Monthly Archives: September 2008
Proof the McCain Campaign Has No Idea What It’s Doing
Posted on September 30, 2008 35 Comments
It thinks that I am part of the “McCain Ohio Team.” I have no earthly idea what they’re thinking, man. But I guess hope springs eternal. Into the spam bin it goes. And before any of you McCain fans complain, allow me to note that all the e-mail I get from the Obama campaign gets […]
Old Man’s War: The Title Sequence
Posted on September 30, 2008 56 Comments
This is kind of fun: A student did a mock-up title sequence for an Old Man’s War TV show for his class on motion graphics. I found it out there on teh Intaarnets, although apparently (according to the BBS thread in which I found it) someone came over here to link me to it today. […]
Scalzi & Buckell Together Again, 10/2 in Columbus, OH
Posted on September 30, 2008 12 Comments
For those of you who live in or near Columbus, Ohio and would rather drag a rake across your eyeballs than suffer through the Vice-Presidential debates, allow me to offer you an alternate plan for your evening: Come see me and Toby Buckell do our nutty wacky science fiction author thing at The Ohio State […]
Whatever X, Day XXX
Posted on September 30, 2008 10 Comments
And now we’ve come to the last day of the month-long retrospective of Whatever, celebrating its ten-year anniversary. And to celebrate, I’m airing the last entry in my “That Was The Millennium That Was” series from 1999, in which I wrote about the best and most interesting stuff of the previous 1,000 years. Unlike the […]
Why Yes, I Should Write About Politics
Posted on September 30, 2008 132 Comments
Over on his site, Paolo Bacigalupi asks the question “Should Fiction Writers Write About Politics?” in the wake a of reader comment after Paolo did, indeed, write about politics. While Paolo answers the question to his own satisfaction (I encourage you to read it), let me state my own, probably unsurprising, opinion here: Why yes, […]
Whatever X, Day XXIX
Posted on September 29, 2008 24 Comments
In which a fine tradition of big fat dorkery is revealed. MAY 13, 2003: Proof I Am Like This in Real Life We enter a recent IM conversation between Bill and John shortly after John notes that he’s thinking of taking Athena to Disneyland at some point in the reasonably near future: [12:47] bill: Excellent […]
Free Falling
Posted on September 29, 2008 126 Comments
My sister called me this morning and asked me if I was okay. I told her I was fine and asked why she was asking. The answer was that she suspected I had quite a lot of money in the stock market, and as we all know, the stock market’s not exactly a happy vale […]
The Big Idea: Kenneth Hite
Posted on September 29, 2008 11 Comments
Now that my travels have ended (yay!), it’s time to get back on the stick with the Big Idea features — we’ve got quite a few coming up in the next couple of months, and this week I’ll hit you with at least a double shot. To begin, I’m really excited to bring this next […]
Whatever X, Day XXVIII
Posted on September 28, 2008 6 Comments
Today is a travel day, as I wing my way back to my family after more than a week apart from them; as you can imagine I’m looking forward to seeing them soon — and there won’t be much posted today. In lieu of me, and as an indication of how much I’m looking forward […]
ZT Review in the San Francisco Chronicle
Posted on September 27, 2008 6 Comments
Zoe’s Tale gets a positive nod in the San Francisco paper today: Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” novels owe a debt to Robert A. Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” and “Zoe’s Tale” tips its hat to the much-loved Heinlein juveniles, such as “Podkayne of Mars.” Zoe is an appealingly articulate character, and her growth from bored space passenger […]
The Myth of the Knockout
Posted on September 27, 2008 55 Comments
I didn’t watch the debate last night, because it was the last night of the Viable Paradise writing workshop and I wanted to hang out and say goodbye to the students we’d been with for the last week. But I did catch the highlight reel and all the color commentary, in which it seems that […]
RIP, Paul Newman
Posted on September 27, 2008 21 Comments
The CNN.com top crawl notes that Paul Newman passed away today at 83. No deep thoughts here, except to say, what a good actor and what a decent man. So long, Butch Cassidy.
Whatever X, Day XXVII
Posted on September 27, 2008 10 Comments
Now, here’s a choice piece of Whatever archaeology, and of some relevance considering that I’ve just spent a week teaching at a writing workshop: the entry I wrote right after I finished Old Man’s War. OCTOBER 29, 2001: Finished With the Novel Well, I’m back. And moreover, during the break I accomplished what I set […]
Metatropolis Cover: Ooooh, Shiny!
Posted on September 26, 2008 12 Comments
As something to leave you with as we head out of the week and into the weekend: The cover art for the audiobook anthology featuring Elizabeth Bear, Toby Buckell, Jay Lake, Karl Schroeder and me. I’ll have more details about it in future days, but for now: Oooooh, pretty.
Whatever X, Day XXVI
Posted on September 26, 2008 26 Comments
What was I like when I was a kid? Here are some snippets. MARCH 7, 2006: 10 Childhood Nuggets For the second entry in Reader Request Week 2006, Gabe, seconded by Claire, asks about my childhood. Rather than trying to bang out a coherent structure to this one, let me do a grab bag factoid […]
Hate Mail in the Mail
Posted on September 26, 2008 15 Comments
Subterranean Press has announced that Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever 1998 – 2008 is now shipping to everyone who pre-ordered the book and is also now otherwise generally available. To which I say: Yay! That makes me happy. If you’ve been putting off ordering this book until it was actually […]
Whatever X, Day XXV
Posted on September 25, 2008 18 Comments
Since this actually came up as a subject of discussion at Viable Paradise, I thought I would air this particular entry again: MARCH 7, 2006: Reader Request Week 2006: SF Novels and Films All right, let’s take a second go at beginning the Reader Request Week here at the Whatever, as the first attempt yesterday […]
John McCain, Candidate for President of WTFistan
Posted on September 25, 2008 139 Comments
Honestly, I no longer know what to make of John McCain anymore. A man who has readily admitted he doesn’t know much about the economy makes a big show of bringing his presidential campaign to a grinding halt to rush to Washington to fix it, which seems a bit like a NASA auto pool mechanic […]
Dum Dum Dum… DUM DUM!
Posted on September 25, 2008
Is it Thursday already? It is! And that means another AMC science fiction movie column. This week I’m talking about musical scores of science fiction films — offering up some suggestions for what I think are significant scores in science fiction film, and asking for your thoughts on which SF movies had scores that helped […]
This is Relevant to My Interests
Posted on September 24, 2008 23 Comments
Click through. You’ll know why when you see it.
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying