“Starter Villain” an Alex Award Winner
Posted on January 22, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 19 Comments
This literally just happened, the above is a screen capture from the actual awards ceremony.
For those who don’t know, the Alex Awards are given yearly by the American Library Association to ten books written for adults that they feel are excellent for teen readers as well. And this year Starter Villain is one of those books! I am thrilled. I want my books to be readable to a wide audience, and this includes teenagers and other younger readers. Also, the cat on the cover helps.
Also, if you’re having a sense of a deja vu with this announcement, it’s because I also won this award last year as well, for The Kaiju Preservation Society. An author winning an Alex Award in two consecutive years is not unheard of — Seanan McGuire has done it — but it’s still a pretty neat thing, and I’m pleased to have my work so recognized. They like me! They really like me!
In addition to Starter Villain, here are the other works and authors honored by the Alex Awards this year:
“Bad Cree,” by Jessica Johns
“Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
“Chlorine,” by Jade Song
“Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros
“The Hard Parts: A Memoir of Courage and Triumph,” by Oksana Masters
“I Will Greet the Sun Again,” by Khashayar J. Khabushani
“Maame,” by Jessica George
“The Talk,” by Darrin Bell
“Whalefall,” by Daniel Kraus
Congratulations to all of them, and incidentally, here is a very fine reading list for all of you.
A very good start to the week!
— JS
What’s Up With Babel and the Hugos?
Posted on January 21, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 91 Comments
Update 1/22: R.F. Kuang’s statement about Babel’s disqualification, on Bluesky.
There’s a new controversy with this last year’s Hugo Awards, involving, among other things, a number of potential nominees declared ineligible for not-at-all-clear reasons, including R.F. Kuang’s novel Babel, which was a presumed front runner before the finalist lists came out. Rather than try to explain the controversy myself (I have been away this weekend and am still catching up), I am going to point you to this piece by Cora Buhlert, which features links to other posts/articles exploring this recent uproar. I will note that at this point everything is at the “what the hell?!?” stage, and the rumors and speculation are just that, rumor and speculation. With that said, something sure seems hinky here, and no one is very happy about it.
What I know is limited to the article(s) I’ve just pointed you at, and nothing I am about to say should be taken as a definitive statement, not because I’m trying to cover my ass, but because I recognize there’s a lot here I don’t know, and I reserve the right to change my mind as more information is revealed. These caveats in place:
1. I honestly cannot think of any legitimate reason why Babel, which won the Locus and Nebula Awards last year, was a World Fantasy Award and Dragon Award finalist, and was on multiple end-of-the-year “best novel” lists, would have been ineligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. It was published in 2022 and had no eligibility issues with any other award. Indeed, its momentum was such I fully expected it to be on the finalist list. Its absence was notable.
2. Absent any other compelling reason for its disqualification, there is speculation that its ineligibility (and the ineligibility of some other potential finalists) is a matter of governmental censorship on the part of China. This is, at this point, only speculation and should be regarded as such. If it were true, however — again, big if — I don’t know what the local Worldcon committee could have done to argue. People in the United States in particular take freedom of speech for granted and have a hard time wrapping our brains around the idea that it is not a universal ideal.
3. If it does turn out that potential finalists were disqualified due to state censorship, one remedy I could see this year’s Hugo Award committee (for the Worldcon that will take place in Glasgow, Scotland) considering is seeing whether the rules allow the affected works/nominees to have their eligibility extended into this year. It doesn’t address what would be the primary issue at hand — which would be state censorship — but at the very least it would offer works and people affected a second chance at something denied to them.
4. Likewise, depending on what we learn about these disqualifications, next year’s Worldcon Business meeting would be a fine time to offer proposals for disqualification transparency (i.e., there have to be reasons detailed other than “because”) and for dealing with state censorship regarding finalists and the award process.
5. Even the speculation of state censorship should give pause to site selection voters regarding future Worldcons. For example, there is a 2028 Worldcon proposal for Kampala, Uganda, and while the proposed Worldcon itself offers a laudable and comprehensive Code of Conduct page, Uganda is a country with some of the most severe laws in the world regarding LGBTQ+ people, including laws involving censorship. If the state leaned hard on the local Worldcon regarding what was acceptable on the Hugo ballot, would it be safe for the organizers to ignore this pressure? This is now an issue we will need to consider, among the many others, in where the Worldcon lands every year.
These are five points top of mind at the moment; I’m sure others have more and different points to bring up. I’m hoping we get more clarity about all of this soon. And if we don’t get additional clarity, then I hope rules are changed that require clarity in the future.
In the meantime: Check out Babel, if you have not yet done so. It’s a very very good book.
— JS
View From a Hotel Window, 1/19/24: Novi, MI
Posted on January 19, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
Well, this certainly looks frosty, doesn’t it. I am here in Michigan for my first convention of the year, the Confusion convention. It’s the one I consider my “home” convention, despite the fact it’s three hours away, in no small part because it’s the first non-Worldcon convention I ever went to. That was in 2005. Not counting the COVID years, I haven’t missed one since. It’s always nice to be back. I’ll be doing a reading and a signing and a panel, but mostly I’ll just be hanging out with friends.
What are your weekend plans, if any?
— JS
An Interesting Behind the Scenes Look at Some Old Man’s War History
Posted on January 18, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 27 Comments
As many of you know, Old Man’s War at one point was optioned for television at Syfy. What you might not know is what happened while it was optioned there and why it never made it to the small screen. Well, screenwriter Jake Thornton, who was half of the writing team on one take of the series, has just posted about his experience working on the script and show. It’s super-enlightening for any wondering why so many things get optioned and then seem to disappear. They didn’t just disappear. Lots of work goes into them when you’re not looking.
On my end of things I can say that I enjoyed working with Jake and his writing partner Ben Lustig, and we’ve remained pals all this time. Sometimes projects don’t work out, but you get to know excellent people in the process, That’s a pretty great silver lining, if you ask me.
— JS
I Spent All Day Downloading Software, Here’s a Song For My Mom’s Birthday
Posted on January 17, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 5 Comments
I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was a very small kid, my mom looked enough like Janis Joplin on the cover of this album that I thought it was her. It was not, but inasmuch as Joplin was my mom’s favorite singer at the time, I think she was flattered. It’s my mom’s birthday today, so what better time to play a song from it. Especially since the rest of the day was given over to downloading software for the new computer. This is a nice way to wrap things up. Happy birthday, mom!
— JS
The Newest Bit of Tech to Arrive at the Scalzi Compound
Posted on January 16, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 36 Comments
It’s a Macbook Pro, and it arrives at a confluence of a few events. The first is that the Mac Mini I bought a couple of years ago for music production turns out to be more than a little underspecced for what I’ve been doing; I keep bumping up on processing limitations and am also running out of drive space. Some of that can be addressed with an external SSD drive, but some of it can’t.
The second thing is that my previous laptop, a Dell XPS, while still in very good working order, is beginning to feel a little cramped for me. As I get older I’m finding the “ultralight” lifestyle no longer is working for me very well, or at least for my eyes. The third thing is that now that the Church is finished, I’m going to start doing more things there, and will need a computer for that space, or a computer that I can bring to the space. All signs pointed to getting a new computer, and having it be a laptop.
I’ve been in the Windows laptop ecosystem for more than a decade, and my desktop is Windows, but at this point I thought it made sense to go over to the Mac side again. I have been using Apple’s ecosystem for music stuff, and prefer it to the options available on the Windows side, and more specifically I had settled on Apple’s Logic Pro as my DAW of choice for most things and didn’t want to have to relearn everything. But aside from that one particular program, everything else that I use for work — namely Office and Adobe applications — are available on both platforms, equally specced, and in a pinch they both have Web-based versions that I can access. Things are at the point where with the exception of a single program I want to use, it hardly matters whether I’m on Windows or Mac, so Mac this time it is.
(The one place where Windows has an advantage here is in video gaming, but again, I have a Windows desktop, so this is not a real concern for me.)
Inasmuch as this computer is meant both as a laptop and a desktop replacement/equivalent I went ahead and splurged. This computer is the Mac Pro with the 16-inch screen, M3 Max processor in the high-end configuration, and all the RAM and memory maxxed out. Also it’s in the sexy “space black” color, which is just a really dark gray. It cost a genuinely stupid amount of money because Apple is Apple, but inasmuch as it’s replacing three computers (the Mac Mini, the Dell XPS, and whatever computer I would have bought for the church), I intend to use it for several years, and it’s a tax deduction aside, I was able to rationalize the outrageous expenditure to myself.
I’ve had it for literally just a couple of hours so I can’t say much about it beyond the superficial — It’s very pretty, the screen looks great and the speakers are excellent — but I will probably have a “general impressions” piece up about it in the next couple of weeks. Be looking for it. In the meantime I’ll be digging into what this computer can do. Should be fun.
— JS
The Big Idea: Alexander C. Kane
Posted on January 16, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
A murder of crows, a clowder of cats… a collaboration of quislings? In Scum of the Earth, author Alexander C. Kane takes a hard look at the sort of person who works for the invader, and in this Big Idea, explains why these turncoats were the perfect subject for his tale.
ALEXANDER C. KANE:
I want to know about the bootlickers, enablers, opportunists, and toadies. Sauron’s personal assistant. Darth Vader’s helmet buffer. Peter MacNicol in Ghostbusters II. I am fascinated by the collaborators. Not the big, bad villains with their death rays, dark magic, or chaos machines out to conquer the universe with their brilliant but ultimately flawed plans. The people who should know better, but choose profit and comfort over humanity.
I look at people who give their service and loyalty to a corrupt system and I want to know why.
I knew I wanted to write an alien invasion story, but I didn’t want to focus on the heroes valiantly fighting to free humanity from tyranny. I wanted to write the story primarily from the perspective of those who were helping the invaders, those who had hitched their proverbial horse to the alien wagon. Space-wagon.
That was the idea of my new book, Scum of the Earth. It is a story of three people who go to work for the Merg, an alien race that traveled across the universe to conquer Earth. These people wake up every morning, look at themselves in the mirror and say, “Well, what can you do?” And they soon meet a group of freedom fighters who know exactly what they can do.
You have Ezra Barker, a political aide, just trying to make it through each day ignoring how much damage is being done to his planet. The Senator, his boss, views every new catastrophe as an opportunity. And there is Sergeant Hayes of the Health and Safety Department, loyal to his Merg masters and willing to do anything to protect what they have given him.
The Merg are poisoning the atmosphere, looting every valuable material they can find, slaughtering any resistance, and forcing everyone else into servitude. Reconquest, a loose group of rebels who make up for their lack of resources and organization with extreme violence, are closing in. Soon, everyone is going to have to make a choice about whom they serve.
As a parent of two young children, I am constantly bombarded with questions. “How do batteries work?” “How long can I grow my fingernails?” What kind of car is that?” “Does anyone actually read your books?” The hardest questions usually are some form of “Is _______ a bad person?” I believe that we are products of our circumstances and surroundings far more than some inner goodness or evil. We are the decisions we make every day.
I see success and failure the same way. Sometimes we just need to find the right people to be successful. Marty and Doc Brown. Kirk and Spock. E.T. and Elliott. Just think, that alien could have been discovered by a bunch of hunters in the woods. Or bears! Oh man, what if E.T. had been eaten by bears?
I’m off topic. Back to the book!
In Scum of the Earth, Barker, the Senator, and Hayes all begin in circumstances that fit them perfectly. They are experts at surviving on a dying planet, but something big is coming. Everything is going to change and each one of them will have to decide who they want to be, what they’re willing to do, and whether they care more about Earth’s survival or their own. And that will decide the fate of the world.
Scum of the Earth: Audible|Amazon
Author Socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram|Goodreads|Threads
Caption This Photo
Posted on January 15, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 105 Comments
I’m very curious to know what you think Smudge is saying, here.
— JS
I Have No Idea Why This Song In Particular Has Been My Weekend Earworm, But, Here You Go
Posted on January 14, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 40 Comments
Because as we all know, the only way to get rid of an earworm is to pass it on.
Fortunately it’s a good song! It’s a story song about a loser who deserves to be a loser (doing a stint for non-support? Loser), but who laments being a loser nonetheless. And by Jim Croce, who was both a really fine songwriter and also the perfect example of how everyone looked older back in the day, because I have yet to find a picture of him where he looks younger than mid-40s, despite the fact that he tragically died at age 30. Seriously, what were people doing 50 years ago that aged them like that.
(Smoking. It was smoking.)
— JS
A Note on New Book/ARC Posts
Posted on January 12, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 34 Comments
Which is: They’ve been missing the last couple of months, primarily because I dropped the former Twitter, which was once of the primary outlets for me talking about the new books and ARCs that have been coming in, and I have to figure which, if any, of the other various social media I’m on I want to port the feature to, and I’ve been punting that decision down the road mostly out of laziness. With that said, I’m going to come to a decision about it soon, and when I do the New Books/ARCs feature will return to its regular rotation. Probably in the next month or so.
In the meantime, here’s a stack of mostly Subterranean Press books that arrived in December. Some good stuff here. What looks intriguing to you?
— JS
The Big Idea: Mark Elsdon
Posted on January 11, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
True story: When the publicist for Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition contacted me about the possibility of doing a Big Idea, I asked “So, did you know I recently bought an old church?” The publicist had not, but we both agreed the fact I had made the questions and concerns raised in this collection rather directly on point. Here is editor Mark Elsdon, talking about the impetus for the book, and the questions the US faces as more church properties go on the market.
MARK ELSDON:
20 years from now there will be a lot fewer churches and church buildings in the United States than there are today. A LOT.
“Who cares?” some may ask. Unless you are one of the rapidly declining number of people who still attend church regularly you may not think it matters much if as many as 100,000 church buildings are gone in the future.
Even though I am full of criticism of Christian churches in the United States, in reflecting on this emerging reality, I find that I care. I care if 40 out of 100 churches in a community become something else. And I would venture to guess that many more folks will miss those churches and their buildings than they might initially think.
Where will members of Alcoholics Anonymous get together to encourage each other in sobriety in a confidential space? Where will we pick up a few extra food items when finances get tight at the end of the month? Where will we vote!? Worship times aside, churches in every corner of our country provide space and services for all those things and more. In fact, in many cases, there are far more visits to churches for community services than for what people think of as traditional religious experiences.
I have been a pastor for 20 years. Like many clergy, I’ve been wondering a lot lately about what church life will look like 20 years from now. Will all the years of studying Greek and Hebrew and church history amount to only that? History? In my work with church leaders around the country I am seeing a massive tsunami of church closure and property reuse rising up before us. I don’t believe God is disappearing. And some churches will still exist in the future. But there will be a lot fewer of them.
People still want to experience the transcendent, the divine. They still crave and thrive in a caring community. They still want to be involved in causes and activities larger than themselves and that change lives for the better. But fewer and fewer people want to experience those things in a Sunday morning worship service followed by Sunday school classes. Which means there are too many church buildings with too much space. Like the decline of the indoor shopping mall, or the closure of Blockbuster video rental stores, churches are closing and the property owned by churches is changing at a speed and scale never seen before.
I was spurred to bring this book, Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition, together as I reflected on the role that churches and their buildings have played in my own life. In many ways, big and small, powerful and mundane, my life has been shaped by church spaces:
Legend has it that my family name is derived from an orphan baby who was left on the steps of an ancient church in the tiny village of Elsdon in northern England many centuries ago.
