a benefit for a niche audience at best. He’s also going to lay off staff, which will save some money but is likely to make the service worse. Which brings us to the next point:
3. No matter what Musk does, he’ll probably make the service worse in the short run. Minimizing moderation on the site, allowing creeps and trolls more latitude, will make the service worse. Fiddling with how verification works and opening it up without an actual plan other than to have it as a bonus for subscribing to Twitter Blue, will make the service worse. Cutting staff hastily on sketchy criteria, will make the service worse. And making the service worse is bad for Musk, because everyone is watching him, and these first few days and weeks are very likely to seal the service’s overall fate.
Celebrities and other heavy users are already leaving or making plans to leave or curtail their use of the service. Advertisers can go elsewhere. What and who is left will not necessarily be inclined to participate in a subscription scheme. The snowball of collapse is likely to start rolling downhill, picking up momentum as it goes, hurtling toward the cliff.
Mind you, it doesn’t have to go this way — Musk could just say, hey, in the short term, I’m going to keep things as they are while I and my crew figure this thing out. But he won’t, because that’s not who he is. He’s the sort of guy who decides to buy a social media service in a fit of pique, and then panic when he realize he’s overpaid and is now in charge of a money pit. So he’s going to do things, and just doing things quickly isn’t going to be great. Beyond this:
4. Musk picked a really bad time to jump into social media. Aside from Twitter’s already-existing money and user woes — it is the smallest of the major social media outlets, by a considerable margin — all the social media giants seem to be doing a faceplant these days. Meta/Facebook has seen its value slashed by hundreds of billions of dollars as Zuckerberg frantically tries to make VR happen; the formerly trillion-dollar company was famously recently valuated less than Home Depot. TikTok really does seem to be Chinese government spyware, and an FCC commissioner thinks it should be banned. More widely, Google is thinking about layoffs, and even Amazon’s valuation dropped below a trillion for the first time in a couple of years. Just about the only major social media that doesn’t seem to be about to implode is LinkedIn, i.e., PleaseHireMeIJustGotLaidOffFromTwitter.com.
The best time for Musk to have bought Twitter was never, but last Friday was definitely not the second-best time. The whole concept of what social media is seems to be undergoing scrutiny, and not just on an existential basis. It would not entirely surprise me to see the social media giants of today sold at fire sale prices tomorrow. It’s happened before! Which, hey, dovetails right into this:
5. I don’t expect Musk to keep Twitter for long. Or at the very least I don’t expect him to have it be his focus for very long. Right now Musk is in the “oh, shit, how do I make money from this” phase of things, and once he figures out he can’t (or alternately, realizes what he’s doing will just make things worse), I think his attention will drift to the other companies of his that actually do make money and will need his attention. At which point he’ll either foist the service off to someone at a substantially reduced price (Google could take it on and happily mine it for all the ad data it’s worth), or hire a caretaker CEO, whose job is to keep the bleeding to a minimum as the service deflates like a sad balloon, and then go back to his previous role on Twitter, which is stoned billionaire iconoclast occasionally posting an outrageous opinion for lulz.
Which is to say: Musk is gonna lose money on this! Like, a lot! But it’s his money to lose, and also, he has the money to lose. If the other parts of his empire do well (and they might!), he might not even miss that money as his overall net worth continues to expand.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. It’s possible that Musk will unlock heretofore-unrealized value from the service, shepherd it to wild profitability, and make all the services’ constituencies happy. In which case: Swell. I’ve liked Twitter, a lot, and would be happy for it to survive and thrive. Prove me wrong, Elon Musk! I will be happy to be wrong!
I don’t suspect I will be wrong, however. Musk overpaid, there’s not that much value to unlock, and he’s gonna take a bath on this purchase before he gives up the ghost and cuts his losses. Musk will survive his Twitter foolishness. We’ll see if Twitter survives it as well.
— JS
The Big Idea: Julia Rust & David Surface
Posted on November 2, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 2 Comments
Sometimes walking in the woods will take you to places you never expected. During the writing of Angel Falls, authors Julia Rust and David Surface went for several walks in the woods, and this Big Idea, they tag-team tell you what they discovered.
JULIA RUST & DAVID SURFACE:
“I found an old trail. Maybe it leads somewhere.”
“Stay outta the woods!”
— The Red House, 1947 film with Edward G. Robinson and Judith Anderson
David: Julia and I love long walks in woods, preferably ones with ruins. One such place is near Bear Mountain, NY, called Doodletown—from a Dutch word that means “Valley of the Dead”. It contains ruins of a town that was settled in the 1700s and abandoned in the 1960s. Our first time there, we stumbled across an old graveyard with tombstones covered in moss.
Julia: Abandoned places have such an air of possibility, both spooky and wonderful. After Doodletown, we visited Gloucester, MA and started reading up on the abandoned area known as Dogtown, though we didn’t visit it that trip. Over bowls of “the best clam chowder in Massachusetts” we posed the question: what if a girl from NYC moves to Gloucester and meets a local boy in the spooky woods of an abandoned town? So, I wrote a chapter from Jessie’s POV, gave it to David, and he wrote the next chapter from Jared’s. Every week we’d exchange chapters, and then walk in nearby woods to discuss the story.
D: We knew there had to be a supernatural element to our story––we just didn’t know what it was. At first, I wanted to be ambiguous about it, present a series of strange occurrences that would be unexplained. While that can work in a short story, it’s hard to sustain that kind of ambiguity over the course of an entire novel. Julia kept telling me we could come up with a supernatural element that could be explained without ruining the story.
J: One day, David wrote this strange scene in which Jared’s teacher makes him think he’s burned him with a lit cigarette. His teacher flips the cigarette at the last moment, so he’s not touched by the burning end, but the character still feels it burn. That scene pretty much came out of nowhere, as did the next scene in which the burn inexplicably manifests on Jared’s arm.
D: It was fun to write but we still didn’t know why it happened––then we decided it was because Jared wanted it to, to prove that the teacher had been cruel to him. And to show that he had been scarred inside by that act, by that betrayal of trust.
J: We realized that our protagonists ‘wants’ could be the driving force behind the strange events they experience. But, as the adage says, ‘be careful what you wish for’ – there was a price to pay. In many supernatural thrillers, you have a human story and a supernatural story that sort of co-exist side-by-side. But now we no longer had a supernatural thing over there threatening our characters’ happiness––we had a supernatural element that was intimately connected to the characters’ wants and needs.
D: This affected our writing in some very powerful ways. For one thing, it required us to focus strongly on the characters’ deepest wants and needs, and to keep them front and center throughout the story. And the teacher (who faked the cigarette burn) went from being a minor character, to having a major role in the arc of the story and the culminating event.
J: By the time we first visited Dogtown, we’d completed the first draft of the novel. Entering the trail and walking among the giant stones we found ourselves laughing––it was exactly the way we’d written it. Every path and sound and feeling were completely familiar.
D: And because we’d spent so much time focusing on our characters’ deepest desires, we really felt a strong connection with them. I know it sounds like a cliche, but Jared and Jessie became real to us. And the last time we visited the woods in Dogtown, I felt like I could feel them there a few steps ahead of us, just around the next bend.
Angel Falls: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Powell’s Books
To learn more about Angel Falls click here | watch trailer here
To learn more about the authors follow Julia: Website | Instagram | Twitter
Spice Meets the Macro Lens
Posted on November 1, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
The Pixel 7 Pro that I finally unpacked and fired up today (it arrived last week, but I was traveling) has a new “macro” photo mode, which allows one to get pretty darn close to one’s subject to snap a photo. Here’s me snapping a photo of Spice about an inch and a half from her nose. She doesn’t look impressed, but no one looks impressed with a phone mere centimeters away from one’s face, I suspect. The distortion from the lens isn’t helping either, although Spice looks cute with a moon face.
I’ll likely write up the Pixel 7 Pro soon, when I have a chance to play with it a bit more. So far I like it! But I’ve also only had it a few hours. Let me take some more photos with it and otherwise play with it and see what I think.
— JS
The Big Idea: Joelle Presby
Posted on November 1, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 6 Comments
What’s in a word? For Joelle Presby, perhaps the whole world… for starters. In this Big Idea, Presby explains how a single word opens up a whole universe for her novel The Dabare Snake Launcher.
JOELLE PRESBY:
My big idea is a dabare.
When you grow up in an area where everyone else speaks at least four languages fluently, but your family moves around, you start over with a different primary language every year or three. For other people, that meant getting very good at language learning. For me, it meant adoring the numerous West African children’s games that were numbers or science-based and could be played without being able to really communicate.
And it meant treasuring the words that were kept in the common argot even as we moved around the country of Cameroon. Dabare was one such word. The fact that it mostly related to science-y and engineering-ish type things made it all the more precious.
The word dabare from the Fulani language in current and historic usage varies significantly depending on which part of the Fulani diaspora is providing the definition and how recently the recording entity has conquered or been conquered by that powerful tribe.
Within The Dabare Snake Launcher, I honor that flexibility in the word’s meaning by redefining it before each section from a new fictional source.
dabare
\ da-ba-RAY \
an engineering construction made with repurposed parts and extreme technical know-how, which either works flawlessly or not at all
origin: West African Fulani
Definition from The Cassini-Sadou Dictionary, 3rd ed.
