The Winner of the “Kaiju” Contest Is…
Posted on October 15, 2021 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
I was slightly stunned to see the response to this giveaway: Nearly 2,400 entries, 1,000 of which came in the first two hours. Makes me feel all warm inside, it does. Nevertheless, it’s now time to declare the winner:
Alan, who chose the correct number “867,” along with ten others. I then instructed Alexa to pick a number between one and ten, inclusive, and it picked ten. That was Alan. Congratulations, Alan, for making through not one but two sifts! I’ve already sent along an email and will send it along as soon as possible.
For everyone else: Thank you so much for playing, and remember you can still get a signed and personalized copy of Kaiju for your very own when it comes out, through Subterranean Press. They will be most happy to take your order and send it along to you in March!
Oh, and, finally: Look! Here’s that starred review of Kaiju in Booklist. It’s out! And lovely.
— JS
Fraud! I demand and audit. And a recount!
Or I’ll just pre-order the thing, like I always do.
When will KPS be available (at least for pre-order) on Audible? Coming up on my annual subscription refresh and will have credits to spend.
As an Arizonan, I believe it is our duty to inspect all of the ballot entries and audit for traces of bamboo fibers.
What is that? I am hearing there were no bamboo fibers, and that the recount showed that I lost even more strongly?
Well then…. nevermind.
Was this number choice perhaps influenced by an 80’s song?
867-5309
Congrats to Alan! So, Mr. S, was that a random number, or did it have a deep, personal meaningful basis for being the chosen one? (I’m betting on random) :)
Thanks for making me laugh “Jerome O’Neil”!
Um, I’d like to submit a follow up number: 5309
Indeed this was the genesis:
https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo
What cracked me up… Someone posted the exact same number as my guess, right before me. .. 712.. what’s those odds?
Funny. Almost picked that same number, for exactly the same reason, then thought, “Nah, far too many people are going to pick that number.”
Guess I was right. Just didn’t think John was one of them. (And… hello? OF COURSE he was one of them. Shame on me…)
The review references 2 of my favorite scalzi books. This one should be good
Any idea who is going to narrate the audiobook?
Looking at the entries it appears six hundred and sixty six was the most popular. Which is logical given that our host is a fan of Robert Heinlein and Iron Maiden. But 867 is classic 80s.
Amazingly, the random number I came up was…867. (I had no memory of the song at the time.) When I saw it had been guessed already, I tried 868, then 869 before I got one that hadn’t been guessed yet. I should have stayed with my first guess…
I was slow checking in and the post was closed before I could enter. But my first guess was 867 (and I wasn’t even consciously thinking of the song). Ah well, I’ll just have to buy it like one of the little people.
# # Congrats
Congrats to the winner!!!
And congrats to Mr. Scalzi for producing another ARC
# # Proofreading
Unfortunately I cannot participate in any physical ARC contests due to
Limited shelf space
A proofreader spouse that cannot sit back and enjoy early stage manuscripts ( like ARC s )
# # Super Fans
Though I do have a large number of legally purchased eARC manuscripts due to Baen.com ‘s eARC policy of selling to the general public
Hint, hint, traditional publishing houses. Super fans want to spend.
# # Locked In series
Especially any products involving Agent Chris Shane. my spouse’s head cannon has Agent Shane being demisexual, I prefer Agent Shane just being private about every part of their life. I wonder if Rule 34 applies here? or if the very generic blank that is the Agent Chris Shane’s appearance defeats even the mighty Rule 34?
This is not an invitation to post links further down in the comments – see Mr Scalzi’s posted Fanfic policies
Edit:
My spouse pointed out the flaws in my Rule 34 logic. Now I feel internet stupid
What, have no nerds done a spreadsheet to show how the fan number picks spread out across the available numbers? I’ve never heard of this song, being unaware of the 80s, on the whole, I think I was working night and day and overtime pretty much then. I did immediately think 666 and then thought it was too cheesy so changed to 696 for some variety. Oh, well. I’m hoping that Kaiju is going to be the book I imagined when the pangolin contest happened.
@jlanstey OK, I pulled it into Excel and did a quick histogram with minor but hopefully adequate data cleanup. This left 2355 guesses. I don’t think I have a stable photo upload option that doesn’t identify me or my workplace or both, but here are the most-often-guessed numbers (with 10 or more guesses each):
42 (56)
666 (23)
1 (20)
777 (19)
13 (18)
315 (16)
427 (14)
732 (14)
742 (14)
837 (14)
997 (12)
1000 (12)
7 (11)
763 (11)
2 (10)
3 (10)
8 (10)
17 (10)
272 (10)
333 (10)
713 (10)
723 (10)
743 (10)
789 (10)
867 (10)
19 guesses were disregarded as the result of being over 1000. Always check for outliers, students. Incorporating 825600 into that dataset is going to make the X axis hard to use.
Within the target range, 379 guesses were unique.
Non-integer guesses included pi (4), the square root of 2 (1), 11.42 (1), and 867.6 (1).
117 integers between 1 and 1000 inclusive were not guessed at all. These were a little bit skewed towards the higher end, i.e. a lot of the lowest numbers were guessed at least once each. The lowest number that wasn’t guessed was 29, whereas the highest number that wasn’t guessed was 988.
2QS, thank you thank you thank you for that analysis, because I was super curious about things like that. I didn’t have the time to do it myself.
All’s I did was used cmd+f to found the first, highest digit that hadn’t yet been posed, which at the time was something like 996. I later kicked myself and thought I should have done a random number generator THEN bracketed outwards until I found the nearest unused number.
Clearly I would have still lost but I’d rather lose systematically than arbitrarily :)
Congratulations to Alan for surviving two sifts! As I reread Ringworld recently, I have to know: did the Puppeteers breed him for luck?
I’m still trying to figure out how to get my signed personalized copy of the audiobook.
Ah well.