My Appearance Schedule Through The Kaiju Preservation Society’s Release Date
Posted on November 21, 2021 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments

Hey, remember back when people used to go to science fiction conventions and hang out, and go to panels and get autographs and do all those things? Well, I do! And it turns out I’ll be doing that again, actually sooner than later. Attending DragonCon over Labor Day weekend convinced me it was possible to make conventions work so long as the conventions had and followed appropriate “mask and vaxx” policies, and also, I just got my vaccine booster shot so my immunological response to the COVID virus is topped up (I also recently got my flu shot, too, because flu sucks). So I went ahead and booked a series of conventions and events leading up to the release of The Kaiju Preservation Society in March. What are they? I’m glad you asked!
December 3-5: Emerald City Comic Con. I have a few panels and signings — here is the exact schedule. We may also have a few ARCs of Kaiju to give away, but we’re still working on that so don’t quote me as confirming that. It’s been several years since I’ve attended ECCC so I’m looking forward to seeing folks in the Seattle area again.
December 15 – 19: Discon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention — This year marks the very first time Worldcon has happened in December (you can thank COVID, of course), and I’ll be there because, among other things, my Interdependency series of books is nominated for a Hugo. Will it win? I have no idea! At this point my feeling is “Cool if I win, cool if I don’t,” because winning Hugos is fun and all, but all the other finalists for Best Series are pretty great, so if one of them wins, that’ll be just fine. Also, as I remind people, if I win, I’ll be “Hugo winner John Scalzi,” and if I don’t win, I’ll be “Hugo winner John Scalzi,” so. I will say that if I do win, the chances are very high I will accept wearing a Christmas elf suit, so if you want to see that, you should probably hope people voted for me (the Hugo voting is now closed). I’ll be on a few panels and doing some autographing and DJing a dance.
January 21 – 23, 2022: Rising Confusion — this Detroit-area event is my “home” convention and I’ve attended in person every year since 2005, not counting this year when they didn’t have it because, you know, plague and all. At this very moment I have not been scheduled for any programming (and as a general rule I keep my programming schedule pretty light for this one), but there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be doing some sort of thing whilst I am there other than just sitting in the bar. Stay tuned.
February 3 -6, 2022: Capricon 42 — This is in downtown Chicago, one of my favorite cities in the world. Rumor has it I may be DJing a dance, and who knows, I might do some other stuff, too. More as we go along.
March 5 – 12, 2022: JoCo Cruise — There has been no official announcement at this moment regarding performers, etc, and I’m not going to get ahead of those announcements in any way. But I can confirm that I will be on the boat, if for no other reason than I enjoy nerdery on the high seas, and I miss seeing friends there.
The Kaiju Preservation Society launches on March 15, 2022, and Tor’s PR folks are working on if/how/where promotional events will happen after that — well, “if” is already a foregone conclusion; we’re totally going to have events. It’s the “how” and “when” they’re working on.
Basically, the next few months look… almost pre-COVID in terms of me being busy with events! Which I am not going to complain about today. I like the idea that I, and we, are starting to go back into the world.
That said, you’ll notice (if you visit the sites of all of these conventions), that they all have pretty rigorous masking and vaxxing/testing policies, and indeed nearly all events in the science fiction/nerd world at this point have these policies. So if you want to go to conventions and nerd events: Go get that shot and mask up, okay? It would be lovely to see you out in the world.
— JS
Mask and vaccine up indeed. I have attended concerts on a weekly basis in SF at organizations with these policies and they are working just fine. I am grateful for SCIENCE and SENSIBILE POLICIES.
It’ll be great to see you at Capricon!
I hope you’ll have a couple of virtual events. One thing that was nice amidst all the misery was getting to attend book events when I normally wouldn’t be able to. For those of us with disabilities or other limitations, having so much online has been wonderful.
It would be amazing if you could make it to planet Comic-Con in Kansas City, it happens April 22nd through the 24th. You are one of my most favorite authors, and to see you and get your autograph means so much.
I am really looking forward to Rising ConFusion 2022. I missed it terribly this year. The con committee is doing a fantastic job of getting thing up and running in an extremely compressed time frame.
My wife and I are in our early 60’s, and retired. We have both been reading science fiction all of our lives (including all of our host’s books of course) and consume a fair amount of Science Fiction in TV/Movies – but are readers first. We are interested in attending a convention – can anyone in the group give any advice on how to pick a 1st convention to attend? We live in the South and could make one a long weekend but are not adverse to traveling further if it is in an interesting city with stuff to do. A convention our host attends would be desirable but not absolutely required…
If there’s a bright side to 2 years of Covid, it’s that John’s TRO against me will expire right around the time Kaiju releases so maybe the police will allow me to attend one of his talks in person.
But seriously, hope to see you here in Raleigh next year.
Looking forward to getting to hear and see you on the Cruise. Given how close the cruise is to the release of the book, any chance that the book might be available in the shop on the boat?
Glad to see you are coming to Seattle. At word of advise, if I may: The area around the Convention Center has, unfortunately, become problematic to move around on foot in recent years. You may wish to plan lodging and meals accordingly..stay safe!