John Scalzi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Scalzi

Born May 10, 1969 (1969-05-10) (age 39)
Fairfield, California, United States
Occupation Writer
Writing period 1991–present
Genres Science fiction, Criticism, Humor
Subjects Finance, Astronomy, Writing
Influences
Official website

John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is an author and online writer, best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog Whatever, at which he has written daily on a number of topics since 1998. He has also written a number of non-fiction books.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Scalzi was born in California and spent his childhood there, primarily in the Los Angeles suburbs of Covina, Glendora and Claremont. Scalzi went to high school with noted blogger Josh Marshall; both were members of the class of 1987. After his stint at The Webb Schools of California, Scalzi attended The University of Chicago, where he was a classmate of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn. Scalzi's thesis advisor, for a brief time, was Saul Bellow. Scalzi abandoned his course of study with Bellow when he became Student Ombudsman for the University. During his 1989–1990 school year Scalzi was also the editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon.

After graduating in 1991, Scalzi took a job as the film critic for the Fresno Bee newspaper, eventually also becoming a humor columnist. In 1996 he was hired as the in-house writer and editor at America Online. Since 1998 he has been a full-time freelance writer and author. Currently, Scalzi lives in Ohio with his wife, Krissy, and their daughter, Athena.

Scalzi is distantly related to John Wilkes Booth.[1]

On 15 March 2007, Scalzi announced himself as a write-in candidate for president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, citing disagreement with the only ballot-listed candidate's vision for the future of the organization.[2] He was not elected.[3]

[edit] Career

[edit] Fiction

Scalzi's first published novel was Old Man's War, in which 75-year-old citizens of Earth are recruited to join the defense forces of human colonies in space. Scalzi noted the book's similarities to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers by thanking Heinlein in the acknowledgments of the book. Old Man's War came to publication after debuting online: Scalzi serialized the book on his web site in December 2002, which resulted in an offer for the book by Tor Books Senior Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. The hardcover edition of the book was published in January, 2005. Old Man's War was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in March 2006.

Scalzi's second published novel was Agent to the Stars. This novel was actually written prior to Old Man's War (it was written in 1997), and was placed online in 1999 as a "shareware novel" by Scalzi, who encouraged readers to send him a dollar if they liked the story (he re-released the book as "freeware" in 2004). The novel became available as a signed, limited-edition hardcover from Subterranean Press in July 2005, and featured cover art from popular Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik.

In February 2006, The Ghost Brigades, the sequel to Old Man's War, was released. Another science fiction novel, The Android's Dream, was released on October 31, 2006.

In August 2006, Scalzi was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer for best new science fiction writer of 2005.[4]

The third novel set in the Old Man's War universe, The Last Colony, was released in April 2007. It was nominated for the Best Novel Hugo award in March, 2008. There is also a novelette set in that universe, called "The Sagan Diary".

The fourth Old Man's War novel, a standalone book called Zoe's Tale, was announced in September 2007 [5] after Tor's art director posted the cover art to her blog.[6]

[edit] Non-fiction

While Scalzi is best known for his fiction, he has written several non-fiction books as well, including a trio for London publisher Rough Guides' reference line of books. The first of these was The Rough Guide to Money Online, released in late October of 2000. This reference book featured tips on using online financial tools. According to Scalzi, it did less-than-expected business, possibly due to the collapse of the Internet bubble at about the same time the book was released. Scalzi's next non-fiction book was The Rough Guide to the Universe, an astronomy book designed for novice-to-intermediate stargazers, released in May of 2003. Scalzi's third book for Rough Guides, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, was released in October of 2005. This book covered the history of science fiction and science fiction film, and listed a "canon" of 50 significant science fiction films.

Scalzi is also the author of the "Book of the Dumb" series of books from Portable Press. These books chronicle people doing stupid things. The first book in the series was released in October 2003 with a second following a year later.

