Birthday Addendum: Northern Lights and Dr Who
Posted on May 11, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
I managed to get through 55 years of life without ever having seen an aurora with my own eyes, not for lack of interest — it’s been a “bucket list” goal of mine since I was a kid — but because of lack of opportunity: I live almost directly on the northern 40 parallel, which is pretty far south for Northern Lights (and extremely far north for Southern Lights), and before that mostly lived even further south than that, in urban environment where the night sky was usually obscured by light pollution. Going to see an aurora would take some planning.
Until last night! On my 55th birthday! When there was a solar storm intense enough to push the Northern Lights into the part of Ohio where I am. I and Krissy went out into the yard and there they were, magenta and green and slowly undulating, and perfectly amazing. I got some pictures of it, as did just about everyone who, like me, had rarely if ever seen them for themselves. I took mine with the Pixel phone’s “Night Vision” setting on, so the photos show the lights as more vibrant than they were with my own eyeballs, but even without computational enhancement, they were, genuinely, a sight to behold.
I’ll note that around here, most of the week before my birthday was cloudy and rainy, and this morning is clouds and rain as well. My birthday, however, the skies were mostly clear, which let us see the lights. This is the second time this year where Ohio’s normally cloudy spring skies cleared up for a single day to let me see a (so far) once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon, the other being the April 8 eclipse. As a friend of mine noted, I have used the “get clear skies” card with the universe twice this year and should not ask for too much after this. Which, fair. And while I know it’s coincidence that a major solar storm happened on my birthday, and that the skies cleared enough for me to see the ionized results from my yard, I’m still going to consider being able to see the Northern Lights for the first time on my birthday as a gift from the cosmos. Thanks, cosmos! It is in fact just what I wanted.
Also on my birthday, a possible name-check on the newest Dr Who episode, in which a very minor character (visible only on a viewscreen) identified themselves as “Gina Scalzi.” Now, I don’t want to read too much into this; it’s entirely possible the name was pulled out of a hat, and also, there is an actual actress named Gina Scalzi (although the character onscreen is played by Susan Twist, who, in one of the series’ small mysteries, appears to be playing more than one minor character through the season, if you include last year’s Christmas Special as part of this season). On the other hand, if ever I were to be getting a shoutout on a television show, this would be a likely one, and in the Anglosphere, “Scalzi” is not exactly a common name.
So… maybe? If I ever run into Russell Davies I’ll ask him. No matter what, it’s nice to hear my last name canonically in the Whoiverse. And, again, on my birthday! That’s even better.
— JS
55
Posted on May 10, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 65 Comments
Most of these annual photos I do indoors, but it was such a nice day I thought I would do my birthday self-portrait outside for a change. I think it was a good call, personally.
I don’t believe turning 55 conveys any special privileges other than now being eligible for living in senior housing communities, but nevertheless it’s been a reflective birthday for me. Lots of stuff is happening for me offline (in a positive way, I will note) that has me thinking about the future and how it will play out. Assuming good health and no major surprises, which is a decent-sized assumption to be sure but even so, I have a reasonably good roadmap for the next fifteen years or so, at which point I will, holy crap, 70 years old. I mean, wow. That is simultaneously far and really not all that far away.
I’m optimistic for the future but also I’m not at an age where I take things for granted anymore. I am physically and mentally healthy but every aspect of that is now something that has to be managed. I’m at the age where people who I consider my contemporaries are beginning to head to the door, and their departures, while unexpected, are no longer entirely shocking. It’s a fact of life that in your mid-fifties your crowds starts to do some thinning out. I’m not a fan of this. I would like it to happen less, thank you.
That said, I feel great and I have plans. You will find out about some of them soon, I think. In the meantime, I wish all of you a very happy me day, and hope it as fantastic for you as mine has been so far. May is a lovely time to have a birthday, I have to say. I may even go outside again!
— JS
Starter Villain a Locus Award Finalist
Posted on May 9, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
That’s the cover to the Italian version, incidentally.
I’m thrilled Starter Villain is a finalist for the Locus Award this year. Here are the other finalists in the Science Fiction category:
- The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport, Samit Basu (Tordotcom)
- A Fire Born of Exile, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz; JAB Books)
- Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra)
- Furious Heaven, Kate Elliott (Ad Astra; Tor)
- Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
- Lords of Uncreation, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US; Tor UK)
- System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
- The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis (Del Rey)
That is an extremely excellent peer group to be part of. I have no expectation of winning this year, because these works are fantastic, and also, I won last year. I fully expect to be cheering on whoever does win. That said, it doesn’t mean I’m not happy and grateful to be in their company here in 2024.
There are many more categories of finalists for the Locus Award as well, including fantasy and horror novels. The full list is here. Congratulations to everyone!
— JS
Today in Silly But Fun Purchases
Posted on May 9, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
I have a couple of things to celebrate this week, so I went ahead and splurged and got myself something nice, namely, an octave guitar. It’s the cream-colored guitar on the left here. As you might expect, this octave guitar is strung like a standard guitar, but is an octave higher (i.e., it plays like a standard guitar with a capo at the 12th fret).
How does it sound? Pretty good! How does it play? Also pretty nicely. If you’ve ever played a mandolin or a ukulele it’s a bit similar to those. This guitar is electric and I’ve played it through my appropriately-sized Positive Grid Spark Go mini-amp, and it sounds delightful. This is kind of a limited-use guitar, and maybe a little silly, but I like it, and it makes me happy, and as I said, I have a couple of things to celebrate this week, so why not.
I would like to say this is the last guitar I’ll get for a while, but that’s not going to be true; I bought a different one a while back (a standard-sized one) but it’s not scheduled for delivery until August. But that will be the last guitar I buy this year. I swear.
Oh, don’t look at me like that. Just trust me!
— JS
RIP Steve Albini
Posted on May 8, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
Pitchfork announced that Steve Albini, indie music producer and general gadfly to the music industry, has died of a heart attack at 61 years old. If you were between 13 and 33 years old in the 80s and 90s and dug what was then known as “alternative” music, then he probably had his hand in some of your favorite music from your favorite bands, including from Nirvana, PJ Harvey and the Pixies. He also fronted his own bands, one of which, Shellac, apparently has a new album coming out next week.
I knew Albini extremely tangentially, in that we both hung out on Bluesky and had some back-and-forth there. It was fun to see someone who actually had a significant role in the culture I and others of my generation participated in hanging out, shooting the shit, and making observations both on the music industry and the culture in general. Albini was known to give unvarnished opinions on the industry he worked in (his essay “The Problem With Music” is a classic piece about how the music industry mostly sucked for every band in it), and he was also remarkably self-observant about being a white dude in the culture, what that let him get away with when he was younger, and how he needed to own that past and work on where he was now. These days, that’s not nothing.
So, anyway, this really sucks and as a music lover, I’m sad about this. Also, as someone who chatted him up online a few times and enjoyed his posts otherwise, I’m also sad. As I noted on Bluesky, this is very much like hearing that your neighbor has unexpectedly passed. It’s just that in this case, the neighbor also was a fucking giant in his field. What a legacy he gets to be part of.
— JS
We’re Fine
Posted on May 7, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
But we did just have a tornado warning and just before that, some pretty gnarly lightning. Again, we’re fine. Some weather is more exciting than others.
— JS
The Big Idea: Laura R. Samotin
Posted on May 7, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
For The Sins On Their Bones, author Laura R. Samotin was challenged to do several tricky things at once in order to make the whole story work. And how were these things tricky things accomplished? As today’s Big Idea explains: trickily!
LAURA R. SAMOTIN:
One of the big ideas motivating my debut adult fantasy novel The Sins On Their Bones was “how do the characters who lost the war and survived continue to live after the shooting stops?” We see many a fantasy novel where the battle is the climax, and yet I wanted to explore what it would feel like to be living in the aftermath of trauma, to be a character dealing with devastating political and personal scars. So The Sins On Our Bones starts at the end—with a Tzar in exile, having (quite spectacularly) lost a civil war to the ex-husband who deposed him.
What I didn’t anticipate when writing was that this narrative choice posed intertwined challenges, not only for the telling of the story, but for the ability of readers to connect with deeply traumatized characters they meet at the lowest point of their lives, with the least agency and self-esteem they’ve ever had. The setup of the book is this: Dimitri Alexeyev is the former Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, and he and the few surviving members of his court are in exile. His court is concerned—there have been rumors that his ex-husband, Alexey, is coming to finish the job and kill Dimitri and the rest of his them. And besides, it seems as though Alexey is preparing to do some rather unsavory things to the country and people they care for in the name of shoring up his rule.
Dimitri, though, would prefer to languish in bed, chain-smoking and drinking himself to death—he is profoundly depressed and dealing with serious PTSD. There are dozens of rejections sitting in my agent’s email inbox that go something along the lines of Dimitri is too passive, he’s not an engaged character. The thing is, those rejections are right—but the implication that the only books worth publishing are the ones in which characters immediately pull themselves up and out of horrible situations by their bootstraps really frustrated me. It didn’t feel realistic to me that Dimitri would immediately spring out of bed and start drawing up plans for how to retake his country after just having suffered the biggest personal and political trauma of his life and rule. At least in my personal experience, that’s not how grappling with depression and anxiety works.
But I knew that I could make readers care about Dimitri—I just had to make them understand what he’d been through, and how miraculous it was that he was continuing to function at all. If they knew his history, they’d see the strength it took just to survive, let alone move forward, and how remarkable it was that he still allowed himself to be open and vulnerable with his friends. The complicating factor was that I couldn’t do this so easily, since I was committed to starting the book off at the point at which Dimitri had already lost—remember, that was the literal whole point of my big idea. What were all these characters doing after the shooting stopped and they found themselves on the losing side?
So on a craft level, I had to work hard to reveal the depths of Dimitri’s trauma while avoiding the one trap that every writer dreads: infodumping. I would have lost readers straight away if I began with a long recounting of everything that had happened over the course of years, because why would they care? It would be like meeting a stranger on the street and having them begin reciting their biography. Without an emotional connection to the character, there’s no reason to care about what they’ve been through—but to get readers to care about this character, I needed them to know what he’d been through. It was a very frustrating MC Escher-like scenario, especially for a debut (and still quite novice) writer.
Working with my editor, I began to untangle the puzzle of how to do this, through conversations with other characters, flashbacks, bits of remembrances in dreams, and more. I invented a whole plot point just to give two characters a way to share their nightmares and thus reveal inner thoughts and fears and pain that they weren’t yet ready to confess out loud. I decided to feed readers a steady drip of “this is what happened” moments in order to keep them emotionally engaged, and to allow them to develop greater and greater sympathy for Dimitri.
In this sense, it’s been gratifying as an author to have already heard from so many readers that they relate to Dimitri. Many people felt as though reading the book was hard but worth it, for the reminder that even when we’re at our lowest points, we’re still worth something, and there are still people who will love and support us if we let them. But also the reminder that it’s possible to slowly regain a sense of self-worth and agency through that support (in addition to therapy, medication, etc.—all of which I have fantasy analogues for in my world). I hope that in addition to showing that books which begin at the end can be loved by readers on a craft level, that my book shows readers who relate to Dimitri a little love in return.
The Sins On Their Bones: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|The Ripped Bodice
New Uncanny Film Essay: The Aesthetics of Spectacle: A Look at Dune in 1984 and 2024
Posted on May 7, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
Over at the Uncanny Magazine site, I’m continuing my essays on science fiction and fantasy film by doing a compare and contrast on how the Dune films of 1984 and the 2020s handle spectacle, and how the aesthetic choices of each are bounded by what what the concept of “spectacle” meant in each of their respective eras — and by what “it “spectacle” meant to the filmmakers, including some who are not the directors of these respective films. Come get nerdy with me about this: the essay is at this link.
— JS
A Couple of Housekeeping Notes re: Email and Feedly
Posted on May 6, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
Because who doesn’t like housekeeping notes? No one! They’re the best!
One: I’m this close to being done with the next novel and do not wish to be distracted, so unless you are my agent, editor, manager or lawyer, if you send me an email, the chances of me responding to it in a timely manner are slim approaching none. Please be patient, and thank you.
Two: If you use Feedly, it is under the impression that I am blocking them from porting my posts to their RSS feed. I am not only not doing that, I have whitelisted the IP address they allegedly use to visit the site. I don’t know why they are under the impression I am blocking them. The problem is them, not me. If you use Feedly to access this site a) you are probably not seeing this, sorry, b) I don’t know what they need to do to fix the problem but it really is on them. No one else’s RSS reader program seems to be having this problem.
That’s what I have for you today. Hi! You’re great.
— JS
A Compare and Contrast: 21 and (Almost) 55
Posted on May 5, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 25 Comments
The younger version of me has hair and a chin. The older version of me has a career and a happy life. You know what, let’s call it even right there. Although I will say the eyebrows are remarkably consistent across time.
I’ll note that when I was 21 I was not really aware of how cute I was, which was probably a good thing, considering my unchecked ego at the time. I would have led myself into trouble. I’m not nearly as cute any more, but I am in fact pretty happy with how I look these days. I wouldn’t want to look any other than I do (minus as annoying persistent COVID-era twenty pounds I have on my waist, but I’ll deal with that eventually). At both ages, I was (and am) mostly happy being me. I’m glad that’s been a constant, along with the eyebrows.
— JS
The Dog at the End of the Rainbow
Posted on May 4, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
She’s a good dog. Apparently we’re not the only ones to think so.
— JS
The First Iris of 2024
Posted on May 3, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
From my house, at least. And it’s a beauty. We’ll have a bunch over the next couple of weeks. Unlike some years, this year I’ll be here to enjoy them. And so I shall.
— JS
The Big Idea: Thersa Matsuura
Posted on May 2, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 2 Comments
Folklore, superstitions, and legends are all essential parts of a place’s culture and history. Today, author Thersa Matsuura wishes to share these incredible stories and beliefs of Japan with the rest of the world, whether you’re a beginner, or a seasoned expert on the subject. Immerse yourself in the legends with her new book, The Book of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth.
THERSA MATSUURA:
I was newly married, living in a small Japanese town in the early nineties when my mother-in-law sat me down one day and enlightened me with the news that I was “sticky.” This meant, she went on to explain, that compared to a normal person, all those spirits and ghosts that lurk pretty much everywhere all the time, like to attach to me and cause mischief. That was my first indication that living in Japan was going to be exciting and strange.
It wasn’t long after that, she told me about how an extremely wealthy friend of hers had moved house last year, only he didn’t pay proper respects to the land kami and inadvertently invited a binbōgami (god of poverty) to live with them. Afterward, came a string of bad luck and within months his business went under and now they were very poor and trying to make ends meet. Not only was living in Japan going to be strange and exciting, I had a lot to learn. Learn I did.
This was pre Internet times, so I spent many days in the library or talking to the little old men and women in the neighborhood to learn more about these superstitions, folk beliefs, and ever present supernatural entities. I mitigated the hurt of being told my careless actions brought bad luck and even sickness with the sheer wonder at and fascination with this extremely rich and layered culture. I just had to share my findings with someone, anyone. That’s when I began using my experiences living here, as well as my boots on the ground research, to fuel my writing and podcast, Uncanny Japan.
So thirty years later, when Adams Media approached me about writing The Book of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth, it sounded like a perfect fit. Only by now, thanks to games, manga, anime, and the Internet, Japanese culture had really taken off. It was everywhere. So I mulled it over and thought what is my, well, Big Idea for the book? What can I bring to the proverbial kotatsu table that all these other books and websites and Youtube and TikTok channels out there haven’t?
Here’s where I remembered the feedback I get from listeners and readers, and how I’m continually blown away by how much more knowledgeable fans of Japanese culture and learners of the Japanese language are than they were twenty, ten, even five years ago. What if I could write a book that could be picked up and read by an absolute beginner on the subject, but also include lots of little unique morsels of information for more intermediate — even advanced — readers?
One way of doing this was to add kanji characters to not only the mythical beasties, but also important book and temple names, as well as interesting nuanced sayings and phrases. Kanji is delightful and multifaceted and sublime. It’s also a good way to really understand the beauty and depth of the Japanese language and culture. Keeping in mind that it’s so much easier and a lot more fun to learn a new language if it relates to something your super curious about, why not study Japanese through folklore and yōkai?
Another way to see my big idea through, was to dive into my Japanese books on the subject. With every one of the 45 chapters, I dug up some obscure and interesting fact or story that I personally haven’t seen translated into English. This way even the most avid yōkai and folklore enthusiast can hopefully learn something brand new.
