The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, Episode 125: John Scalzi
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This week, we welcome sci-fi writer extraordinaire John Scalzi to the show. Scalzi burst onto the speculative fiction scene in 2005 with Old Man’s War, which was nominated for a Hugo Award and kicked off a six-book series (plus related short stories set in the same universe). Two other books in that series (The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale) were also nominated for Hugos.
Scalzi also wrote Redshirts – a ridiculously fun riff on Star Trek‘s “redshirt” trope – and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2012! He’s a writing machine and averages about a book a year. Last month saw the release of The Collapsing Empire, which kicks off a new series in a new universe. And if you’ve read and enjoyed any of Scalzi’s work, I can guarantee you’re going to love it. It’s a hell of a ride.
On top of all the novels, he’s been even more prolific over on his website, Whatever, where he’s been writing about anything and everything for years. I highly recommend following along.
On this episode, we chat about the out-of-the-gate success The Collapsing Empire has enjoyed, TV and film rights (and adaptations in general), historical Easter eggs in his writing, the pressures and creative freedom granted by his unprecedented book deal with Tor, the little Wil Wheaton who lives in his head, the JoCo Cruise, and why it’s important for writers to commiserate and discuss the challenges they face.
Connect:
- John Scalzi is on Twitter here.
- The show is on Twitter here and Facebook here.
- Shiri Sondheimer is on Twitter here.
- Jamie is on Twitter and Instagram as @theroarbots.
- Justin is on Twitter and Instagram as @140JustinC.