Dabare—the engineering know-how to plan, implement, and follow through on a complex project
(Samson Young’s note: Depending on context, “dabare” is sometimes applied to someone who only thinks they have this “dabare” skillset, but the resulting engineered object—also referred to as a “dabare”—proves the individual does not/did not.)
Definition from “Local Terms” in The TCG Kilimanjaro Handbook
Dabare—early texts using this term can be understood to mean some combination of the following: (1) scheming, (2) the practice of magic, (3) the application of knowledge in an attempt to force a result, not always successfully
Source: University of Yaoundé, Fulani Folklore Wiki
Characters who scheme make for really fun story-telling. And complex engineering is a delight to my nerdy soul. I began work on my Dabare novel after getting my hands on a hardbound 2013 collection of articles from the International Academy of Aeronautics titled, “Space Elevators: An Assessment of Technological Feasibility and Way Forward.” I skipped to the section in the back of the book with all the reasons why a space elevator was impossible.
They weren’t wrong.
But if you give me science fiction’s traditional single cheat, in this case, a tether of carbon nano fiber in truly industrial lengths, all the other problems are solvable with money, power, and hard work.
In short, a whole lot of characters would have to fight for and against the construction of Earth’s first space elevator. If it succeeded, it’d be the amazing wonderous kind of dabare. If it failed, it’ll be the greatest waste of all time, and Earth would’ve been better off if no one had ever tried. A space elevator project is a dabare. It has to be.
The Dabare Snake Launcher: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s site. Follow her on Twitter.
Staying Or Going at Twitter: Ironically, a Twitter Thread
Posted on October 31, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
Written this morning and now posted here for archival purposes. I’ll likely have more to say on the topic soon, but at the moment I’m in transit and heading home.
Also note that if you’re reading this here, you probably don’t need the links to the site that I have provided.
1. As folks are asking, no, I’m not leaving Twitter at this time, for reasons I explained in April, when the current owner first started his quest to own the place (see the attached article). What I am doing, however, is re-evaluating how I use the site.
2. And not just how I use Twitter, mind you, although that is the current hot topic du jour. I’m thinking about social media generally, and the utility of “being the product” in exchange for ease of use and an audience. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t have advantages…
3. …for someone like me. I like having a largish audience and Twitter not requiring me to do much besides being quippish. But even before the new guy, the deal has been getting increasingly lopsided and requires more effort from me to use useful and usable.
4. It’s become less *fun,* honestly, and the steps that the new guy seems determined to take will make it more so, and more prone to trolling and impersonation and misinformation. The value proposition for me could go south fast.
5. If the value proposition goes south, then the question is how much of my time/effort I want to give the site. I don’t want to walk away from 200K followers, and I enjoy (most) of the interactions I have with people here. But I also have other places I can be…
6. … including my own site, where I don’t have to worry the owner is a bored, overly-rich shitlord trying to monetize every last possible thing because he overpaid dramatically for it. There are options, for me at least, because I stuck with my own online space all this time.
7. Now, I’m well aware that if I draw down on Twitter, not everyone here is going to follow me elsewhere, and, well. That’s life, and the decisions that will have to be made. I’ve gone through several Internet phases already. Nothing lasts, it’s always in flux.
8. Which means this “crisis” is also an opportunity. How *do* I want to be online in 2022 and beyond? I’m on Twitter because it’s easy, but what if I made an effort elsewhere? What would that look like and how would I do it? I’m thinking about these things now.
9. So, anyway. In the short-to-medium run, I’ll still be around here. But I am recalibrating what Twitter is worth to me, and making plans to do more things elsewhere, especially with my own site. Which I should have been doing already, honestly. I’m looking forward to it.
10. Also: Hey! Here is my personal site. Bookmark it in your browser, put it in your RSS feed, subscribe to in email, etc. I already update there daily and have for 24 years. Make it part of your everyday online experience if you like.
11. And now, as usual, here’s a cat to end the thread.
Originally tweeted by John Scalzi (@scalzi) on October 31, 2022.
— JS
Tiger Tail and Moon Mist
Posted on October 30, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Here on Sunday at Hal-Con, and I was presented with two regional favorite ice creams: Tiger Tail, which is orange ice cream with a ribbon of black licorice, and Moon Mist, which is basically banana bubble gum. The Moon Mist was a little much for me — 11-year-old me, the one who would shove an entire package Bubble Yum into his mouth at one time, would have loved it — but the Tiger Tail was pretty great, and I ate the entire bowl presented to me. The was followed by probably the most intense sugar rush I’ve had in a decade. I’m back in my hotel room now, managing the crash.
Also, Hal-Con is now at its end, and I had a genuinely lovely time at it. Everyone was super nice, people seemed happy to see me, and the staff and volunteers were just terrific. As the kids would say, A++, terrific con, would attend again. Although next time I might not eat an entire pint of ice cream at one go. Time for a nap.
–JS
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying