56 Comments on “A Request re: Jeopardy (Update: Found It!)”

1. Darn it! Thought we’d have time to speculate on possible questions. Figured something like “All that is eeeevil and lib’rul in the SF publishing world” might make the cut.

2. WOW, this is so cool. Congratulations! You’ve been Jeopardy’d!

3. Wow, you are Officially Famous! I am oh so glad I have your autograph! ;-)

   Now, when is the movie coming out????

4. Oh, way, way too easy! I was hoping for something like John Scalzi futuristic novel featuring patients who are aware but cannot physically move due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body and use robots to communicate and move about the world. It would have been great if it were a Final Jeopardy question and the judges rejected an otherwise correct answer because the contestant hyphenated their answer. (Sorry, I’m in a crappy mood tonight.)

5. Now all you need to do is appear in a New York Times crossword as a clue or answer and win a Grammy and you’ve got the meaningless-celebrity-fame trifecta.

6. OK, maybe kinda harsh – it’s still a nice sign of recognition.

7. it’s official. You Have Arrived.

8. LOL

9. Just saw this on Twitter actually lol! Not sure if this is what you’re looking for?

   Sent from my iPhone

   >

10. Wondering what the category was. And how much you were worth.

11. Excuse me, but since no one answered the question it has messed up my OCD sensibilities and I MUST right this wrong. Ahem… “What is blue shirts?” There, that’s better. ;)

12. Round: One. Category: Sci-Fi Books. Point value: $600.

13. I think the important question here is. . . did anybody get it right? Because the contestants have wiffed on some pretty easy (to my mind. . .) questions before.

    Previously (3 days ago or so. . .) on College Championship Jeopardy. . .they missed this $800 dollar Q : http://imgur.com/5Fft9jb

    :/

14. Well congrats! We watch every night but of course tonight we were out to dinner! We would have gone crazy! We are so jazzed for you! Now I get to post on FB that it wasn’t my John Scalzi 😉!
    Fun time for all!

15. First Oprah, now Jeopardy! This has got be just a little weird for you. Cool, but weird.

16. Nice. They mentioned the game I work on last night (LOTRO). That makes us nerd buddies, right?

17. Dear Rembrant,

    Uhhh, Oprah?

    What did I miss!

    pax / Ctein

18. Heard the question (my husband was watching while I was cleaning up after dinner! Wonderful feeling of “I KNOW THAT!”

19. Low hanging fruit, right there. Much better if they’d used the fart joke opening to Androids… ‘o)

20. That’s how you know you’ve made the big time, man. Congrats!

21. I forget the details and the search here on Whatever didn’t find it. (Pre WordPress hosting issue?) Same with Google and Youtube searches. My unreliable memory thinks it was an episode about being a Kept Wife or some such nonsense. Our host was invited for counter point I think.

22. I watched this. My wife and I said your name in unison (promise: first time that’s ever happened!), and were Very Proud of Our Scalzi.

23. @ Ctein,

    Oprah interviewed two ladies who had co-authored a book on dating tips called “The Rules,” which, if memory serves, advised ladies to hold guys at arm’s length and not let on they were interested until certain guidelines / tasks were achieved – basically puppy training. John was on as counter-point to say that he had met his wife when she asked him to dance and so pointed out that if his wife were to have followed ‘the rules,’ they would not have met.

    I saw the video a few years ago though it seems to be off the web now. It showed John being charming (though wearing a sweater of questionable taste) and obviously winning over the ladies in the audience while simultaneously enraging the authors.

24. This is not going to help with ego control… either in Darke County, Ohio (understandably and even acceptably/expectedly; one must maintain our fully-justified faith in the ego-puncturing capabilities of the other members of the household… especially the dog) or wherever a certain erstwhile rabid puppywrangler is currently abiding (not so much). I predict a hissy-fit from the latter within the next six days.

    Of course, a hissy-fit from that source could happen at any time, for any reason, so how would we know it was related to this calumny, this unwarranted popular recognition, this Communist plot to destroy all that is right and good and traditional in American science fiction?

25. If only Jeopardy! weren’t a family show… *sigh*

26. Very. Cool.

27. I saw it. Wished I had recorded it. That was very cool and congrats!

28. What is: “Redshirts”

29. Let me add my congrats (or should it be condolences?) on achieving “mainstream” celebrity. It’s interesting that the show’s producers obviously felt that by now, John Doe should have at least a smidgen of familiarity with your work.

