Not Bored With Me Yet, Are You?
Posted on June 25, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
No? Good. Here are three links for you.
1. The AV Club reviews Redshirts, offers some really big spoilers (so, you know, heads up) but also says this: “Redshirts pushes the limits of parody, then revels in the audacity of creation.” That’s going to the publicists, I’d say.
2. If you like hearing me talk (and talk and talk) then you’ll love this audio interview for Locus, in which the fabulous Karen Burnham interviewed me while I was in Houston. We talk about the tour, humor, the current state of science fiction, and other such things.
3. And if you finish that audio interview and still have a hankering for more of me yammering incessantly, I will hearken back to another interview I did, this one with Mur Lafferty for her world-famous podcast I Should Be Writing. This was recorded on the day Redshirts came out, so I talk about that, including the DRM flub, and other topics.
If you are bored with me, uh, dude: Why are you here?
Bored? There’s still some dance left in you, Monkey, how could we be bored?
Steve Buchheit wins the thread
Regarding your conversation with Karen Burnham about whether any Hugo Ceremony MC has won a Hugo – I think this happened to Asimov. Anybody know for sure?
of course i am not bored yet…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Not bored.Sometimes, life just gets in the way of your readers.
I saw it happen to Neil Gaiman.
I don’t know about Asimov, but a few years ago at Denver (2008) Connie Willis won the Best novella at the same time that she was MC’ing (with Robert Silverberg) the ceremonies.
No, but I think the question is deeper than you think. One of the things I struggle with as a writer, something I think is a pretty clear distinction between ‘writing’ and ‘good writing’, is that it isn’t boring.
Writing is easy. Any fool can string words together. Good writing is hard. Not every fool can string words together that other people want to read. And one of the things I’ve noticed about good writers is that they tend to use about as many words as are necessary, and no more. “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but nothing more to take away”, blah blah yackety smackety. It’s one of the keys to being Not Boring.
…and I’m a tech writer: software manuals, process documentation, marketing communication- …stuff that is all pretty tedious to begin with. And I find that It is REALLY HARD to make this stuff Not Boring. “Whatever”? Not Boring. The latest completion report for an implementation action at a client site? …yeah, it’s gonna be tricky to make that really pop. And I can’t use “send in a man with a gun”…
Not boring. When I tell people about your writing, I end with something like “and he writes an almost-daily blog which is more entertaining than most peoples’ novels.”
Never bored – rarely even midly irritated. Possibly because broadly speaking our social veiws seem similiar. As for politics – hey I’m Australian and from the outside EVERYTHING about American politics just seems crazy.
whatever is the only blog I read daily – so please keep writing it. if you feel like it. and if you don’t, that’s ok too.
I will (finally) be picking up Redshirts tomorrow. Definitely can’t wait to read it – setting aside my slog through the “Malazan Book of the Fallen” series for a few days (yes, the tone of Redshirts is completely different in every possible way from the Malazan books, I already know this).
So all those reviews…next week I’ll be able to read them!
I sm trying to avoid reviews of Redshirts with even a hint of spoilers right now as my copy has yet to arrive here in the frozen wastes. Not because of supplier problems but because I can be a right pratt sometimes and I screwed up the order. Fortunately I know the people who live at the old address the book is going to and they will send it on to me. Maybe they won’t even read it first, who knows?
Neil Gaiman MC’d the Hugo Awards in 2004, when he won for Best Short Story with “A Study in Emerald”.
@Jeff: actually, none of American politics makes a lot of sense from the inside, either…
@Jeff — much of American (USAian) politics is just disgusting. Out in the rural areas, where actual farmers are holding elective offices like Soil Conservation District #34 Board Member … it’s still the agrarian near-utopia our Founding Fathers had in mind. Once a political party — any political party — gets involved, it goes down hill fast, and it rarely recovers.
@htom and M.A
I was mostly kidding, but to get serious for a moment the situation is really no better here-just a simpler election process. Our current ruling party -left leaning and grown from the trade union movement, openly says that its elected members must have the Party as their first loyalty. To me that is the problem with all so called democratic politics now – loyalty to the Party. I feel the first loyalty of ALL elected officials should be to the wellbeing of the country and the people as a whole, rather than to the party and the party powerbrokers – few of whom are EVER elected officials. I don’t beleive democracy can work unless / until every vote is a true conscience vote rather than a vote on party policy. Yeah I know -never going to happen.
Okay, to answer my own question – and thanks for the other examples – Asimov was Toastmaster at the 1966 Hugos, and he won “Best All-Time Series” for the Foundation series. Thank you, Google.
Too bad I won’t be at Worldcon this year – it’s sure to be a blast!
I just got “Redshirts” for my birthday!
Speking of Redshirts: the biggest disappointment of the last couple of weeks was seeing the exploding head scene in Prometheus and having NO collateral redshirt deaths. Not even a flesh wound. You’ve got an EXPLODING HEAD, dammit! make it count!
@Monica McAbee
It did happen to Asimov, it’s quite a funny story