Monthly Archives: September 2019

The Thing I Splurge On, Travel-Wise

Tomorrow I start on a week-long trip to Australia, the itinerary of which goes as such: Dayton to Houston to Auckland to Melbourne to Canberra. It will take over 40 hours, and includes an epic 11-hour layover in Houston because, well, that’s just how these things work sometimes. The length and general nature of the […]

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And Now, To Celebrate a Haircut, We Present Two Sides of John Scalzi

The first look is one I like to call “Newly Divorced Suburban Dad Makes His First Tinder Profile”: The second is “Man Wrongly Convicted is Finally Released, But Prison Has Changed Him”: I don’t know, maybe I have them reversed. It’s so confusing. Also: Hello, in addition to getting a haircut I broke a tooth […]

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Well, It’s Been a Day, Hasn’t It

The working day started off with Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament called unconstitutional in an 11-0 decision by the UK’s Supreme Court, and finished off with Speaker Pelosi announcing a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, because it appears he tried to blackmail a foreign power to go after his political opponent. Which is not […]

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The Big Idea: Annalee Newitz

Time Travel! Annalee Newitz is playing with it in their new novel The Future of Another Timeline! Or, perhaps, has been playing with it already, or will have been playing with it at some unspecified point in what might have been the future! Maybe! They’re here now to sort all the timelines out for you. […]

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Tools, Not Rules: A Twitter Thread

Posted here for posterity:  1. Looking at a conversation of some crankybottoms dissing me (among others) as a postmodern scribbler who has no time for the great writers of western civilization and therefore has no knowledge of the “deep norms” of genre and therefore my writing sucks. Well — 2. Being accused of having no […]

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How I Spent My Week Away From the Internet

Here’s what I did! 1. Wrote more in The Last Emperox. It was good, you’re going to like it, I think. Still have more to do, expect me to keep focusing on that until it’s done. 2. Went out and saw friends on several different occasions. This involved a lot of driving, so I drove […]

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Away For a Week

Why? One, to get work done on the book. Two, because I feel like it. I’m also going to take a week off Twitter, too. Aaaaand probably won’t read news or otherwise see what the outside world is up to during that time either. I figure the planet can get along without me for seven […]

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21 Years

Oh, hey! Whatever is now old enough to go drinking. It probably won’t go drinking, because I don’t drink, and also the blog is not an actual person, but I admit it’s amusing to think of my blog suddenly ditching me to go out on a bender, then coming back and drunkenly slurring out what […]

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Declaring Hot Take Bankruptcy, Probably Through September

So, I’m waaaaaaay behind on The Last Emperox (it’s my own damn fault), and as a result I’m now clacking away furiously and also, as it happens, very happily employing my nanny software during the day until I get my writing quota done. What this means is that when I sign back on to Twitter […]

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The Big Idea: Sean Carroll

I’ve been aware of the “Many Worlds” interpretation of physics for some time — longtime readers of mine know it’s intimately connected with space travel in my “Old Man’s War” series of novels. But in the real world, how does it connect to the actual physics we know and (profess to) understand? Actual physicist Sean […]

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The Big Idea: Alexandra Rowland

Tulips, bitcoin, fantasy worlds — how to each relate to the other? Alexandra Rowland knows, and in their Big Idea for A Choir of Lies, they are happy to lay it all out for you. ALEXANDRA ROWLAND: Do you like coincidences? Here’s a cool one: From November of 1636 to February of 1637, the Netherlands […]

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Trade Reviews for A Very Scalzi Christmas Are In

And it looks like it’s going to be a merry Christmas for my little book, as it’s gotten positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Kirkus. And what do they say? From Publishers Weekly: “Scalzi (The Consuming Fire) unleashes his wicked wit in this stocking stuffer miscellany of mostly goofs and jibes directed at the […]

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The Big Idea: Steven S. Drachman

In today’s Big Idea for The Innocent Dead, a famous Muppet is revealed to be a master of teleology by author Steven S. Drachman. And that’s not the wildest idea on display today! STEVEN S. DRACHMAN: My Watt O’Hugh books (they’re now at long last a “trilogy”) are about a time-roaming 19th century gunman and […]

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The Gunn Center Makes a Change, and Further Thoughts on the Reassessment of John W. Campbell

The Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas has announced that it’s changing the name of its annual conference from the Campbell Conference (named after Analog editor John W. Campbell) to the Gunn Center Conference. In the same announcement, it notes that it is discussing alternative names for its […]

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The Internet Sends Me Flowers

Seriously, these flowers arrived on my doorstep with a note that said “Congratulations for just being a pretty awesome person” and it was signed “The Internet.” And, well. I’m actually touched. Whether I am actually awesome enough to truly deserve flowers from the Internet remains to be seen, but I certainly appreciate the vote of […]

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The Big Idea: Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe

Reboot, reimagine, reinvent — there is nothing new under the sun, as they say, and humans find ways of looking at old stories in new ways. This is an idea that acclaimed editors Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe have taken to heart in their new anthology The Mythic Dream. Here they are to go into […]

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