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John Scalzi, the Prequel
95 Plays4 months ago
Back in 2003, at the WorldCon held in Toronto, Canada – known as Torcon 3 – Joe Mahoney met Mark Rayner for the first time. Joe also had an opportunity to meet and interview John Scalzi for a radio documentary that later aired on CBC Radio's The Current.
The interview (the entirety of which is included in this episode) is a fascinating slice of history. It was John’s first WorldCon and he took an anthropological approach to understanding what was going on all around him. “It’s like a convention of misfit toys,” he says. “It’s its own self-contained things.”
As a fan and a writer of science fiction he has great observations of the whole process.
The interview prompts Mark and Joe to reminisce about the early years of the 2000s and how some authors managed to break through with new media such as blogs and podcasts.
They also reflect on their own first experiences with WorldCon. “For me it was pretty mind blowing,” Mark says, including experiencing his first panel with Robert Silverberg and David Brin, as they discussed the work of Kurt Vonnegut.
Plus – a bonus clip with Larry Niven! Not to be missed by fans of science fiction and fantasy!
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at [email protected]
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Transcript
Honorary Doctorate Humor
00:00:10
Speaker
Monsieur Mark, how are you? Dr. Mahoney, my nemesis. I haven't actually received an honorary doctorate yet. I'm waiting. ah I would love to have one too. That'd be cool. Just FYI, anyone out there who wants to be given one, I'll take it. Just saying. Yeah. We'll both take it. I mean, you can get us a package deal too. Like we'll, we'll back and forth on a, on a convocation ceremony. It'd be fun. There you go. A two, two for one deal. Yeah. So this is a ah ah kind of a unique little episode.
Introduction to 2003 John Scalzi Interview
00:00:40
Speaker
kind of what did What did you call it? I want to call it John Scalzi, the prequel. John Scalzi, the prequel. the pre That's what this is. Yeah. Because this is a, it's about a nine minute interview that I had the good fortune to do with Mr. Scalzi back in 2003.
00:01:00
Speaker
at the WorldCon in Toronto, which was called TourCon. And we talked about it in last week's episode in our big interview with ah John Scalzi. Conversation. Yeah, and that's right. Yeah, we call them conversations, not interviews. I'm just keeping you honest, man. Thank you. yeah Keeping me
John Scalzi's Early Career and WorldCon Experience
00:01:20
Speaker
accurate. But that that was a great conversation with him, and we talked about how I had met him before he was the John Scalzi that we all know and love today. His first book had yet to come out, Old Man's War, and was coming out shortly. And Robert J. Sawyer ah brought me to John Scalzi and said, you should interview this guy, because I was doing a little documentary for CBC Radio's The Current.
00:01:42
Speaker
And so we had this, this chat and I took clips from this chat and made it a part of a radio documentary that ultimately aired on the current. And now what we propose to do is to play for you that entire nine minute interview with John Scalzi. ah that we had back in 2003. So we're both going to listen to it again and then give our thoughts on it after we play it. Anything to add before we play this for people, Mark? I just still upset that I wasn't present at this interview because I was there. I was. That was my first talk. That was my first world gone, too.
00:02:18
Speaker
Well, and I clearly remember meeting you and, uh, and, and, and liking you. But I was not worthy of an interview at that point. That's no, but to make you feel better, I'll just say that is John Scalzi co-hosting this podcast? That is true. that Take that John Scalzi. There you go. Yeah. All right, so let's let's play this ah nine minute fascinating little prequel to John Scalzi's career and then and we'll talk about it. Tell me who you are and what you're doing here. My name is John Scalzi. I have a book coming out next May from Tor called Old Men's War. It's my first world con.
00:02:59
Speaker
And this being your first WorldCon, what are your impressions? It's wild. It's one of those things where if you've never been to one before, it's really hard to describe. One of the things I did before I came here is I called up friends who had been to WorldCons and other conventions, and I was like, what can I expect? when am i What am I getting myself into? And they had a whole bunch of different perspectives, but basically what they had told me is just go You'll see it when you get there. You'll understand it once you've arrived through the door. And then, of course, now I have to explain it. My wife is back home in Ohio, and so I talked to her last night, and she's like, what is it like? And I was like, it's like the convention of misfit toys. It's all these people who are you know very much in love with science fiction, very much you know of their own culture and their own little group, and it's it's
00:03:46
Speaker
It's almost anthropological in the sense that you can get here and there's almost no contact with you know the rest of the world. It's its own self-contained thing. And in some ways, if if you're observing it from the outside, it can be very, very intimidating. Do you feel a part of it or do you feel a loop from it? It's really interesting. it's I feel because this is ah is is the first time, and also because I'm a writer, one of the first things one of the things you do in your writers, you want to look around and you want to take notes about your you know what you're seeing, what you're
Science Fiction Community and Culture
00:04:20
Speaker
observing. So part of me is sitting there going, kind of write this down, I've got to take these notes because this is so wacky.
00:04:26
Speaker
ah But at the same time, i mean these people are obviously very much connected to ah their field. very ah The writers are very connected to the fans. The fans are very much connected to the writers. There's a back and forth which is very appealing for someone who is ah trying to sell books, who is trying to you know explore that community. So um i feel I do feel a little bit of part of it right apart from it right now, but it's something that I think is definitely worth getting to know a little bit better. Do you think that the response that you had might explain in part the image problem that speculative fiction has?
00:05:03
Speaker
Well, look, I mean, the thing about it is, you know, science fiction has its history of, you know, there is ah the science fiction core group, and and and let's face it, everybody says, you know, they're geeks, they're freaks, you know, they're just this group of people who can't connect with everybody else. But look at it another way. Back home where I am in ah and Ohio, there's a huge culture for um people who collect automobiles. you know Of all kinds, there's Camaro fans, there's ah people who collect Mustangs. This is no more or less weird than that. I mean, the difference is that you're talking about science fiction rather than talking about what's under the hood of a Camaro.
00:05:43
Speaker
and So I don't think that it's, I mean i obviously the the issue is that a lot of people who read science fiction do tend to be ah introverted, introspective, not necessarily necessarily conventionally socially apt. But at the same time, um these people do build their ah do build their own social structure here. These people are extremely social. If you go and you go to like the folk rooms where they're singing and playing music or you go to these parties where which are huge and people moving back and forth,
00:06:14
Speaker
These are people who are connecting with other people. It's in a different way, but it's no less real and it's no less a way that people connect. How can they then be considered socially inept? i wonder in that's That's a very good question. the What happens is people are comfortable in the groups of people that they know and and the rituals that they are used to used to doing. Science fiction people are comfortable with science fiction people because they all know the ground rules. you know They know how to interrelate with each other. They know their inside jokes. they They get the terminology. it would If you were to throw someone, if you were to throw in the high school jock into this ah into this milu, he would be the anti-social one because he has no clue what's going on and everybody would be looking at him going, you know, come on guy, follow the rules. So I think it's a matter of
00:07:08
Speaker
What you have here is a a subculture as opposed to the larger culture, um and and maybe we they're seen as anti-social due because of the subculture, but in fact, as as we say, you know it's very social within its own set of rules. uh...
Unconventional Publishing Journey of 'Old Man's War'
00:07:28
Speaker
let's talk a little bit about uh... you breaking in as a writer how did that come about well it's actually a very interesting story i uh... wrote a novel uh... called old man's war and rather than doing the conventional thing of shipping it off to agents and publishers i decided what i was going to do is heck with it i'm just gonna put it up on my website and show it to people so uh... in december two thousand two i serialized a chapter a day
00:07:53
Speaker
put it up there and let people read it. and And at the end of it, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is the editor at Tor, sent me an email. He's like, I've read it. It's good. We want to buy it. And I'm like, well, OK. i want to sell it to you so we've we're pretty sure that that's the first time uh... that someone has serialized a novel which was then purchased there've been other people prior to that uh... who had put up sample chapters or had put up uh... uh... and then were and then had sold it but this is the first time that the entire novel had been placed on the web for people to read for free uh... and then was subsequently purchased by a major science fiction publisher how many hits were you getting
00:08:35
Speaker
um Each day there were about three or four thousand. It was it was my site, which is called Skalzi.com, um typically gets several thousand hits a day because i do ah I do a daily blog there and do some other things. So I was basically playing to my audience and then other people who read science fiction came to see it as well. So I did get a little bump for for doing that. It wasn't huge, but it ah it's a matter of I guess it it found the right audience and in terms of at least for one person. How did your site with your blog get so many hits when my site only gets no hits? Oh, well I'm sure your site's very nice too. ah Partly because I've been doing it for so long. I've had Skalzi.com for ah for several years, since 1998, and I've been writing daily on it since then. I've also spent some time and before that working for America Online where I had done stuff. so i had had
00:09:29
Speaker
some reputation ah and then matter it's just a matter of accretion if you do something long enough enough people will find you um and it's very interesting in terms of terms of blogs I mean everybody there's the same that in in the blog world everybody is famous to 15 people and it's and it's very much the same sort of thing it's like my People, if you want to call it that, the 2,000 or 3,000 people who visit a day um are very much interested in what's going on in my life. And and so it's a weird sort of quasi-fame. And yet, you know in the real world, I'm just this guy. So it's it's it's interesting. I think that's the euphemism one would like to use for that.
00:10:08
Speaker
What is your writing about? ah Your fiction. My fiction. Well, this this particular one is best described as a Heinlein juvenile with old people in it. The basic story is that a colonial army with science fiction a recruits soldiers from senior citizens on earth and says, here's the deal, you get a new body that's enhanced um And in exchange, you give us 10 years of military service. The catch is, during those 10 years of military service, there's about an 80% chance you're going to die. And so the question is, is do you continue to live on Earth for maybe you know another 20 or 30 years, but as an old person?
00:10:52
Speaker
or do you take a chance get this fresh new young body ah that's super enhanced and possibly die in
Scalzi's Diverse Writing Career
00:10:59
Speaker
your first battle? And it's a really interesting conundrum and then of course then there's the questions of people leaving Earth where they've been for 75 years to this entirely alien ah existence where, you know, completely ruthless, completely without any friends and how do you how do you start over? How do you start again? How do you think your future will unfold as a writer? we'll We'll have to see. One of the things that's very nice is that in addition to writing science fiction, I do a number of other things. I write non-fiction. I had an astronomy book come out in May called The Rough Guide to the Universe, and in in October I have a book that's coming out called The Book of the Dumb, which is essays on stupidity.
00:11:40
Speaker
um So I do that. im I do DVD reviews and other writing for magazines, and I do a lot of corporate work. I have many different things that I can do in terms of writing, so the way that I look at it is right now I'm getting to write science fiction, which is fun and is a blast. ah If it works out, then great, I get to continue to do that. If not, then I get to do it for some time, and then there are other things that I can do as well. i'm I'm very optimistic about my ability to find work as a writer, even if I don't necessarily continue to be a science fiction writer. Thank you for this. You're very welcome. Thank you.
00:12:16
Speaker
So there you have it. John Sculzey back in his early thirties, I think, talking about what it's like to be at his first, um, science fiction convention. What did you think, Mark? He's pretty much the same. Actually, when you think of like, when you listen to him, it's like, yeah, he's changed a little bit, but not much. Like his observations are quite funny and thoughtful and yeah. Yeah, I remember liking him a lot. and It does not come across in the interview.
00:12:47
Speaker
You are very, very, very professional with that interview. Do you mean in the sense that um like two professionals? that were using No, no, no, no. I'm not saying it sounds like you don't like him. It's just like, I don't think you can tell from your responses, which is actually what you should be doing as an interviewer in that situation. You're like just trying to get the information out of them. So I think actually from a journalistic perspective, what you did was perfect in that interview. Good. Good. Yeah. But so that you liked him is kind of cool. It makes it even better. Cause like, wow, he was really, you're a cool, you weren't like fanboying all over him. It was good. Well, I mean, yeah, there was no real case to, to fanboy at that time because oh really he was, cause there was, why we why would you say that? Well, were you not reading his blog at that time?
00:13:38
Speaker
No, I had no idea who this guy was. I was. I actually read his first novel, which I think he also published on his blog called Agent to the Stars. I think that's his. Wait a minute, you knew of John Scalzi before he became like a science fiction writer? Yeah, so I think I read Agent to the Stars before I read Old Man's War, which is a great book. And if anyone listening likes science fiction, they should absolutely read that book because it's, you
Blogging and Early Interactions with Authors
00:14:10
Speaker
know, it's got, it's on like top 100 lists and deservedly so. It's a great book. Well, see, I had no idea of his work.
00:14:18
Speaker
I didn't know about Agent of the Stars. I didn't know about his his blog. He was a completely unknown quantity to me. And i I really thought that I would you know interview him and then and take clips of his and then never hear from him again. And then he, of course, you know, turned into John Scalzi, a super successful science fiction writer. Yeah. i I just found that whole arc of being on the internet the way he was quite interesting because I mean, I started my blog
00:14:49
Speaker
Which was quite popular for a while ah in 2005, and that was relatively early, but not nearly as early as he was doing it. He was doing it in the late 90s. yeah I mean, he was doing it because he could do it. There was no blogging. I mean, I could have done it too if I'd been smart enough. But yeah, there was no blogging software back then. So he was doing it all with HTML. right And I just found that fascinating that he managed to get a big audience that way yeah and then sold a book based off of the blog.
00:15:22
Speaker
Because Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the editor-at-tour, must have been you know reading his blog. I mean, I was reading it, so like obviously other people were reading it. yeah And he had a readership of yeah went you know a few thousand people back in those days. It was a really interesting path to breaking into the field. And not a path you could follow now. No, I don't even i don't even know what path you could follow now. You couldn't do the Hugh Howie thing, which was I also missed by a couple of years. Hugh Howie podcast his novel on a platform called PodioBooks.com, I think it was. Right. And that's how he got wool out there, and that's how that became a book.
00:16:03
Speaker
Well, and Terry Fallis, who we had in this sub podcast. Yeah, he did the same thing. He did a podcast. Yeah. Well, he also hustled though. He was also selling paperbacks out of the trunk of his car. So yeah yeah he was working real hard. yeah I remember actually getting a Facebook request from ah Terry Fallis and I'm like, who is this guy? And it was obvious that he was, you know, he's promoting something and I'm like, ah, I guess I'll just accept. I sat on a panel with him in 2005, just after ENC had published the Amadeus Net, and he'd get to you know ah find a publisher for his book. And for him, that was cool that I'd had this little publisher publish my book. I'm like, I don't know. It's just what you're doing looks pretty good. The fact you got a podcast. Yeah. Well, because I had said to Sculzy that you know he was one of a select group of people that I met before.
00:16:56
Speaker
they became famous, and the other was Robert J. Sawyer. But Terry Fallis actually is in that group as well, because the Facebook requests, and also he'd emailed me at CBC Radio asking me how to adopt his um his book into a radio play. And I'd gave him like a polite response that, you know, thinking I'd never hear from him again as well. So, you know, there's hope for us yet, Mark, that we'll... Ah, i'm I'm still having fun. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm having fun.
Convention Experiences and Imposter Syndrome
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah. Now, did any other observations about that? Well, actually, I was falling back into my experience of TorCon, which was just otherworldly and surreal and just like I kind of really understood what he was talking about, which is like, you don't know what this is until you go to one of these things.
00:17:45
Speaker
right You have no idea. The weird thing is I think, I think he was a fan. Like he was, he won a Hugo award for his fan writing later after this. yeah you there But he was already obviously a fan and I was a fan too. I've always loved science fiction, but I'd i'd never been part of like that, that world. So I think for me, it was pretty. mind blowing, just like the experience of having all of these people who are just as into this stuff as I was.
00:18:16
Speaker
It was really weird. And then also my first panel experience, which is, I got to mention it cause it was just, I talked to my students every year about imposter syndrome, but I've actually had legit imposter syndrome. My first panel and I might be map not again, hallucinating this, not remembering it exactly right, but I met David Bren and Robert Silverberg on the same day. And I'm pretty sure it was the same panel. And we were talking about Kurt Vonnegut. How I got in this panel, I have no real idea. I think the only reason I was probably there is because I had a few short stories published and I was a Canadian author. And I think there's probably some sort of can con content.
00:18:58
Speaker
like ah so Okay, so it was you on the panel and Robert Silverberg and and i would bret I remember sitting between them and feeling really awkward about that as well because they were obviously pretty good friends already. And yeah, we were supposed to talk about Kurt Vonnegut. I have no idea what I said. I don't even know what the questions were about. The whole, the whole experience is a complete blur to me. Did they accept you? Did they? They did. And actually that's the thing. They were both like Robert Silverberg was a real gentleman. He was actually very helpful to me during the thing. And then afterwards I had a nice chat with David Brand and he said, I said, I don't know why I was there. He said, you have every right to be there.
00:19:42
Speaker
You're a writer. You want to obviously love Kurt Vonnegut. You had an as much knowledge about him as anybody has. And so why wouldn't you be there?
Insights from Larry Niven and Robert Silverberg
00:19:52
Speaker
Which was for me, validating and kind of a nice, you know, salve to my feeling of being like, why am I here? But there was a moment, it's like, I think I might have a pet panic attack. No, I'll be fine. No, I'll be fine. No, you're going to have a panic. No, no, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. And I was fine. And I could talk and it was fine. But there was a lot of big names at that. There was. Yeah. Larry Niven was there. i Yeah, he was. man yeah you know And you know what? As a little bonus, I'm going to play the clip. Oh, of Larry Niven. You talked to him too? I recorded Larry Niven. And here, listen to this. Okay. So we're here with Larry Niven.
00:20:35
Speaker
How are you? I'm fine, thanks. I wonder if you could just tell me who you are and what it is that you do. um a I'm Larry Niven. I write books. I write almost anything I desire to and can almost always sell it. I've written over 50 novels and a number of short stories short story collections that is hard to count. What do fans mean to you? I i like the ego stroking. and I have always thought of writing as a collaborative effort. and In my head there is an imaginary science fiction reader whom I'm talking to. And he thinks a lot like I do and has pretty much the same questions. He just needs things explained to him a lot.
00:21:20
Speaker
Do you go out of your way to meet fans? to Yes. I live in Chatsworth, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, and I'm here in Toronto. I go a long way to meet people who read my work. So you've been to a lot of Worldcons then? Yes. I've been to most of the Worldcons since 1964.
00:21:43
Speaker
Do you come to Worldcons specifically to meet fans, or do you have so other things that you try to get out of Worldcons? The Science Fiction Convention is something like heaven to me. ah Heaven would be a lot less confused, I think, and you'd find your way around more easily. But you've got the books. You've got the people the people who read the stuff you love, who would like to talk to you about it. This is what I was looking for when I was a kid. What does science fiction mean to you? What does science fiction mean to me? I don't know, a form of entertainment.
00:22:19
Speaker
a form of instruction, a source for learning more about the universe. There's a lot of teaching in so in good science fiction. What would you be doing if you weren't writing science fiction? Beats the heck out of me. I thought once I would be a mathematician but i I'd turn out not to have enough of the knack. Do fans ever make you uncomfortable? There are certainly, you can find any
00:22:51
Speaker
A few. Any particularly memorable encounters or? Sure, but I'd be a borer if I talked about them. No, I don't know about that, but I won't press you. Okay, great. I really appreciate that. That was, yeah, that's amazing. The other story I have about Silverberg, Robert Silverberg, was I was not on this panel, thank God, because it was in a really big room. There's probably a couple hundred people there. And he was talking about, he went on this riff about how simple it was to describe stories. And people were just shouting out names of stories. And Silverberg was giving you the one sentence pitch for what that story was. And they were perfect. It's almost like I was watching it going, how is he doing that?
00:23:46
Speaker
And he's obviously done this before. Are these plants? It's like, no, they don't seem to be plants. They just seem to be shouting out their favorite stories, like, you know, yeah Odysseus, he would, you know, describe Odysseus, like, oh, well, it's about a, it's about a man coming back to his wife and he has several encounters that are really unpleasant, but he really wants to get home. And that's the story. So he's a just a super smart, super nice guy. Yeah. Elegant guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember seeing him there, but I didn't get to, uh, to talk to him. Yeah. So that was, that was TorCon. That was.
00:24:23
Speaker
Well, and then fast forward, what, how many years? And then we met up again, the next time I saw you was in Montreal. Montreal. That anticipation. Yeah. Yeah. And what year was that? Anticipation, Montreal, 2009, where I met, I was there with ah my friend, Fergus Heywood, and we had breakfast on the the first morning and sitting at the next table was you and your brother, Mike. Oh yeah. The four of us had a great time at that con,
Memorable Conventions and Conclusion
00:24:52
Speaker
I'd say. Yeah. And I think we met up just about every night during the con to like, yeah. You also asked me to read for something too. I remember that. Well, I had done an adaptation of, uh, the cold equations for CBC radio. And so we did a, uh, a presentation, a standup read presentation of the cold equations at anticipation. And it was, uh, it was you, me, Hayden Trenholm, Mary Robinette Cowell,
00:25:22
Speaker
And others that I don't even remember, unfortunately, called respect to that but yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. At least I think it was fun. I i mean, I, I think I was very stressed about it before I did it, but I i think I had fun doing it. Well, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've always had fun at these conventions and, uh, and I need to go to more. Yeah, I'm going to probably go to one in, uh, November, I think I'll probably go to one. ah which one but It's called can con. I'm sure you know, but oh yeah one a I've been to that one several times. So I always super enjoyed that. I'm actually looking forward to it a lot. I actually haven't gotten to one since I think anticipation. So I'm yeah well overdue. Yes. Well, we need to be at another one together at some point. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.
00:26:14
Speaker
All right. Any, any final thoughts about, uh, conventions, uh, John Scalzi, uh, Robert Silverberg, or, and just something completely not related to anything that we're talking about. No, I do, but no. Okay, all right. This is the the shortest episode yet of Recreative, but we'll be back next week with a full-fledged episode writer, publisher, Catherine Fitzsimmons. Another terrific conversation on Recreative. Thanks, folks.
00:27:11
Speaker
Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web designed by Mark Rainer.
00:27:21
Speaker
Show notes and all episodes are available at recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. Drop us a line at joe mohoney at donovanstreetpress.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.