And finally, while it’s impossible to list all the places these supernatural beasties, mythical heroes, and their stories can be found in recent games, anime, manga, and movies, I did try to give a brief overview just to further demonstrate how delightful, ubiquitous, and interconnected they have become.
What I find marvelous is that after 34 years of living in Japan, while it’s not always easy, I am still learning something new every single day. My hope is that readers of The Book of Japanese Folklore will gain a deeper understanding of the nuances and subtleties of the country and relish in the brilliantly outrageous — oftentimes hilarious — imaginations of the Japanese people of yore. And maybe, just maybe, if their curiosity is piqued enough, they can use the book as a jumping off point to go on their own strange and exiting journey into the seemingly fathomless depths of Japanese culture and mythical beasties.
The Book of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
A Quick May Moment
Posted on May 2, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
It’s a pretty good month around these parts.
Back to writing on the novel —
JS
The Big Idea: José Pablo Iriarte
Posted on April 30, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 6 Comments
Author José Pablo Iriarte is here today to tell us a bit about their debut middle grade novel, Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed. Both their novel and their Big Idea feature a feeling many creatives (and others!) are familiar with: imposter syndrome. Follow along to see how fitting into a new school is only the beginning of Benny’s problems.
JOSÉ PABLO IRIARTE:
I first encountered the term “imposter syndrome” from the proprietor of this very website. I was in Denver in 2008 for Worldcon, and since it was my very first Worldcon, I attended a panel/presentation given by John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal that was titled something like “Worldcon for N00bs” (I’m too lazy to attempt to look it up, so let’s assume that’s what it was called). I was an aspiring writer without a fiction sale but with a recently completed novel manuscript, and Kowal was a finalist for the Best New Writer Not-A-Hugo and I wanted to learn the secrets of becoming part of the community of specific writers, and who better to learn from than these two?
At some point the two of them talked about the phenomenon of imposter syndrome and I had an immediate flash of Holy crap, I know exactly what she means! Not as a writer, because I wasn’t even accomplished enough to be an imposter. But I’d experienced it as an early-career teacher, and in other contexts where people seemed to defer to my alleged knowledge and talents, even when I wasn’t sure I had much of either. Now I get to deal with it as an author, where I’ve got some of the credentials that would suggest I know what I’m doing, but I’m pretty sure I don’t, that I’ve gotten lucky two or three times, and that it’s only a matter of time before somebody comes along and realizes I’m just playing at all this.
In Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed, my middle grade debut novel from Knopf/Random House, Benny has to deal with a case of imposter syndrome of his own, and he could point to pretty definitive reasons why it’s deserved: He’s enrolled in an arts magnet school, but he has no discernible artistic or creative talent. While everybody else in the school had to audition to get in, he’s there because his parents are on the staff as teachers, and so their kid gets to bypass that hurdle. His father is a successful screenwriter who has left Hollywood to teach drama. His mom is a polyglot who plays guitar. His siblings are a talented dancer and a star thespian. And then there’s Benny.
When his brother’s attempt at a joke backfires, leading everybody at his new school to believe that Benny is a trumpet-playing prodigy, the screw twists even tighter.
Benny does have one “gift,” however: he’s the only one who can see the ghost of his famous musician grandfather, Ignacio Ramírez. Ignacio has been denied entrance into the great fiesta in the sky due to the many people he hurt in life with his arrogance and self-absorption, and he’s been given a New Year’s Eve deadline to make things right, or walk his former haunts forever. Exacerbating Benny’s imposter syndrome, Ignacio believes he can accomplish his goal by transforming him into the star musician everybody expects him to be. To that end, he gives Benny one bit of terrible advice after another.
Folks who’ve read my short fiction know I tend to focus on feelings and relationships more than on high stakes action and protagonists squaring off against antagonists. While the premise of a kid trying to fit in at a new school and a self-aggrandizing ghost trying to earn his wings does lend itself to a lot of hopefully funny hijinks, I can’t write a story until the characters feel real to me and until their needs and problems feel like ones I can personally identify with. So a lot of my own fears about not being good enough, or about not belonging, powered Benny’s narrative.
I hope readers will find my novel to be a fun visit to Miami with a supernatural twist, but I hope the explorations of family relationships and belonging, and how to navigate both while being true to your own authentic self, linger on after the hijinks are done.
Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Hello, I Have a Deadline, But Here is Krissy to Keep You Company
Posted on April 30, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
The shirt, incidentally, was a gift to me, but it fits Krissy better, on a few different levels.
Off to type. You kids behave yourself.
— JS
The Big Idea: Lyda Morehouse
Posted on April 29, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
Fight the good fight. That’s what we all try to do, isn’t it? Stand up and fight, never surrender. It’s what makes us human. At least, that’s what author Lyda Morehouse expands on in her Big Idea for newest novel, Welcome to Boy.Net. Read on to see what exactly could make a computer “human.”
LYDA MOREHOUSE:
There’s been a lot of talk about artificial intelligence in the news lately. Congress is rushing to pass laws; artists, actors, and authors are freaking out for very reasonable and legitimate reasons; and everyone and their dog is trying to sell you some “AI enhanced” app or some such. But, when we say AI, what we really mean is highly-sophisticated machine learning. There isn’t a real intelligence behind this.
That being said, we don’t really know how to test for machine intelligence.
The Turing Test is the most famous way to try to determine if a machine is intelligent, but the weak point is, well… us. All a program has to do to pass the Turing Test is convince us of its humanity. And, I’m not saying we’re easily fooled, but, generally, as a species we enjoy anthropomorphizing things. Give me a cute enough mascot and a reasonable enough argument and I’d probably allow that spoons could be people. We love to give the benefit of the doubt. In fact, as early as 2016, Saudi Arabia of all places had already given a robot named Sophia citizenship, and all the human rights that entails.
So, in my mind, at least, the Turing Test is kind of an easy “A” for most of the current crop of machine learning programs out there.
When thinking about the far-future, I started to wonder what might replace the Turing Test. What is something that is so fundamentally human that it could be instantly recognizable as sentience, as a sign of intelligence?
My answer: resistance.
When I wrote Welcome to Boy.Net, the first book of the Earth’s Shadow trilogy, I decided that some future think tank determined that if a program can resist being overwritten or reprogrammed, that is an absolute and certain sign that it is intelligent enough to have a sense of self-preservation. My two heroines don’t believe such an artificial intelligence exists… until they meet one. But the theme of resistance, of fighting to preserve one’s authentic self, resonates throughout the entire book.
I started writing this novel shortly after Trump got elected, and its germination happened in the activism I was participating in. I was going to protests almost daily, and you’ll see that in the book’s literal street protests that turn into a kind of communal rescue operation. At a time when we were all making jokes about the “darkest timeline,” I tried to write the future I wanted to bring into existence. My working title for the book was “Lesbians in Spaaaaaace,” because part of what I wanted to write into existence was a future where people like me got to have adventures.
Being alive and queer — especially trans — is also a daily act of rebellion, of resistance. My main heroine, Lucia Del Toro, is a trans woman who is a refugee from a militaristic stratocracy. Hers is the struggle against the kind of fascism that refuses to accept her as a human being. I’ve been writing a lot about trans and queer folks, ever since my first novel Archangel Protocol was published in 2001. I’ve known that I was a very butch lesbian for a long time, but the more I’ve learned from the trans community, the more I’ve come to my own personal understanding of the parts of me that don’t fit a cis definition. For me, personally, and especially with Trump and his allies on the horizon again, this story feels particularly necessary. Some days, for many of us just waking up alive is an act of resistance.
And hopefully this fun space opera of mine will leave readers with a sense that resistance is never futile. That’s just the lies of fascism talking, trying to convince us to comply and not fight back. As my fellow Minnesotan Paul Wellstone used to say, “Stand up, Keep fighting!” And, I would add, be a lesbian in spaaaaace!
Welcome to Boy.Net: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Kobo|Powell’s
Testing Bluesky Embeds
Posted on April 28, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
This is only a test, please ignore (or don’t, I mean, I’m not your dad)
In many ways, I’m still riding that high from middle school when the teacher would ask if anyone in the class knew the answer to the question and then would quickly amend “anyone but John”— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) Apr 28, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Did that work?
— JS
One Year of Bluesky
Posted on April 27, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 27 Comments
A year ago today my pal Lou Anders asked me if I wanted an invite to a new microblogging site called Bluesky, which was making a little bit of a news splash because Jack Dorsey was on its board, and because it was initially a sort-off offshoot of what was then still known as Twitter, but designed to eventually be a federated protocol, like Mastodon was.
I did want an invite. One, I always like to reserve my name on any new social media instance, and two, I was auditioning other microblogging sites, like Spoutible and Post, to see if they were worth my time, and worth moving over from Twitter, which was well into its transformation into a fascist shithole. It was worth auditioning Bluesky for this as well. When I logged in, the site had just under 10,000 users. I posted my traditional “here I am, here’s a cat picture” inaugural post, and settled in to see if I could like the place.
Reader, I could. A year later, and not counting my own personal site, Bluesky is what I consider my primary social media hangout, the place I go to see and be seen online, to chat with friends and readers, to be accessible in a casual way, and, simply, to have fun. It’s not the only place I’m online — I’m on Threads rather a bit as well, not to mention Mastodon, I keep professional and private accounts on Facebook, and I even pop into Instagram from time to time. But if you ask me the question “what’s the social media you check first and last every day,” Bluesky is the answer.
What I like about Bluesky is wrapped up in both its technical differences from other social media, and the way I use it personally, both of which dovetail into each other. Bluesky is (largely) algorithm free – what you’re presented with when you sign in is the list of people you follow, and their posts in chronological order. As a default, the service doesn’t push posts on you; you can subscribe to lists that people create, for varying interests, but if you only follow a couple of people, then by default those couple of people will be all you see (this is why, I imagine, there was this period when one of the largest complaints about Bluesky was that all people saw on the service was me and Neil Gaiman — people followed us because they knew of us, and we both are, shall we say, enthusiastic posters). Bluesky is what you make of it, essentially.
Which I think is great! As it happens I don’t want my social media site to suggest reading material for me, because inevitably the algorithms want you to “engage,” and since people “engage” with the things that piss them off, inevitably the feeds make people twitchy and angry. All social media algorithms lead to doomscrolling; it’s damn near axiomatic. That Bluesky doesn’t lead with this is perfect. I quickly found friends and interesting people on Bluesky, and my feed was filled with some fabulous stuff.
Now, the flip side of this is you can’t just sit back and let Bluesky happen to you. You have to engage with it — actual engagement! Not the kind where an algorithm pokes you with a stick! — or you’re going to be bored. It’s not an endless TikTok firehose where all you have to do is put yourself in its path. It’s a spigot, and you control how much or how little you get. Everyone says they want that, but it turns out a lot of people kinda like the firehose instead.
The other aspect of Bluesky being algorithm-free (and still being relatively small; its user base currently sits at 5.5 million) is that it’s not great for being famous or being an influencer, or being a troll. I think the Bluesky technical and cultural schema confuses the famous and/or influencer and/or shitty people who come onto the service to be famous, or to influence, or to be shitty for clicks. You can’t game an algorithm to go viral, and the sort of marketing that works on other social media works less well on Bluesky, and even if it did work that way, there aren’t hundreds of millions of people to broadcast at. You can try to do all these things on Bluesky, obviously. But Instagram and TikTok and Threads and the former Twitter are all still there, and much easier to game and influence and troll. People who come to Bluesky to do those things don’t seem to stay very long.
Which is a feature, not a bug, for me, and comports with how I want to do social media. I am not on Bluesky to be “famous,” or purely to market myself and my work. I’m on Bluesky to fart about and chat with people, and do socializing that works for me as an introvert and who is, most of the time, better in text. Do I tell people about upcoming books and events, and talk about the writing life, and occasionally brag about the cool shit that happens to me because I’m just “famous” enough to have cool shit happen to me? Hell yes I do! Along with the pictures of cats, weird thoughts that pop into my head, and talking with people I enjoy chatting with. It’s all “yes, and,” and Bluesky is great for that.
I want to talk about one other technical aspect of Bluesky which I think is a real differentiator, and also helped me evolve my thinking about how I want to be online generally, which is its really fantastic “block” feature. When you block someone on Bluesky, it doesn’t just keep them from seeing you, or you them. It also (as I understand it) nukes every interaction you’ve had on the site with them out of existence, not just for the two of you but for everyone else. I understand that some people dislike this and feel like it’s overpowered and breaks conversational continuity. I tend to think of it differently. I think it both disincentivizes the power of being shitty for clicks and influence in general, and disincentivizes being shitty to people, or (intentionally or otherwise), directing others to dogpile. On social media, that is absolutely a jewel beyond price. You can still be an asshole on Bluesky if you want to! And some people are! But you risk all your “work” in that area being wiped out by someone else in a single click. That’s not fun for most trolls.
It’s also changed my behavior. I don’t go out of my way to troll, but on the former Twitter, when trolls rolled up on me, I would give them a little head pat, say something sarcastic, and then block them, because it was fun and I was petty enough to do it, and because there would be that residue of me stomping a troll. On Bluesky, there’s no residue, so there’s no point in doing that… which made me think about why I was doing it at all. Stomping a troll is fun, but it’s also still acknowledging the troll exists (or existed), and it’s still farming a response from one’s followers. It’s not being a troll, but it’s not great, either. And bluntly, it mostly didn’t feel great on my end — there was that enervation of having let a troll get to you in the first place, if only to sarcastically dismiss him (and yes, almost always, it’s a him).
Bluesky early on fostered the idea of “Don’t Engage, Just Block,” which is to say that the first time some dick rolls up to give you a hard time, you just zap him there and then, no muss, no fuss, just that dickhead gone forever, not longer your problem and no longer the problem of anyone else in that comment thread. Bluesky’s powerful block tool encourages getting that done sooner than later, so you don’t disrupt the conversational experience for anyone else, and then it’s done and you literally never have to think about that person again.
I found this philosophy of blocking early and often and without taking on anything they did more than “Oh, look, troll,” to be liberating. No more wasting brain cycles! Just block with the dispassionate mercy of angels and get on with your life! I had been leaning that way the older I got anyway — I wasn’t any less desiring of poking jerks, I’m just more tired — but this was a real clean break opportunity for me, and I took it. I also adopted it for Threads and Mastodon and everywhere else I am online. I do so much less taunting of the tauntable now than I did back in the day. Mostly now I just block.
(Am I proud that it took Bluesky’s block feature to help me decide change my own behavior, at the oh-so-tender age of 54? No, I am not! But let’s take our improvements where we may, shall we.)
Bluesky, it should be noted, is not perfect: Humans are still humans, on both sides of the site, and Bluesky has in the year I’ve been on it weathered its own controversies and cliques and weirdness, including a sort of insularity, especially from people who were on the service early, which I suspect ran off some folks who might have otherwise stayed on the site. Some people took the concept of “Bluesky Elder” far more seriously than they should have. I’ll also note that I personally use Bluesky for some things more than others, and farm out other things to other services. Generally when I want to gripe about politics, I go to Threads, and if I’m going deep on some nerd issue, I tend to head to Mastodon. So it’s possible that Bluesky is not a complete social media solution for me.
Then again, I don’t know that I’m looking for a complete social media solution at this point. I don’t need Bluesky (or Threads, or Mastodon, or wherever) to replace what Twitter used to be for me; there’s some wisdom in realizing that this was an “all eggs, one basket” approach to social media. I don’t think Bluesky is going to be bought by an egomaniacal fascist billionaire anytime soon (it should be noted that Jack Dorsey, while on Bluesky’s board, is not running the place and in fact doesn’t even currently have an account on the site), but if it is, it’ll be better to also be active on other sites as well. Bluesky is my current favorite social media site; it doesn’t have to be my only current social media site.
Ultimately, here’s the thing that makes Bluesky my current favorite social media site: I’m actually happy to be on it. I enjoy it in a way that I hadn’t enjoyed being on social media (particularly the former Twitter) for years. The fun of hanging out with friends, of meeting new people who might one day become friends, of being goofy with strangers and riffing on the silly memes being created and shared — I missed that, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until Bluesky reminded me it was possible to do that. It’s been a year of social media being a positive part of my life again, and no matter what happens from here on out, that’s something that I, frankly, was not expecting.
So to the people who make Bluesky what it is, both the staff and the folks who post it on it: Thank you. It’s been a pretty good year. I hope we keep it going.
— JS
New Books and ARCs, 4/26/24
Posted on April 26, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments
As we hurtle toward the end of another April, there’s still time to tuck in one more stack of new books and ARCs that have come to the Scalzi Compound. What here strikes you as a good read to take with you into the weekend? Share in the comments!
— JS
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying