One of Life’s Little Ironies

Posted on May 29, 2007    Posted by John Scalzi

I just turned down this month’s featured selections for the Science Fiction Book Club… which happen to be The Last Colony, and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I turned them down because Patrick was kind enough to provide me a copy of his book, and also, you may be reasonably assured I have a copy or two of TLC tucked away somewhere. However, despite my passing on these books, I hope you will consider them if you are a member of the SFBC, particularly Patrick’s book, which I quite enjoyed.

I’m very pleased to be the featured selection for June, and the only thing that would have made it even better would have been if Ellen Asher and Andrew Wheeler, SFBC’s editors (and the people who chose my book to be a featured selection) had not been unceremoniously dumped by Bertelsmann, the SFBC’s new owner, once that company took possession of the book club a couple of weeks ago. I’m not entirely sure what’s to be gained by stripping the SFBC of their talents; from the outside this looks like one of those “penny wise, pound foolish” decisions that does not exactly raise confidence in the future of the book club. We’ll have to see what becomes of the book club from here.

In the meantime, I want to make sure I say thank you to Ellen and to Andrew: Their support of all of my books so far, and the support of the SFBC under their tenure, made a real difference in how my books did out there in the world. I owe them, as do any number of authors. I’m going to miss them at the head of the Science Fiction Book Club; if you’re a member, I don’t doubt you’re going to miss them, too.