Whatever Best of 2017
Posted on December 24, 2017 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
Well, this was a year, wasn’t it. I’m not going to be terribly disappointed to see it go. Nevertheless, I got some decent writing out of it here on Whatever. Below, in alphabetical order, you’ll find the pieces I find of special note in 2017. Be aware that I tried to keep the pieces kvetching about our current horrible president to a minimum; I want you to be able to get through the pieces without feeling like you want to walk into the sea. Nevertheless these pieces reflect the general “ugh” of the year, because, well. 2017 and all that. You know. You were there.
- 2017, Word Counts and Writing Process
- The Brain Eater
- Can You Tell My Earnings From My Amazon Sales? Spoiler: Nope, Not at All
- Diversity, Appropriation, Canada (and Me)
- Genius and Master
- Getting Lucky With College Costs
- Hamilton, and Thoughts on the Uncanny Valley of Musicals
- Harry Potter and the Initially Dismissive But Ultimately Appreciative Fan
- Harvey Weinstein and Other Abusers
- The Moral Shambles That is Our President
- My Personal Feminism, 2017
- The New Year and the Bend of the Arc
- On That GOP Health Care Bill, and Tax Breaks
- On the Matter of Empathy For Horrible People
- The Poverty “State of Mind”
- Punching Nazis
- A Q&A For the Post-Weinstein Era
- Utopias
- The View From the Top of Amazon’s Heap
- Wonder Woman: A Smash, Possibly in Different Ways Than You Think
And just so everything in this wrapup is not Very Serious Pieces, here’s me and Chuck Wendig and Neil Gaiman and Mikey Neumann and my kid being silly on Twitter. You’re welcome.
Hmmm….you are getting (disturbingly) good at this self-portrait stuff (to call it ‘selfie’ would trivialize). Alarming resemblance to Ed Wynn (not a bad thing, just alarming…). ‘o)
I laughed for five minutes at the photo. That’s just how I feel. Thank you.
Read your piece on college costs. I am a Miami University grad who, with mixed emotions, saw my son enroll at Ohio University, A solid school, but still.
Anyway, they did, as Miami apparently still does, allow payments by credit card. I used my airline loyalty credit card to make the payment, promptly paid the credit card and basked in the glow of air miles accruing to my account. Eventually I had enough miles for a ticket to Europe , which I am certain I would have enjoyed if I wasn’t broke from helping with college tuition.
Contemplate the apparent opportunity.
Happy holidays and here is to a better new year.
Friendly advice for your New Year’s Resolution….new stylist. :)
Always appreciate the comments, Scalzi, particularly the link to greatest hits missed. Dunno if this was your intent, but I found you through your blog, thought “Hey, I like this guy,” and went and bought some of your books. Keep on truckin, weird 70s cartoon dudes included.
Missed the parts of 2017 when my brain rooooolled my eyes ‘way back in their sockets. But otherwise, yeah, looks like you covered our brains on 2017 well.
A timely quote from the Hamilton essay:
The kind of year where a bad hair day was the least of your worries…