John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi IIis an American science fiction author, online writer, and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Old Man's War series, three novels of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award, and for his blog Whatever, at which he has written frequently on a number of topics since 1998. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2008 based predominantly on that blog, which he...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth10 May 1969
CountryUnited States of America
I tell people the first time I decided to write a novel I was in my mid-20s, and it was, 'Well, it's time to see if I can do this.' I basically flipped a coin to see if I was going to write science fiction or if I was going to do a crime novel. The coin toss went to science fiction.
I don't keep a Bucket List. I'm open to anything.
Personally speaking, when everything is boiled down to the marrow, I think the reason Reddit tolerates the creepy forums has to do with money more than anything else.
I would say I'm a medium-sized 'Star Trek' fan. I love the universe that it's created.
Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.
When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.
When I was 10, I was hit by a car, which turned my right tibia into a jigsaw puzzle.
What we need to do, as writers, is find out where our market is and adapt to it. I'm not saying that you follow every trend slavishly, but what you see is that, if there is a sea-change in the way that things are being done, then you account for it.
Reddit is not a public utility or a public square; it's a privately owned space on the Internet.
People imagine that there are rituals, like lighting candles or sacrificing chickens. They really just want to know what the magic formula is for writing. I inevitably disappoint them by saying you just put your butt in the chair, and you write 500 words a day, and then you get up and repeat it the next morning.
I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.
I find it difficult to believe that Redditors don't understand that anonymity online is merely a facade; indeed, it's probably one of the reasons that revealing the identity of pseudonymous Redditors is looked on as such a huge betrayal.
I don't think we're at the point where most people are willing to get rid of body parts and replace them, but then again, people who shoot lasers in their eyes come out with better-than-perfect vision.
Humor is rare in science fiction... there's so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it.