Monthly Archives: January 2014

I’m Just Going to Leave This Here

What’s this? It’s the traffic graph for all the parts of Scalzi.com that are not part of the current iteration of Whatever, i.e., archives and other bits and pieces that continue to be linked into from around the Web and Internet. The part of the site you’re reading now (the current iteration of Whatever), has […]

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How I Knew I’d Made It

In conversation not too long ago, someone asked me when I felt I had “made it.” It’s a fair question; for a writer, there are a lot of milestones that could be the points at which one feels one has made it. Selling that first book is an obvious one (selling the second book, a […]

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The Big Idea: Myke Cole

It can be a strange thing when the real world intersects with your fiction, particularly when you’re writing a work of fantasy. Myke Cole knows what that’s like, since it happened with his latest, Shadow Ops: Breach Zone. A strange thing — but is it a good thing? Well… MYKE COLE: Let’s say you make […]

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The Big Idea: Delilah S. Dawson

Life is a circus — but is the circus all it’s cracked up to be? Delilah S. Dawson ponders this very question, on several different levels, in her latest novel Wicked After Midnight. We now place her in the center ring to address the topic. Here’s your popcorn, and there’s her spotlight… DELILAH S. DAWSON: […]

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How Cold It Is

It’s so cold that this soda can inside the refrigerator in the garage blew up explosively, cleanly shearing off the top of the can at the seam and coating the lower half of the fridge in cherry cola flavored ice. The rest of the soda in the fridge (the storage of which is what it […]

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The Big Idea: James L. Cambias

I can say this with some authority: I’ve known longer than anyone else working in science fiction today that James Cambias is a terrific writer. I know this because when I was editor of my college newspaper, James turned in some fantastic articles about the history of the university and of Chicago, the city our […]

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A Convention Harassment Policy in Action

Arisia is a convention with a harassment policy. So what happened when a woman quite reasonably felt she was harassed, and complained to convention about it? Why, it was handled quickly and efficiently, of course, because there was a process in place to handle it, and that process was followed. Read about the event here. […]

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Notes on My Nexus 7

I bought myself the latest generation of Nexus 7 tablet as a post-Christmas gift, and I’ve gotten a couple of people asking me what I thought about it. Briefly: I like it a whole lot, and in fact would probably say that of all the tablets I have or have tried, it’s probably my favorite. […]

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Zeus, 1/26/14

Clearly, pondering the future. Or, looking at the finger I held up to get his attention while I took the shot. The horribly cold weather we’ve been having reminded me that Zeus came to us right around this time of year, on a night where it was single digits outside. He’s been with us six […]

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Every Award-Winning Book Sucks (For Someone)

As part of my occasional and hopefully instructive series of entries in which I try to make the point to writers that negative reviews are part of the territory and ultimately not something to get too worked up about or to let scar one’s psyche, I would like to present you excerpts of one star […]

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A Public Service Announcement re: The Hugos, via Twitter

NOTE: I am about to unleash a chain of tweets on a single subject. It will take me a couple of minutes. Here we go. — John Scalzi (@scalzi) January 25, 2014 People on blogs talking about Novel Hugo picks and predictions saying "I'm not noming for him but Scalzi's probably getting one." Well… — […]

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In Which I Sing a Depeche Mode Song For Patrick Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders Charity

Yes, Patrick asked me to be a stretch goal for the charity this year, so I said, sure, when you reach $325,000, I’ll sing Depeche Mode’s “But Not Tonight,” accompanying myself on tenor guitar as I do so. Guess what? They reached that stretch goal! And for those of you saying “what song is that?”, […]

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