30. You sir, have truly made it. Nothing you do from here on out can top this.

31. Recorded it. Haven’t edited it down to that one question and response yet. Anyone interested?

32. russkirk, I would watch it.

33. Hey that’s really neat! It shows your author fame and admiration is spreading more and more. I also understand Cory Doctorow was also in a Jeopardy answer, under the same category I believe. I tried checking out the news about it on his site (craphound.com) but for some reason the post wasn’t opening. But these answers in the game show shows that sci fi authors like the two of you are being taken more seriously as time goes by. Congrats to both of you!

34. First two questions were on Cory Doctorow and Connie Williss, the John. I’ll prep an mp4/m4v version of all the Sci-Fi book questions and another of just John’s, put them on my public Dropbox page and post a link here. You don’t need to be a Dropbox user to download them from there.

35. Question for Our Gracious Host – have you ever had any desire to be on Jeopardy! (or any other game show)? It seems like you have both the breadth of knowledge and the positive personality needed to make it through the casting process.

36. Well, they came out as .mp4’s and at 720p, but they look good.
    Redshirts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42338874/Redshirts.mp4
    All Sci-Fi questions: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42338874/All%20Sci-Fi%20Qs.mp4

37. I suspect John is too well known to appear on Jeopardy now.

    Dancing With The Stars, OTOH …

38. Ooooh! Great idea, Jon. He could win it all with a Lightsaber Dance to https://youtu.be/gqg3l3r_DRI

39. Russkirk, thanks for the link!

40. My lover returned back to me I’d like to say that i got a positive result from (greatzula@yahoo.com) ever since i used his love spell, my lover have learned to appreciate me more and more day by day, and he doesn’t take me for granted.

41. Thanks russkirk.
    Joust! That was a fun game! I fed many a quarter into that one. I can almost hear the pterodactyl screech.

42. Sorry John, Jeopardy notwithstanding, your are still most famous for putting bacon on a cat.

43. Thanks Russkirk! I run ConnieWillis.net and will do a screen capture of the Connie Willis one.

44. I think that you now really need to write a book about idle freshmen athletes….

45. One about idol freshman athletes might be better.

46. Can somebody explain to me what happened after Sam answers the $400 Connie Willis question? He answers “London” but then Sarah gets to choose again? I don’t understand what transpired! Shouldn’t Sam get to choose the next question since he got the question right?

47. Don’t go by my clip, Victor, there were a couple of questions from other categories between the Willis and Scalzi questions that I edited out. Sam picked his question from another category and there were several minutes worth of commercials in between, too.

48. Oh! That makes a lot more sense. Thanks, russkirk! Cheers!

49. What is The Spank Chronicles: Volume 1: The Spankening?

50. I always wondered whether Mr. Scalzi had to get permission from whoever holds the rights to Star Trek, since Redshirts is an intentionally derivative reference to the ST universe. I’m guessing not since Redshirts avoids explicit references and is more homage/parody than rip-off, but my knowledge of intellectual property and copyright rules is close to non-existent. Does anybody know and care to share?

51. CEC:

    There was no permission to get. The word “Redshirts” wasn’t (and isn’t) trademarked by Paramount/Viacom/CBS. I checked before I started writing. If Paramount/Viacom/CBS tried to trademark it now, it would be unlikely to get it; among other things, my novel is evidence of prior art.

    TS Hottle:

    Actually that was the fake “working title” for The Human Division.

52. Is it a problem that Jeopardy referred to Star Trek by name? The book, if I recall, did not explicitly mention it, correct?

    Also, just curious: how did you find out you were going to be on? Did they need permission from you to make you a clue?

53. Brian Greenberg:

    It’s not a problem. Hell, I mention Star Trek by name in the book, too. That was also not a problem.

    I found out I was on when people started tweeting at me that I was on. Jeopardy was under no obligation, legally, to get my permission to be made part of a clue, or to tell me. I’m basically a public figure at this point. If public figures had to explicitly clear references to themselves, some of them would never have the time to do anything else.

54. What is “Old Men’s War”? No? What is ” Zoe’s Tail”? No? Grrrrr….

55. Wow, you have really made it; a question on jeopardy/

56. @Ambivalent in Tokyo,

    After seeing your response, I looked around trying to find the video myself and failed. (It looks like the Internet Archive doesn’t save YouTube videos; I was rather disappointed finding that. I don’t really know any resource for “1996 interviews on Oprah” in a general sense either.)