My parents made their first friends as immigrants to the United States by offering to share a joint with people at church. (Turned out it was a joint of roast beef to the relief, or perhaps disappointment, of those they invited over.)
I avoided going on long runs with my high school cross country running team by hiding in a church gymnasium and playing basketball instead.
I learned about homelessness and the role churches play in Taiwanese immigrant communities while in college and at graduate school.
I met my life partner at church.
When I sat down to count, I discovered my life has been touched by literally hundreds of churches and their buildings. I am a pastor, so I imagine this is more than the average American, but even many who never attend a worship service are often directly, or indirectly, touched by a church building.
I don’t want to look back 20 years from now and regret the huge loss of social fabric that churches provide, or have missed the opportunity to do new, wonderful things with these properties. I don’t want all of the beautiful church spaces that were built for community life to be replaced by privately owned condo buildings making money for already wealthy people. Or to end up standing empty with a fence around them while the stones crumble and community groups can’t find anywhere to meet. There is only this one window of time to do what I can so that when tens of thousands of churches are gone, they are gone for something good.
A lot will be lost when churches are gone but there is also an incredible opportunity for new life to emerge on church land and in church buildings. Affordable housing, community centers, early childhood education, and new business incubators are just a few examples. One recently closed church near Portland, Oregon was just given to a coalition of Native American groups so they can build tiny homes for Indigenous women and children experiencing homelessness. The traditional spaces that churches provide might be gone, but they could be replaced with something good.
And so I set about gathering a group of contributors to write essays for this book who could reflect on many angles and aspects of this transition. The authors are diverse in discipline, expertise, geographic location, age, gender, race, and more. They come at this question as sociologists, urban planners, developers, clergy, philanthropic leaders, and theologians. It was really important for me to amplify the voices of people who have been more focused on doing amazing work in their fields than making a name for themselves. And I wouldn’t have published the book if I couldn’t include a couple of chapters reflecting on the fact that the land churches occupy today was home to Indigenous peoples before European colonization. Could the best future use of a closed church be to give the land back?
The best part of this project for me by far has been the relationships I’ve developed with the contributing authors. I have learned and gained so much from their brilliance and friendship. I think of this book as a written version of the children’s tale, stone soup. I have personally brought little to the project besides a driving question. I dropped that stone into the pot, and the authors contributed their incredible ingredients. Together they have created a delectable soup that I hope in some small way will create more good, when churches are gone.
Gone For Good: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
RIP, Terry Bisson
Posted on January 10, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 12 Comments
Here’s his obit at Locus. A sad day for science fiction.
— JS
The Big Idea: Beth Cato
Posted on January 9, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
Hungry for a fantasy heroine that’s as relatable as she is badass? Look no farther than Beth Cato’s newest novel, A Feast for Starving Stone. Come along in her Big Idea as she shares a bit about the story she’s cooked up.
BETH CATO:
I sometimes joke that people can tell I write fantasy novels because my heroines have functional clothes with pockets. Good pockets are an important criteria for my clothes as well (and a reason I reject many pants and coats before even trying them on), and my protagonists tend to be like me in a lot of ways, practical attire included.
To that end, Adamantine Garland is one of the two leads in my new Chefs of the Five Gods series. She’s in her mid-forties, like me. She’s going through perimenopause, like me. She loves cooking, like me–though she’s even better at it, because she’s not only trained in food arts, but has a divinely-touched tongue. She has an empathetic understanding of food and how it tastes, not only in her mouth, but how other nearby people in proximity to food will sense flavors. Even more, Ada can tap the potential of rare ingredients, calling on the Five Gods of Cuisine to imbue foods with abilities that will then empower whoever chows down on the meal. Those powers include regeneration, stone-like skin, speed, and so much more.