[edit] Online and other writing

John Scalzi is known to amuse himself by altering photos of his own likeness. (uploaded by John Scalzi)
John Scalzi is known to amuse himself by altering photos of his own likeness. (uploaded by John Scalzi)

Scalzi registered the domain name Scalzi.com in 1998 and in that year also began writing the "Whatever," a more-or-less daily blog. The name suggests the wide range of topics Scalzi writes about there, although many of Scalzi's more memorable postings center on the topics of politics and writing. While Scalzi maintains he started Whatever to keep in practice for "pro" writing, a number of writings originally posted there have gone on to be published in traditional media, including his "I Hate Your Politics" and "Being Poor" entries, the latter of which was published in the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune in September of 2005. In November 2005, Scalzi announced that entries from the run of the Whatever would be compiled into a book from Subterranean Press. The book, You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing; was released by Subterranean Press in February 2007.

Scalzi also used the Whatever as a way to solicit fiction and non-fiction submissions on the theme of Science Fiction Clichés in 2005 for issue #4 of Subterranean Magazine, which he guest edited (published in 2006 by Subterranean Press). The original solicitation was posted in March, 2005 with the unique requirements that submissions would only be accepted electronically in plain text, and ONLY during the period between 10/1/05 and 11/1/05 instead of before a traditional deadline. After the print run sold out, the issue was made available online as a free download.[7]

In September, 2006, Scalzi created a brief internet sensation[8] when he taped bacon to his cat.

On March 29, 2007, it was announced that Scalzi had again been nominated for a Hugo Award, this time in the category "Best Fan Writer", for his online writing about the science fiction field.[9] He is the first Campbell Award winner to receive a nomination in this category. In 2008, he was again nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo, becoming the first person to be nominated for that category and the Best Novel Hugo award at the same time since 1970.

In addition to his personal site, Scalzi was a professional blogger for America Online's AOL Journals and AIM Blogs service from August 2003 through December 2007. In this role he created participatory entries (most notably the Weekend Assignment and Monday Photo Shoot), answered questions about blogging from AOL members, and posted interesting links for readers. Readers of both Scalzi's personal site and his AOL Journal "By the Way" noted distinct differences in tone at each site. Scalzi has acknowledged this tonal difference, based on the different missions of each site. Scalzi also blogged professionally for AOL's Ficlets site beginning in March 2007, writing about literature and other related topics. On December 7, 2007, Scalzi announced that by mutual agreement, his contract with AOL would not be renewed at the end of the year, in part so that he would have more time to devote to writing books.[10]

For traditional media, Scalzi wrote a DVD review column and an opinion column for the Official US Playstation Magazine from 2000 through 2006, wrote an additional DVD review column for the Dayton Daily News through 2006, and writes for other magazines and newspapers on an occasional basis. He also works as a consultant for businesses, primarily in the online and financial fields.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

[edit] Short fiction

[edit] Non-fiction

[edit] Editor

[edit] Upcoming books

  • Zoe's Tale (Tor Books, 2008)
  • Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: Selected Writing, 1998 - 2008 (Subterranean Press, 2008)[11]
  • The High Castle (Tor Books, 2009)

[edit] Nomenclature

The name of the main character from Old Man's War, John Perry, comes from the first name of the keyboardist of Journey, and the last name of the vocalist. Similarly, the character Steve Cain has the first name of the vocalist and the last name of the keyboardist. There are also characters whose names are based on Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. [4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Family Assassin", post on Scalzi's blog "Whatever", May 17, 2005
  2. ^ "SFWA President: I'm a Write-In Candidate", post on Scalzi's blog "Whatever", May 17, 2005
  3. ^ SFWA Officer Election Results, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website, posted May 12, 2007
  4. ^ John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award Eligibility & Author Profiles, Writertopia.com
  5. ^ Zoe's Tale: Yes, It's True
  6. ^ Two New Covers from John Harris
  7. ^ Subterranean #4, 2006
  8. ^ Whatever: A Lesson on Teh Intarweebs
  9. ^ Hugo nominees, Nippon 2007 site
  10. ^ An Important Announcement. By the Way, 12/7/07
  11. ^ Scalzi's compilation "Your Hate Mail Will be Graded" delayed to 2008, SFScope

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: