Monthly Archives: September 2008

Old Man’s War: The Title Sequence

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. […]

Read More

Scalzi & Buckell Together Again, 10/2 in Columbus, OH

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 […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXX

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 […]

Read More

Why Yes, I Should Write About Politics

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, […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXIX

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 […]

Read More

The Big Idea: Kenneth Hite

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 […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXVIII

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 […]

Read More

ZT Review in the San Francisco Chronicle

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 […]

Read More

The Myth of the Knockout

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 […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXVII

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 […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXVI

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 […]

Read More

Hate Mail in the Mail

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 […]

Read More

Whatever X, Day XXV

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 […]

Read More

John McCain, Candidate for President of WTFistan

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 […]

Read More

Dum Dum Dum… DUM DUM!

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 […]

Read More

%d