Oh yeah, and because the Chefs (that’s with a capital C) in my secondary world are essentially trained as food-focused priests/soldiers, she’s also proficient in fighting and killing, when necessary. I daresay, such things are not within my skill set.
My first book, A Thousand Recipes for Revenge, established my setting inspired by 16th and 17th century Europe. The focus is on France, which I’ve renamed Verdania. There is a lot of swashbuckling action along with requisite feast scenes. As the story begins, Ada is in a tough spot. She deserted the army years ago, and has since lived in hiding with her grandmother, who is slowly succumbing to dementia. When assassins show up at Ada’s door, her first concern is to get her grandmother to safety–and her next is to find out how these assassins found her and why they want her dead.
The second book is A Feast for Starving Stone, out today. Ada has found her answers–and a whole mess of additional trouble. War is descending on the continent, and Ada has made enemies of two Gods.
I had a lot of goals in mind when I built Ada as a character, but most of all, I wanted to depict the competence that arises from decades of hard life experiences. I wanted someone with old scars. I wanted someone who’d fought battles while pregnant. I wanted to depict a person who’s embittered by heartbreak, but hasn’t lost her compassion or humor. I wanted to show someone who has lived, truly lived.
That means Ada has white hairs. Her body is resilient and strong, but her back might go out if she carries something wrongly or hits the ground hard. She is annoyed by hot flashes. Her periods aren’t regular–and yes, I absolutely mention this in the text, because 1) over half the planet’s population deals with periods, 2) it’s nothing to be ashamed about, 3) periods are absolutely relevant when a character is traveling hard and trying to stay alive, because not only can the cyclical pain be debilitating, but cloths need to be kept handy for blood.
Ada is a strong, savvy middle-aged heroine who can wield a rapier as well as a soup ladle. She’s realistic–except for, perhaps, the abundant pockets in her clothes.
Order A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (psst, the ebook is currently on sale across portions of the planet, the US included) and A Feast for Starving Stone through your favorite indie or other bookseller! They can also be found in audiobook through Audible.
A Feast for Starving Stone: Amazon|Audible|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Today in “Incidents Just Waiting To Happen”
Posted on January 8, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
To be clear, among the cats in the house, it’s usually Smudge who is the real butthead of the three, probably because he’s a dude cat, and because of all three cats, he’s the one who is most proudly a chaos engine. However, every now and again Sugar sheds her pretty princess persona and whacks Smudge a good one, just to keep him in line. This morning, Smudge clearly transgressed an unwritten line, and Sugar is waiting for him to come out and get his richly deserved whacking. It’s never dull when you have multiple cats, I’ll tell you that much.
(They’ve both gotten over it now, whatever it was. And where was Spice? Napping in my office. She avoids drama as much as possible. Wise kitty, Spice.)
— JS
I Played Video Games To the Near Exclusion of Everything Else Today, So Here Is My Favorite Fountains of Wayne Song For You, In Lieu Of Actual Thought
Posted on January 7, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
Because it’s a wistful, beautiful song which fits the moment. Have a happy Sunday evening, y’all.
(PS: I don’t regret playing video games all day. Sometimes you need a “play video games all day” day.)
— JS
A More Than Trivial Amount of Snow Has Finally Arrived
Posted on January 6, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 53 Comments
Not quite enough to completely blanket the lawn, but more than enough to make the roads slightly hazardous. Winter is finally, without a doubt, here in Ohio. We’ll get a slight uptick in the temperature for the next week, but then down to the 20s. It’s January. Seems fair. I understand other parts of Ohio are getting more snow.
How are things where you are?
— JS
The First Sunset of 2024
Posted on January 4, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
More accurately, the first sunset visible from my house so far this year. The other days had setting suns, but they were obscured by a thick batting of clouds. Today was the first day the sun was visible on the horizon. And it looks good. I will take it.
— JS
Perhaps the Greatest Award I Have Ever Won
Posted on January 4, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 27 Comments
In 2007 my friend Norm Carnick decided to make a fantasy football league and asked me if I wanted to join in. Despite having very little interest in professional football or indeed most professional sports at all, I said sure, because why not. 16 years later, I’m still in it. Every year, come draft day, I do the same thing: Let the league’s auto-draft function pick my players for me, and then, having done so, leave the team alone to do its thing, swapping out players only during bye weeks or for injuries. When an injury means I need to pick a new player, my policy is simply to go to the roster of available players and pick the one predicted to gain the most points in the position in the next week. Otherwise, I give the team no thought.
How does this go? Most years, as you might expect, pretty terribly! For the vast majority of these seasons since my team (first the Mediocre Walloons, currently the Churro Unicorns) took the field, I have placed in the bottom half of the league in end-of-the-year standings, with eight times — eight! — in last place. And, honestly, this year, when the Churro Unicorns finished eighth in the regular season with a 6-8 record, having just lost 5 games in a row and only barely limping into the postseason, I quite reasonably assumed I was heading for yet another bottom-half season.
But! Then! I quite unexpectedly bested the #1 seed in the first round of playoffs — by a score that would have had me lose to literally any other winning team in the first round. And! Then! I unexpectedly won in the second around, again with a score that would have had me lose to the other winning team! And in the final — well, there I actually crushed my opponent by 24 points, so go me. The point to this whole story is that, for the first time in the 16 years of this fantasy football league, and quite ridiculously, given my regular-season placing, I won my league’s fantasy football championship.
I would like to say this is the result of effort and canny management on my part, but remember that I do auto-pick and swap out only for by-weeks and injuries, and even then just pick the players the league predicts will do well each week. There is no significant management on my part, and this championship is almost entirely unearned — due to luck and possibly some less-than-successful choices on the part of other managers who are generally far better at this than I am (and of course the performances of actual players, whose game stats are transmuted into fantasy points, and on whom none of us exercise any control at all). There is no reason at all that I should have won this championship. I did anyway.
Naturally, this delights me. The league does not offer a physical trophy but I was all, fuck it, I want a trophy for this, so I went and bought the ugliest possible trophy to commemorate the moment. It’s now on one my brag shelves, keeping time with my Ohio House and Senate proclamations, a Seiun award and the Budapest Grand Prize. If nothing else, it’s a reminder to have a good sense of perspective about awards, and life.
I don’t ever expect to win my fantasy football league championship again, for the same reason I didn’t expect to win this year in the first place, and that’s fine — I’m in the league because my friend asked me to, and because it’s fun, and it’s more about the experience of doing the thing. But it was a blast to win it once. I’ll be riding this high for all the rest of 2024.
— JS
What I Have Eligible for Award Consideration This Year, 2024 Edition
Posted on January 3, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
This year, it’s two things:
Best Novel: Starter Villain, Tor Books, September 2023, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor;
Best Novelette: Slow Time Between the Stars, Amazon Original Stories, June 2023, John Joseph Adams, editor.
Oh, and technically my EP of music Between the Stars is eligible for Best Related Work, because I composed it as a companion piece to Slow Time Between the Stars, but I’m going to be realistic about that one.
I hope you will check out both Starter Villain and Slow Time if you haven’t already, and give them consideration in your 2024 award nominations and selections.
As always, remember to nominate and vote for what you love and want to give attention to. If that includes my work, fabulous. If it’s something else, that is fabulous too.
— JS
New Movie Column Up at Uncanny Magazine
Posted on January 2, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 27 Comments
I’m writing a column on science fiction and fantasy films at Uncanny magazine, and my new column is up. Tangentially it’s on The Marvels, the most recent film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Less tangentially, it’s about the problems of widely expansive entertainment universes, and at what point does having fun in the universe start requiring too much homework.
This link will take you to the Uncanny front page, and you can link in to my column from there (and while you’re there, check out the other cool columns and stories). Enjoy!
— JS
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying