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Joe and Mark are joined by the super successful and super-fun science fiction writer, John Scalzi.
It's an entertaining conversation about science fiction, the egotistical nature of writing, and John's hobby, which is music.
In addition to having a terrible case of G.A.S. (guitar acquisition syndrome), John loves creating "weird ambient electronic music."
Mark and Joe learn all about John's amazing career in science fiction, his deadline-driven process, and the economics of that trade. But the conversation doesn't end there, as the three examine the value of creating art, just for the joy of it.
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.
Drop us a line at [email protected] to tell us what you think of this episode... or any other.
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Transcript
Introductions and Pleasantries
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Joe, how are you? Very well. How are you today? Things are going well. What song do you like your go to song to pump you up? Like, so if you're going to karate and you need to like, you know, get all charged up, do you got a song that you'd like to listen to? Oh, gee, or so many songs. My, you know, my Spotify playlist is over a thousand songs now and they're like pretty much all my favorite. So, but you know what I've learned when you ask these questions that the response needs to be like the first thing that comes to mind mind in your head. Yeah. Yeah. So the first time that popped into mind right now is John K. Sampson's, uh, vampire Alberta. I just, I love that song. Do you know that song? No, I don't know that song. Oh, yeah you need to look that up. It's a great song. Um, yeah, he's a, he's a Canadian musician yeah and it's satirizing Alberta and the oil fields and everything, but it's also an homage to a,
00:01:04
Speaker
another Neil Young song. So it's got that Canadian pedigree and it's not like a pump you up song, but it's a, it's just a great song that I love to listen to every time I, it comes on my playlist. It immediately made me think of werewolves in London. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's in that same hair continuum. Fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, like, yeah, we're like big speculative fiction guys. So of course vampires, werewolves. Yeah. So what about you? Well, mine's really cliche. Uh, actually, especially after CSI Miami co-opted it, but, uh, the who won't get fooled again. There's just something about the star of that song that just gets me going. Yeah. Absolutely.
John Scalzi's Personal Theme Song
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess this is an appropriate question for our guests today. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. John Scalzi. Welcome to the podcast. Recreative. Thank you. It's good to be here. Great to have you. So yeah, do you have a song that, you know, pumped you? This isn't our big question, which we're going to hit you with later. Oh, no, no, you're softening me up for the big journalism. I've read a couple of jabs before we hit you with the Roundhouse. Actually, I was thinking of of something. it's It's that whole thing of like, if you have a personal theme, what would your personal theme be? And for me, there is a semi obscure Danny Elfman song
00:02:21
Speaker
called Gratitude, which is off of his solo album entitled Solo, which wasn't really a solo album. It had all the members of Oingo Boingo on it, but for contractual reasons, it had to be labeled as a solo album. So any event, Gratitude is just a great song because one, it's got that Danny Elfman voice, ah which you know the younger generation will know as Jack Skellington and of course the Oingo Boingo tunes, but it's also talking about ah ah about the idea of you know life's been so good to me has it been good for you has it been everything that you've expected it to be and just the way that it goes across is it just it just when I was younger it just really hit me as being both ah cynical and hopeful at the same time and
00:03:11
Speaker
the beat of it and the sound of it makes it really good, you know, ah like wrestling, villain, inter music, how compet is yeah floating all around you and stuff like that. And I don't see myself as as a wrestling heel. I want to be clear, but certainly that that that kind of energy is something that I can appreciate. And so for a good 30 years now, I would have to say that that's always been kind of tucked into my pocket of songs that I would include on my you know you know on my on my personal tender playlist. like If you ever get to know me in five songs, this is definitely one of them. Interesting. was yeah That's from my workout. like It's a good one to start with. is like
00:03:59
Speaker
I tend to listen to my playlist is for like driving and cooking. Yeah. Not at the same time. Not yet. Not yet. So,
First WorldCon Experiences
00:04:10
Speaker
okay. So it's been a long time since, uh, since you and I first spoke. What year was that? Was that like 2003? It was 2003. Yes. Let's go back to 2003 and it is literally my first world con. And, uh, and it is in Toronto. ah Canada. I know you've heard of Canada. and And it was actually also I think like only my first or second time ah in Toronto. It was enough that like I went to the airport and I got to the ticket counter and like, I'm going to Canada. And they're like, that's great. Do you have your passport? And I'm like, what?
00:04:52
Speaker
because I entirely forgot because I'm a big, dumb American. Canada is an entirely different country. And I but didn't get on the plane. I had to drive home. No way. No, I had to drive home and I had to get my birth certificate because I did not have a passport. But in 2003, you could still show your birth certificate and get across the border. ah And I literally drove like as fast as I possibly could from Ohio, where I live, to Toronto where the Worldcon was. I made it 15 minutes before my very first ever panel. I sit down on the panel. I'm like, ah I can't believe I've made it. Oh my God. I had to just drive all the way here. This is my very first panel. I just almost missed it. And they're like, oh, it's your first panel. Great. You're the moderator.
00:05:43
Speaker
so So we met actually a couple days after that. I believe you were walking around with ah with a microphone and you were at the floor party. and And I was just wandering around aimlessly and you're like, this aimless looking fellow seems like he might be someone interesting to talk to. And I have no idea what I said to you at the time. I'm sure that there are tapes of it. yeah um But I probably did acknowledge that it was my very first WorldCon and in fact very first science fiction convention ever. So you got me really as early as you possibly could have in my entire science fiction career. That's something we share. That was my first WorldCon too. wait You know what? And I i met you there too, Mark. Yeah, I met you there too. That's wild. It's a it's a big WorldCon reunion. It is. Awesome. Yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
So, okay, so my 20 words or less ah version of that story is it was much easier for me because I worked across the street at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. So, yeah, it wasn't as hard. I didn't need any passports or anything like that. And it was actually Robert J. Sawyer who pointed me in your direction. Oh, really? is Yeah, because I was doing a documentary for CBC Radio's The Current at the time, which is their big morning show. And it was on science fiction and on the convention, and I needed people to talk to. And he's like, you should talk to this guy because I think he's he's an up and comer. And I remember i remember thinking, oh, I'll happily talk to him because he doesn't intimidate me. He's not like a huge name or anything like that. He's like me, you know? So I felt like I was talking to, you know, just like, uh, an ordinary bloke, just like myself. And we had a fantastic conversation in this. We went into the sounds worse than it, than it is. We went into a bedroom, closed the door and it was a big party raging outside. And then we had this great conversation about your perceptions of, uh, being at your first world con. Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
and the fact And you told me the story i about your first book coming out and how that had come about, how you'd serialized it on your blog. And yeah, and you made the final cut. There was definitely some quotes to you in the final documentary. No, I'm glad it wasn't a complete waste of your time. No, I remember it too because i it's always fun for me because I was a former journalist, right? Okay. um So I have been in your position before where you're like, I have to find someone to talk to. Hopefully they have an interesting angle. Hopefully there are going to be, there's actually going to be a quote in here that I can use, right? So, you know, and there I was your ally in the sense of I knew what you were doing. I knew i knew kind of what you wanted.
00:08:31
Speaker
in terms of ah of quotes and I didn't want to disappoint you. I mean, in in in my sense, I was like, you know if it makes it in, that's great. If it's not, it's Canada. you know I'm not gonna hear it anyway. um Although you did finally send it to me like 10 years later or something like that. Well, yeah, because the the flip side of that is that you're also in this select club of people that I have met who then later went on to great success. And and Robert J. Serra is one of them because I
Career Growth and Humility
00:09:01
Speaker
worked with him on a show called Ideas at CBC Radio. And I remember he said to me,
00:09:06
Speaker
He said, yeah, I'm going to be like a science fiction writer. And I'm like, good luck, pal. I'm the one who's going to be the science fiction writer. And then I watched an amazement as he went on to become Robert J Sawyer. Yeah. And then I interviewed you and I'm and you're like, yeah, I'm going to be a science fiction writer. And I'm like, yeah, right. I'm the one that's going to be the science fiction writer. And then I watched an amazement as you did basically the same thing as Sawyer. Yeah. And yeah. But then both of you are so incredibly gracious that you still talk to me. And yeah, I sent you the interview a decade later and you posted it on your blog and yeah, yeah so very cool. I mean, the thing about it is is that we've, ah you know, it's the thing for me that there's no point in being
00:09:52
Speaker
um a jerk, right? It's like, you know, it's not like so I've gotten too big for talking to X, Y, and Z. The moment you you do that, and you've really kind of started huffing your own fumes, and that's never never a good thing. And also, I don't have any illusions about who I am as a person. You know, it's sort of like, you know, yes, I have gotten very I've been very fortunate in in my career, and all those sorts of things. and i And I get to live the enviable science fiction writer life. But I also still have to take out the trash.
00:10:29
Speaker
I still look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. you know i still ah you know oh no You're still very dauper. All these sorts of things. I think my saving grace, because I do have a huge ego. I do have a huge you know like sense of well-being, but I also have a reasonably good sense of myself and I don't ah put myself up on a pedestal. And also it's very helpful that I have a a spouse, my wife, Christine, that literally every time she starts thinking I'm i'm getting a little too big for my britches, she will reach over, she will pull on my earlobe and make a hissing sound like the air out of my head.
00:11:12
Speaker
Memento Mori, Memento Mori. Yeah, that is exactly right. My yeah you know my wife is like, yes, but i I married you while you were still some schmo, so get it together. Wow. And then on the other hand, then you've got Mark here, who since he's we've started this podcast has just become insufferable. so What's your book? Mark, you're the worst. I've only known you for what, 12 minutes and 12 seconds, but honestly, what is it? No, Mark is amazing, which is why he's called us this. I think all writers have an ego, frankly, even the ones who aren't as successful as you, to write something down and then think, yeah, people should read this. No, no, no, no. I mean, I think that's absolutely correct. I think that's absolutely correct. I've always been
00:11:58
Speaker
a bit of an exhibitionist, and you know it's like, I've written something, it's funny, here, here you go, here it is, read it. And I realized that I don't write if I don't have an audience, because people always gift me like journals, because you're a writer, you would love to have a journal. And and and I always say thank you, and I really appreciate the thought of it. I never write in them, because yeah I would be the only one who reads them. And I would, I'm thinking, because I'm in my own brain. But I have the blog, whatever, which has been up for twenty almost 26 years now. and ah you know And I write on that nearly every day because there's an audience for it. I am very, very much an audience-driven person. And ah and that
00:12:46
Speaker
again relates directly to my ego. The idea that not only do i am I going to write something, but that it actually deserves to have an audience, which is hugely arrogant and has has been ever since I was 14 years old, which is when I really started you know the writing thing. Okay. This is a perfect opportunity to, we always do this thing on this podcast where we know who you are. And, uh, and obviously on our, uh, on our ah blog, we will have a big, you know, write up about who you are. yeah Can you tell us in your mind who you are and what you've done?
00:13:22
Speaker
frame your own reality. This almost sounds like the opening to, you know the and now I segue into my Disney, who am I song, right? can do it in song if you like. if you know Oh, really? He reaches over for his cute little guitar and yeah and no, I'm not gonna do that. Yeah, um ah too bad. ah He had picked up an electric guitar there and was about to play it. yeah yeah It's and it's a really cute one because it's a it's actually it's called a luke guitar. It's got three strings. It's designed for kids to learn how to play. But I got it just because I think it's cute. And it's fun. And I have a ridiculous guitar collection for someone who is a terrible guitarist. I have like, like 10 or 15 guitars at this point, and including
Music Projects During COVID
00:14:05
Speaker
one that has you have gas. Oh, my God.
00:14:08
Speaker
gas. Oh, yes, I definitely have gas gear a acquisition syndrome. It is it is a thing there are literally I have I have a a regular acoustic sonic here. I've got the lube guitar. I've got a jazz master ukulele right there. And oh, here's the here's one and I Nobody who is listening to this will see it, but you guys will. This is my roots in pride and joy. This is a Eastwood octave guitar, which means that it is a it is a guitar, but it is starts at an octave to a regular guitar. Wow. It's amazing.
00:14:46
Speaker
and Now, what i what I love about this is that listeners to this podcast who don't actually know that you're a science fiction writer are now thinking, who's this musician that they're talking to? it's Yeah, and it's really funny because now I do actually have, because i my COVID project, and and I will preface this by saying I will get around to who I am. Okay. But my COVID project, because I was trapped in the house just like everybody else, some people did sourdough, some people learned how to knit, I was like, I am finally going to put together my music room and start recording and doing music. And so that was my COVID project. So I bought a whole bunch of ah musical instruments. I had some to begin with, but I bought more.
00:15:28
Speaker
I started recording music and I started putting it out on Spotify. So there are very, very few people who know me better as a musician than as a writer. And I can guarantee you all of those guys are 50-something electronic music nerds who are like, oh, I listened to your ambient music. It's awesome. and And I love each and every one of them, bless them for the end of their days. Because that's what I do. I do weird electronic ambient music because ah that's who I am. Anyway, hi, I'm John Scalzi. And when I'm not doing weird ah ambient electronic music, I write science fiction books. My most well-known ah science fiction book, which was the one that had not yet come out when you and I first talked, Joe, um ah is called Old Man's War.
00:16:21
Speaker
It will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. Great book. It is a great great book. And then ah other notable ones include ah Red Shirts, which won me the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Very recently, the most recent book was Starter Villain, which was nominated for the Locust Award and is currently nominated for the Hugo Award. And then and I'll have a new book coming out next year, which is called When the Moon Hits Your Eye, which was about what happens when the moon literally turns into cheese. So that's who I am.
Adapting Books to Films
00:16:59
Speaker
And then I also, in addition to and in addition to that, I also do some TV work, including writing episodes of Love, Death and Robots, which is Netflix animated anthology series. Like I said, I play music sometimes. I do photography and
00:17:16
Speaker
You know, and I think that's it. That's all I do. that's Can I ask which ones did you do for Love, Death and Robots? Because I i love that show. Yeah, I did the two the two ones that were the three robots. Yes, love those. Yeah, yeah yeah there's there's three robots. And then in season three, there was three robots exit strategies. um There was when the yogurt took over, there was alternate histories in which I got to murder Hitler over and over again. So that's fun. and then automated customer service, ah which was, you know, robots gone wrong as they so often do. Yeah, that's such a great series. I haven't watched the whole thing yet. I'm like a season and a half in those robots are great.
00:17:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah, you know, it's great fun. And I've had a ton of fun working with it. ah the The people who are involved with it, including Tim Miller, who is you know the person that I worked with most closely, have been just terrific to work with. um Everybody has Hollywood horror stories, if you've ever done anything with Hollywood. But I'm happy to say, you know, working with Tim and Jennifer U. Nelson, who is the supervising director for seasons two and three, And you know Blur Studios in general has just been wonderful. They're just lovely people. They always keep you in the loop. um They're always soliciting feedback and asking you what you be think about things. Sometimes they don't take your suggestions, but that's the that's just the way things work. And they know what they're doing as well as any anybody else. But the fact that they ask it all is great. And I can say that I've been just delighted with that everything that's happened with that series so far.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, they're going to have season four coming out at some point and that will be great as well. Yeah, a very different experience than what I understand. David Brinhead with his movie Postman, which is one of my favorite books and so disappointed in the movie. You know, the thing about it is that that and this is something that so I was a film critic and I did entertainment journalism for a number of years before I ah long before I became a novelist. And one of the things I always tell people is you have to understand that when you option your book, they almost never say, this book is a treasure and we don't want to change anything. What they are really saying is,
00:19:31
Speaker
We think we can make money with some element of this book, and we will do whatever it takes to make that movie successful, even it means completely changing almost everything else. And that's not necessarily a horrible thing. I mean, the the ah confluence of things that are in When Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner are kind of slim. yeah So sometimes that sort of radical adaptation is not a bad thing. But you have to be aware that they are not buying the book per se. They are buying the idea of the book as they see it and then they will just, you know, go to town. And if you're not ready for that, that can be a problem. And if you're not
00:20:17
Speaker
wanting to do it, then don't take their money. Just literally don't don't do it. you You can say no. yeah and And honestly, for many writers, um the only power that you have in adaptation is the ability to say no. Because once you say yes, once you're like, here's my baby, treat my baby well, and they're like, off we go to the circus. you know so Yeah, I've done a couple of adaptations, written a couple myself. I adapted the cold equations for, uh, for radio. Yeah. And, and I could kind of see doing that how, like i I was interested in respecting the original material, but I also came to look at it. I was like, yet another draft of that material, yeah you know?
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's the whole thing is is it doesn't matter. I mean, the book is the book. The book is the book of the book. And once it's been published, it's not going to check. Right. Yeah. um Everything else literally is an adaptation because it's going into a different medium. It's going to address a different audience. It has different motivations. Like it's easy for me to write weird stuff because it's just me and the economics of books are enough that if You know, bluntly, if 20,000 people buy the book, then we zero out and everything's fine. But if someone is going to spend $200 million to take a book, whether it's mine or anybody else's, and then put it out into ah and to movie theaters, it has to make that money back. That's $200 million dollars for production, plus another $100 million dollars
00:21:49
Speaker
for ah you know marketing and advertising. So you start off $300 million dollars in the hole. You have to basically earn twice that to get to the point where you're in the black because you have to share your money with the exhibitors and so on and so forth. um So yeah, anytime someone's like, I'm going to do a big bluster with that, yeah, they have to make more than half a billion dollars. before they even come close to, you know, ah to zeroing out. and you knowla And you just have to be you have to be aware that that is a a completely different thing. Whereas I or another writer, it's like when I started off, my old man's worst advance was $6,500.
00:22:29
Speaker
I didn't have to sell that many books in order to get into the black. It's a very different economic scale. Because you said this, you know, once the book is done, the book is done. And what you're talking about really even happens at the book level, right? Because once it gets to a reader, the reader does the same thing that a producer is going to be doing, they're they're going to be envisioning things their own way. And yeah, it's it it it leaves us and it's no longer ours. And that's part of what happens as a writer, you have to accept that. Yeah, well, no, it's very much the the thing is is the the book is a conversation, right? Which is I've presented you what I believe the book is and the reader is going to read it and they are going to do the visuals in their head. There's going to be like some characters who they like more than other characters. And why didn't you make this character more prominent?
00:23:16
Speaker
or you know And this is what this is what fan fiction is all about, right? Which is, it's like, you did a great story, but now I want more and you are too busy, like, you know, paying your bills or something like that to give me what I want immediately. So now I'm going to write more ah in your universe for you. And I think it's great. I mean, people ask me every once in a while, you know, it's like, you know, they're playing with your characters. I'm like, yeah, they love my stuff so much that they can't wait on me to keep you know playing with it. I can go ahead and buy that Mercedes because I know that they will be there for the the next book. I do have to tell people when they're like, I've written fanfic. I'm like, that's great. Never show it to me. right Because you know yeah for legal reasons and also because sometimes they do things with my characters that I.
00:24:06
Speaker
That is an interesting interpretation and I don't want to know. But as far as it goes, the fact that people fan write is kind of the greatest compliment you can get as a writer. That is just a signal that they really want more of what you are providing. Yeah, it's a wonderful compliment. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. now Speaking of the economics, and I'll just touch on this ah ah briefly because it is kind of a cool thing you know that that happened to
Significant Book Deal with Tor
00:24:35
Speaker
you. The whole business with Tor and that that massive advance you got, how much was it? Can I ask him? so ah In I signed a 13-book contract with Tor.
00:24:49
Speaker
And it was for $3.4 million dollars um for for all 13 books. It was very, very interesting when that happened. One, because, you know, I went into Tor. I just finished a book ah series with them. I finished the the last book in the Old Man's War series until next year where I'm going to do book seven. But I just finished it and I was out of contract and I was talking to my agent. and I was like, I really hate going in and negotiating every single time. Let's go and say, you know, give them like 13 ideas. Right. And I wrote them out and I had them all presented. I said, let's give them 13 ideas and they'll take five. Right. Or seven or something like that. But just so we can say, you know, just give us some stuff so we don't have to think about it for a while. um And we go in and we make the presentation to tour and it's like here are the 13 ideas. And so pick the ones you want. And they said, thank you. We will take them all. and I was like, oh,
00:25:45
Speaker
Well, okay. And then we had the negotiation for how much that would cost them. And it went back and forth. And we finally settled on the 3.4 million as the base rate. And I remember there was going to be an article about it in the and the New York Times. And I mentioned to k Chrissy, again, my wife, you know, they're gonna do a story about it. They are going to have to talk about the money. And my my wife who is the one who is like, be careful about talking about the money because authors should talk about the money that they get because other authors need to know what is going on with the but the field, right? But for folks like me, after a certain point, you know, my wife said it stops becoming, it stops being information and starts sounding like bragging, yeah right?
00:26:30
Speaker
Did you pull in your ear? yeah no she was like but just so you know and i and she asked So I said, they're going to do a story about it in the New York Times about this deal because it's a big deal. It's big ba because of the length and because of the money. And she's like, do they have to mention the money? I'm like, yes, if they don't mention the money, there is no story. Again, journalism, what's the hook? so money Here's a hook. Um, so that came out and what was really fascinating was watching people respond to it. Some people are like very cool. He's, you know, he's set for a long time. Other people's like, but he could get more.
00:27:03
Speaker
if he's self-published or there are people like he's only making like $300,000 a book. That doesn't seem like that much. And and yeah ah ken by brain, you know, when when people were saying that was like, are you are you listening to yourself? The $300,000 or whatever is the base rate, you know, because then after that comes the audio book. After that comes the foreign sales. After that comes the film and TV options. Yeah. then if they ever earn out, then becomes the royalties and all this stuff. This is this is the base rate. If all I do is write one book a year, I'm in the one percent for, you know, ah the United States and Canada for all of North America. Are you sure that that's not enough? How much more do you want me to have basically? Yeah. Yeah. To me, it's a kind of a healthy sign, isn't it, for the science fiction ecosystem and for writers at a time when I think a lot of people are kind of despairing of
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think what they what they saw, and one ah ah and I think one of the things that that worked in my to my advantage was that, one, I was writing stuff that was accessible, that it wasn't just for Dining the Wall science fiction readers. that you could give it to You could give it to your dad. yeah you know or you could give it to ah someone you know who's a friend who's like, I like science fiction, but I don't know where to begin, right? my I think my role is, I'm 100% a science fiction writer, but I am a science fiction writer who is an ambassador to the mainstream.
00:28:38
Speaker
That was kind of- Yeah, you don't have the barrier to entry that a lot of them do. You're right. And that is a very real thing. And it is also something that both Tor and I understood that that's my role. This is kind of people are like, well, that's kind of a gilded cage, isn't it? Like you have to write accessible science fiction, whether you want to write something that's complicated and twisty and all that sort of stuff. And I was like, well, one, you can do that and still make it accessible. But the other thing is if I want to go completely wild and write something incredibly weird, um then that's where Subterranean Press, which is a small press that I work with here in the U.S., comes in because they will take it in a novella form. You know, so as far as it goes, I didn't feel too constrained. But also, I like writing the thing that I write. But the other thing is, is yeah, it is a it was Tor's way of saying in 2015 that we are going to be here
00:29:31
Speaker
for a long time. Not only not only with John Scalzi obviously, but for other writers as well. and and And Tor has made other similar moves with other writers. They made it with Victoria Schwab, V.E. Schwab. They've made it with TJ Klune, who is Canadian, with their books. and So as far as it goes, I was the first of these sort of significant um contracts that Tor did, but I'm by no means the last of them. And that is toward saying to the world, not only are we going to be around, but science fiction is going to be around. And we believe that it's going to be doing well for a long time. And they've been right about that. um When I started out writing science fiction in 2003, the science fiction that you would see on the bestseller lists
00:30:19
Speaker
were either the Golden Age science fiction era ah writers who had already built their audience over 20, 30 years, but mostly it was Star Wars books, right? um They were the only really reliable um science fiction and to some extent fantasy that would make it on to the New York Times bestseller list. Now, here in 2024, there's hardly a week where there's not science fiction or fantasy regularly on the adult hardcover and adult combined print and ebook lists. So Tor was right, you know, science fiction fantasy is here, not only is it here, it's no longer stuck economically, it's no longer stuck in a genre ghetto. It is absolutely mainstream. yeah yeah absolutely mainstream
00:31:08
Speaker
ah So it was ah it was a good bet for for Tor, not just in me, but in the genre as general in general. That's very cool. And it totally is mainstream. You know, Mark, I have to say, Mark, I think you would be doing better if you, yourself, if you worked on your spelling and just looking at your shirt. I love the shirt. ah sure This shirt is ah there spelled T-H-E-I-Y, apostrophe R-E. It's all in the spellings it was. My library of information science students can't stand this shirt. i've I've learned I can't lecture to them while I'm wearing this shirt because they just their brains can't take it for very long. It causes physical pain. does cause pain. I can see it, yeah. Absolutely. I apologize if it's hurting you today, John. No, no, it's fine. I mean, you can't see it out here. I'm wearing my Poe as a skeleton shirt. so
00:31:58
Speaker
Ooh, macabre. Yeah. So Mark, do you think it's time for us to pose the, you're the question guy in this podcast. Yeah. Well, so what's your party piece? What do you want to talk about today? Oh, geez. What do I want to talk about today? It's, it's so hard. It is. But there's no wrong answer. You know, the thing is, There is no wrong answer. I, you know, I will be i'll be honest. I mean, I've had a lot of fun recently doing music. I would love to talk to you guys about that simply because I have a philosophy of why I do music, even though no one listens to it and why it is actually beneficial for me to do it for my actual career, which is writing ah science fiction.
00:32:46
Speaker
so So we can talk about that. And I guess the the place that I would start is very recently I did two covers of ah music. And you can find them online. And one of them was ah Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. And and then the other was If You Leave by OMD, which I did with Paul and Storm, who are a sort of humorous musical combo. And we did that song as if If You Leave for the Kids out there is from the soundtrack of the 1980s teen film Pretty in Pink.
00:33:23
Speaker
And he's a synth pop band. So very poppy and lots of synthesizers and, you know, 80s drums and stuff like that. And the way that we did it ah was as if um it was a 50s sun recording studio session down in Memphis. Oh, wow. And I was doing the lead singing of that. And I was you know singing it like as it was Elvis. You know, if if you don't leave now, Please don't take my heart away. Just like that. and so I'm going to throw some reverb on that in a post. and yeah Yeah, well, that's exactly what we did. and um you know they're They're both out in the world and I'm really proud of both. One, because the OMD one is just ridiculous. it was It's always fun to throw out your party trick and my party trick is doing an Elvis voice. right and Then with the fake classic trees one,
00:34:16
Speaker
I've been doing music production, like I said, basically since the the pandemic. And this was the first time I've done, and I've done a number of cover songs and I put them up on the website. And this was the first time I've done a cover song that I feel like I've i've really hit it. Like the the combination of having developed the competence to do it and doing a cover that sort of Approaches that I want to be very careful about this but like approaches something that you would actually hear if you went on the radio Yes, right be like yeah, almost and it's almost radio ready sort of thing and as a person who is a creative person, right?
00:34:54
Speaker
knowing that whenever you start a new type of project, right, or new sort of creative endeavor, well for me, it's photography and music, right? That there is that long period of succitude, right? You're gonna suck, right? Especially if you're doing music, like, you know, to go with these guitars, right? If you just pick up a guitar, you are not going to bang out a guitar solo that's going to be amazing because you don't know the relationships of the strings to the music, you don't know how to record, you don't know how to... You have to spend time learning how to do that. And so with production of music, it's the same sort of thing. You've got to learn like the digital audio workstation, which is the thing that you record into and run the synthesizers and everything out through and so on and so forth.
00:35:43
Speaker
there's a learning curve. you know that and So you start noodling around and so for the first like two or three years, Just like with writing, you basically produce stuff that sucks. It's not good, but it has benefit because here is a thing that you are doing that you are learning. yeah right You are learning how to do it. And so the joy of it is actually the learning how to do it. And so with the the fake plastic trees, and that was the first time where I feel like it's like um it's not just learning. It's not like, oh, it's not bad for someone who doesn't know what he's doing. It's like, no, this is actually decent. It's not. radio had radio on the art does not have ah anything to worry about. So you didn't bring in Nigel Godrich to produce here. No, it was tempting. But I let ah I let that one go. But it was ah for, you know, basically doing it in the basement, I was pretty happy with it. And then obviously, with the um if you leave with Paul and Storm, they are actually musicians. They have been doing that for
00:36:46
Speaker
20, 25 years and to be able to ah have my voice sit in the mix of what they were doing and not sound completely and wholly out of place. you know ah It's basically the first time where I've listened to what I've been doing and been like, yeah, no, I am actually a musician now. as opposed to a ah ah you know a dude wailing away on his guitar or on his keyboard or his computer keyboard um trying to figure figure things out. And all of this is actually important for my writing because
00:37:21
Speaker
I'm gonna get to this. Writing is my job, right? I really enjoy writing. I would be doing writing even if I wasn't paid for it. Don't tell my publisher. think that you know But the simple practice yeah the simple fact of the matter is not only is it something I enjoy doing, not only is it my profession, but I have 30 years of professional experience with it. And I am adept at it. in a way that only comes through experience. But the flip side of that is because it is my job, there are expectations about how I do that job. Like I said, the contract with Tor ah exists because
00:38:02
Speaker
It is understood that regardless of what type of science fiction that I write, whatever the subject matter is, however I present it, that it is still going to be accessible, that they are still going to be able to put it out and draw in people that they haven't necessarily gotten before. I am i am meant to be at the door saying, come on in, science fiction, you thought it was just for nerds. It is, but it's not just for nerds anymore. It could be for you. You know, that sort of thing. I am i amm the huckster at the door. So that's the gig, right? so And I love it, and I accept that, and that's what I do, but it also means that I exist in a very specific space. When I'm doing music or when I'm doing photography, I'm not making any money off of it. I will i am 55 years old. I will never become a pop star at this age, right? it is it is It's too late for me. Well, I didn't think you were going to be a famous science fiction writer either. So you never know. how I mean, we I mean, I could I could pull it off, but it seems unlikely, especially since what I'm doing is fiddly electronic ambient music. The kids are not screaming for that. Right. You know, they're not saying it's like I I'm going to tour with him like like I tour with with the with the ah Taylor Swift. Right. that Never going to happen.
00:39:26
Speaker
But that's fine because you know my dozen of fans, D-O-Z-E-N, no S there, is is actually really great because if there's no expectations, there's no worry about that, then it doesn't and I don't want to say it doesn't matter what I do, but it means that I can enjoy it purely as the exercise of creativity.
Music as a Creative Outlet
00:39:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that that's really important for creative people that particularly if there's some aspect of your creativity that is your job, right? right um That you have another aspect where it is purely just what you do for yourself. If no one ever listens to anything that I put out musically, and like I said, I've i've seen my Spotify
00:40:13
Speaker
streaming numbers. ah It's as close to zero as you can get without you know actually being zero. That's fine because I have enjoyed the process. I enjoyed the music that I put out. I've enjoyed ah the the creative exercise of doing them and not having the expectation of saying, you know, now it has to be accessible to 100,000 people. And to have that sort of gives me a grounding to go back to my writing, which again, I absolutely love. I write the way that I do because that's the way I want to write, but it still comes with expectations. It still comes with pressures. It still comes with, you know, I do have to at least try to earn out yes um what they the money that they put in put into me. And so that is really useful to be able to go back to that going, okay, I've done,
00:41:05
Speaker
weird ambient 10 minute track that is just noodling and now I can go and center myself in this funny dialogue that makes people laugh. So it it really does energize you when you just play the music you go to do the music and it's just it's just like a break almost. Yeah, that's exactly right. um Because create doing creative things is um is important to me, right? I mean, even when I'm not doing the writing, I'm more likely to be fiddling around on a guitar than watching a movie, like for example, simply because it activates part of my brain that are enjoyable. I mean, sometimes I do just want to watch a movie. We watched, Chrissy and I watched a movie last night on Netflix and it was 100% a Netflix movie, which was like,
00:41:52
Speaker
I'm, my brain is dead. Look at the pretty lights. Click. Right. And sometimes there there's there's absolutely that. But a lot of the time I want to be doing something creative and I don't necessarily want to be doing the writing. And like I said, that's where the music comes in or that's where the photography comes in. And just endless sort of like with a photography, for example, it's like I take the picture and I load it into Photoshop and then I spent hours just moving a little slider of back and forth, you know, being like, what does this do? What does this do? what it And then finally i get the picture, you know, the exactly where I want it. And again,
00:42:28
Speaker
no one's asking me to be a professional photographer, but the end result of that is I've created a piece of art that I've enjoyed, and the process of it has been something that I really enjoyed as well. And there's no deadline on it. Nobody's sitting there going, you know, where's that batch of photographs, which doesn't happen with the writing. I just finished a novel, The When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and then immediately had to jump in and write a novella, and I had finished that. and both of those there were very hard deadlines that I couldn't miss and so even though I loved writing both of them and I think both of them are very good racing to hit that deadline was a little excruciating especially because one was directly right after the other and so yeah after that was done my brain was like you're not going to be again for another two months
00:43:12
Speaker
Can I ask you a question about that deadline business?
Role of Deadlines in Writing
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. This is literally why I'm here to answer your question. That's great. We're not even paying you for it. Maybe I shouldn't get into that. I don't know about you, Mark. We're serious about writing, but we're not writing at the same professional level as John. Yeah, it's not our living. Yeah, you know, I mean, I have a work in progress and and um I couldn't tell you when it's going to be done because I don't have a deadline and because I'm trying to hit this quality bar. But your stuff is already, you know, it's hitting a quality bar anyway. But do is there a tension for you with the between the quality and the getting it done with the deadline or how does that work?
00:43:54
Speaker
um Yes and no. I mean, the thing is there has to be a certain amount of time. Otherwise, it's not good, partly because I don't outline. I write and I find out what I'm doing as I'm writing it. So I have to have a certain amount of time for exploration. Right. And that's just that is an aspect. So if I have to rush, either it needs to be really short, like but all the short stories that have become part of Love, Death and Robots were usually about 2000 words or less, um so I can bang it out in a couple of hours, or it has to be something that I've thought about so much that all I'm essentially doing is typing. But for everything else, there there has to be some time for that creative process. At the same time, for me, I have found over time um that I actually do with novels and novellas and short stories, stuff like that,
00:44:48
Speaker
having a deadline is actually incredibly important. I was waiting for that. um because Because you're a journalist. Absolutely. yeah yeah yeah Well, here's the one thing is that to go back to the thing about the journalism, it absolutely matters, right? Because I worked at a newspaper, everything had to be in by 3pm or didn't get into the next day's paper, right? um Or for the weekend ah paper for the Sunday paper, everything had to be in by Wednesday. You know at cuz I was the entertainment section. It's not like you were like, uh, you know last minute news or anything So it all had to be in by a certain amount of time and there were no excuses It just had to be done and now I did that for years literal years where didn't matter You know, here's a deadline if you miss it
00:45:36
Speaker
you're not only do you screw yourself, um but you screw everybody else. Somebody has to make a desperate dive through AP to find a story that fits exactly the news hole that you've been given. Yeah, yeah you learn you learn not to, you learn not to do it. And that's been hugely helpful in sort of sticking with the deadlines. But the other thing is, is that if you know a deadline is June 30th, right? Just I was pulling a number out of the air. I know how long it takes me to write a novel, right? And so knowing where that deadline is, it's like, at a certain point in the beginning of May, my brain says, okay, you're done screwing around. Yeah.
00:46:18
Speaker
get it done because otherwise you're going to be absolutely you know absolutely miserable. And so whether or not it's like at this point, again, 30 years on, um at this point it's not even really conscious. Like in the perfect world, as soon as I had a book idea that I knew that I had to do, I would write 500 words a day so that I would get it in a smooth and even ah sort of thing. But that's not how my brain works. My brain was like, oh, now I got to start, you know, a year out, I kind of vaguely start thinking about it. Then three months out, I'm like, oh, no, I really have to start thinking about this. And then two months out, oh, shit, I really have to start writing this. And then like a third of the book gets written in the last two weeks. It's just that it's a lot.
00:47:05
Speaker
right? But at no point am I not writing. It's just, you know, my brain is noodling, my brain is thinking about things, and then it gets to that certain point. And that has come in handy, like um the there there's a book in the interdependency series, um which is called the collapsing imparts, the second book in the series, right. And I got the deadline wrong in my brain. I thought it was like two months later than it was. o um And then one day I look at my calendar, my Google calendar, and and this is this is the truth. It was like it was June 4th and
00:47:43
Speaker
The deadline was June 18th. And the amount that I had written and that I had actually typed out in the book was big fat double zero, right? And so I had two weeks to write out that book. And I turned to Chrissy, and ah this is my joke, I turned to Chrissy and I was like, you're going to shove food under the door. once ah Once a day there's going to be a jug by the side of the door, you will take that away. No to the jug because the bathroom is literally right next door to your office, but yes to the shopping food. And and so I wrote 80,000 words wow in in two weeks. And when I tell that to people, and I didn't tell people about that until the book was published. It had gotten a couple of star reviews. It hit the New York Times bestseller list. After the all of that, I figured it was okay to let people know it took two weeks to write it, but it didn't take two weeks to write it. It took two weeks to type.
00:48:36
Speaker
it took a year to write because I had been mulling it over in my head. So the the deadline is incredibly important to tell my brain when to stop screwing around and actually start typing. And without that, it does get kind of, it does get kind of aimless for me. There are so many ideas that I have that are not part of my book contract that I'm like, I should write, that i like right now, I finished a novella, I have two months of downtime before I have to start writing the next book. And part of my brain is going, oh, but you could write all these other little things that I wanted to do. I was like, yes, I could do that. But there are video games and no and there are naps. So yeah guess what I'm going to do. There's no deadline attached to them.
00:49:20
Speaker
And I have music to play. ah There's no deadline attached to it. So those things will probably not get done unless at one point someone says, that's a really great idea. I will buy a book or whatever with that. And now there's a deadline attached and then I have to and then i have to do it. Okay, now I have to go down a bit of a rabbit hole and put on the journalist, ah the hard journalist hat here. Oh boy. Oh no. wait You had thought about that novel for a long time and then wrote the 80,000 words in essentially two weeks. yeah My question is, well, it's more of a statement really, is you can't have been that precious about the pros.
00:50:03
Speaker
um Well, that was one of the reasons why I waited to see if anybody had caught me. right because ah like i I was writing it so quickly that when I turned it in, I had no i had no ability in my brain to comprehend whether what I had written was actual competent prose or not, right? Because it was just, it was so focused on just getting it out that I was like not worried about making it pretty. And this is in my particular case, um this is where
00:50:46
Speaker
both 30 years of professional writing, and at that point, 15 years, 16 years of writing novels, having that muscle memory really ah came in handy because my brain knew how to do all of that stuff without me focusing on it per se. The thing is, is that quite literally, most people don't know that I wrote that that I typed out that book in two weeks and ah The like I said the reviews nobody knows your process. Nobody knows whether a book takes a year three months Three years ten years what they know is here's a book. How does it how does it work? Like I said, we didn't tell anybody that whether this book, how long it took to write this book, until well after the book was was out in the world. And as far as we can tell, both from the professional reviews and from the reader reviews and from everything else, nobody else could tell either. Which either means that my my default level of writing is shit, which there are a lot of people who would be more than happy no to agree with you on that.
00:52:00
Speaker
Or it means that so much of what the writing process is and how I write in my particular style of voice is so inculcated into just my brain as it is, is that even without consciously writing for style, that style will come out anyway. Well, and I want to contextualize the question a little bit because in no way am I suggesting that I think that, you know, your prose was shit. You're a horrible writer. How have you become? No. The reason I meant I bring it up is for a couple of reasons. Number one, I'm way too precious, which is why, you know, my work is taking me too long. But the second thing is, is that I've also learned over time, I seem to be more successful when I write like I talk.
00:52:50
Speaker
now you know yeah so and then so When you're writing it out that quickly, you're just you're getting the story out. and and yeah To your point, you are already writing at a certain level of prose quality. yeah so I actually think that's a very instructive lesson, yeah the fact that you could do that and maybe more of a should. Yeah no absolutely you should not do that i know and a hundred percent no and you all the people who are listening cannot see how yeah exactly wish we could a speech out of that i i basically wreck my brain.
00:53:25
Speaker
um writing 8,000, 10,000 words a day per te for two straight weeks. It was not a comfortable experience at all. ah ah The story I tell is that when I turned it in at seven o'clock in the morning, on the day it was due, like literally the latest that I could possibly turn it in. I was i was so innervated and just my brain was fizzing and I couldn't go to sleep, even though I was desperately, desperately tired. I was like, I'm going to go downstairs and I'm going to watch Teen Titans Go, which is this animated TV series on Cartoon Network um that you know is designed for children. And I'm like, that's the speed my brain is working right now.
00:54:10
Speaker
And 10 minutes in, I had to turn it off because there was too much going on. Chrissy tells me that there was it took a week for me to basically respond in a manner that was like even approaching human. So it was not it was not a good experience. um But what I do think is true is that at a certain point you learn to trust yourself. You learn to like, you know, let's just get this down and then we can tweak it when we when it's done. um And I do think there is a there is a thing that writers do
00:54:47
Speaker
which is that they they're much harder on themselves than any other person is going to be, right? And ah so they want to have the exact sentence hit exactly how they want it to hit and do all this or polish it as much as it can before they move on to the next thing. ah The problem with that is quite simply until you have the entire thing, right? You're not going to be able to see whether or not the two hours that you spent highly polishing that one sentence for maximum punch is going to make sense in in the larger and in the larger sense of the thing. And so honestly, I do think, and again, everybody's process is different. You find what works for you and you do it, right? But I do think by and large, for most people,
00:55:38
Speaker
who are writing, the the best thing to do is get it out. Do the, as they call it, the vomit draft or the barf draft or the first, draft whatever you want to call it, get that out and it'd be like, this is a broken pile of crap, but now it's out and now I can learn how how to fix it. And that's what we're rising and drafting. I had a follow-up question. now i don't do a lot of I don't do a lot of doing first draft and then second draft. When I type the end, I almost immediately send it right out the door. But that is because during the process of writing, like I will write about 2,000 words a day, I'll quit for the day, I'll come back.
00:56:17
Speaker
I will read those 2,000 words that I had just written. I'll do all the tweaking that I need to do, write the next 2,000 words. And in the course of that, if there's something I need to fix, I will go back and fix it and the in the in the process. It's the same amount of editing, but it has the same effect. But the whole point of it is it has to be out so you can look at it and be like, oh, no, this is what I... need to do to make this particular thing work. Nobody sees process. They only see the end result. And long and and people really who are writers really need to internalize that ah no one ever sees process. No one ever, ever sees process. I will tell a story that is related to this, comes from the world of music. I used to be a music
00:56:59
Speaker
ah reviewer. And I did a review of a cult album, the band The Cult. yeah um It was their like 2001 or 2002 album Beyond Good and Evil, which one, if you name your album after a Nietzsche book, you're already asking for trouble. um When I listened to it and I gave it like a C, right? I was like, if you are a cult fan, this is the thing that you will you will find a perfectly prominent. If you're not, there's not much here for you. The review comes out and a couple of weeks later, I get an all caps angry email from Ian Asbury, who is the lead singer of the cult. And I'm going to do an accent here that I have no idea if that's his accent or not. He's like,
00:57:48
Speaker
You have no idea how much blood and sweat went into making that album. you ah Your review is absolutely unfair. and That's why i I write them back. I'm like, one, what are you doing? Don't respond to reviews. That's just and bad news. yeah ah Two, I don't care how much blood and sweat went into it. I'm not here to review the blood and sweat. I'm here to review the album. The album was mediocre. and Three, Two weeks from now, no one will have remembered that I ever wrote this review and you will still be the guy who wrote love removal machine. So maybe you should get a grip and then I send that off. And then a couple of days later, there's an email.
00:58:30
Speaker
in not in all caps. He's like, you've made some very excellent points. Thank you. absolutely Nice. and i think that' that But the same, the same again, is with writers. Nobody cares about the process. Get it out. Take a look at it. Be like, Okay, now I can fix this fix the things that need to be fixed. And then eventually you have to stop fixing it gets out the door. But that's what having errors and for some people data readers and all that sort of stuff it is sufficiently good for the purposes of taking it out into the world and see and see yeah that was my follow-up is how much how much trust do you have to have in your editor in that particular situation where you know you've blasted this thing out ah about as quickly as any human being could do it frankly
00:59:14
Speaker
i i've been very I've been very fortunate. i mean Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who's my editor, is a very good editor. and and we have a We have a good relationship. um and He you know calls me on my bullshit when I need to be called on my bullshit. um and Also, my wife, I read the ah read the chapters to her or she reads them as they come along and so I can tell my wife loves me too much to yeah like tell me when I'm you know pretend that I'm not writing at the top of my game so um as far as it goes between the two of those um it's fine but the other thing is is that again I know what the expectations are and I know what what I want to write I what
00:59:57
Speaker
I'm expected to write and I also know how I write leaves them almost no time. So, you know, before it has to go into post production. So I usually turn in pretty clean copy like the the book that I just turned in, when the moon hits your eye, maybe had like a ah page of editorial notes. And those were very specifically, I think you should use this word here, not this word. all that yeah And all that sort of stuff. I get Overall, I get very, very few notes. And again, I i really do um take that back to my journalism training, that it has to be as clean as possible before you put it in. The most important thing that ever happened to me was as a writer is I spent two years being an editor and dealing with other people's writing. um Specifically, I was the editor of ah of a humor site.
01:00:44
Speaker
Humor is very hard for lots of people to do, particularly successfully. um I would have a thousand applications you know are you know for ah basically 20 positions. And after going through like a thousand stuff, I would still have 10 things left over or 10 slots left over. So I would have to go back and tweak things and show people how to do it. And two things happened out of that. One, I became an editor, which is incredibly important. But the other thing is is that I became so much less precious about my own writing. I went back and looked at my writing after having been an editor. I'm like, who told this guy he could write? yeah This is crap. And I've been very fortunate that my own crap level or my own awareness of my ability to turn out crap if I'm not paying attention is very high. And I'm also very ah easily bored as a reader.
01:01:35
Speaker
So if I'm writing something and I'm bored reading it while I'm writing it, then I know there's ah there's a problem. And so I will usually either address it immediately or come back the next day, again, with the you know ah what that's what the process of editing is for, and and deal with it. And being not precious, again, ah with one's writing and being able to call yourself out on your own crap um is really important. Now, I want to stress that The way that I write, because it is humorous and because it is not ornate and all that sort of stuff, there are a lot of people who just don't like it, right? They're like, this is not the writing that I want, this specific thing. And so there are a non-trivial number of people who are like, hey, I guess he's okay. Or no, he's actually not a good writer at all.
01:02:24
Speaker
because taste is what taste is. um The fact of the matter is is I'm a very good writer of a very specific type and if you don't like that type, then you will never be happy with what
Taste vs. Quality in Writing
01:02:35
Speaker
I write. And not only is that okay, I am perfectly happy with that because what it means is there's so much other writing out there that is going to be to your ah taste. Please stop reading me who will never make you happy and read some of these other amazing writers who don't write like me and who will be people that you love. I love the idea that there is a difference between taste and quality. yeah Oh, yeah. No, there absolutely is. And and wisdom comes when you learn that that is that is the fact. There are so many writers who I read their stuff and objectively I'm like, holy crap, this is amazing. And subjectively is like, I don't want to read this anymore. yeah
01:03:19
Speaker
Right. ah And it is not that they are not good writers. It is that the specific type of thing that I want to read is not this. And I was more than happy to champion these writers as great storytellers, great writers, even if I am not individually interested in them, because I Again, 30 years of doing this professionally, I know good writing when I see it, and I also know what what my own tastes are and they don't always overlap. Conversely, there's a lot of crap that I'm just happy to read because I'm like, oh yeah, this is what I like. um and but But is it good writing?
01:04:02
Speaker
as a as a matter of, you know, grammar and style and everything else? No. Is it making me happy? Absolutely. And in that sense, it's good. But there's there is a difference. in Just like there's some music that I love that I'm like, oh, this is crap music. But you know what? walk Let's do it. And other music where I'm like, this is amazing music and I never want to listen to it again.
01:04:25
Speaker
John, we could talk to you forever. In fact, I think we could have an entire series of podcasts, just conversations with John Sculzey. We might have to pay him for that. But I have one last question, and then and then I'll ask Mark if he has one last question. I read a story that that you had flipped a coin earlier in your career about whether or not you would write science fiction to fantasy or ah
Choosing Science Fiction Over Mystery
01:04:49
Speaker
mysteries. Yeah. And how do you think things, do you ever wish that you'd that it had come up mysteries? No, I don't um for a couple of reasons. One, as it turns out, you can write mysteries in science fiction. So I mean, I've written i've written the dispatcher series, I've written the lock-in series, so that that itch is being scratched within the genre of science fiction. So I got to have my cake and eat it too, as it were.
01:05:14
Speaker
And the other reason is, so when I was 32, right, just before Old Man's War got sold, and then I embarked going to science fiction conventions where I met you, and ah and meeting other science fiction writers, I had told my wife that I thought I had made all the friends that I was ever going to make in my life, right? Because I was 32, you know, yeah I knew all the people that I knew, right? um And I was fine with that. But then I got into the science fiction community and the science fiction community is a slightly different writers' community at the end than a lot of different um types um because they have the conventions, because they have, ah because essentially science fiction as a written genre
01:06:03
Speaker
in the United States, and I think Canada as well, came out of enthusiasts for the very first wave of of science fiction writers then becoming writers themselves and being in contact with each other. The community of science fiction is materially different than so many other genre writing communities. And so some of my best friends and some of the people who are most important to my life ah writers and fans and you know and editors and so on um have been people that I've met in the last 20 years and I don't know that I wouldn't know the same people for one thing um if I had gone and written mysteries and crime fiction and I don't know that I would know as many different people.
01:06:53
Speaker
So for me, I made the right decision, not only in terms of the genre of the writing, um but all the benefits that come out of having been part of that genre for the last two decades. I think I made the right decision. Cool. Mark, any final thoughts, questions? That actually answers my question because my question, because you want to heave a bow for fan work too, right? I don't know what the title was that. So ah my question was, what relationship did that have to your you know progression as a writer? Clearly it had a huge impact. It was really interesting to me because you know the the fact of the matter is I had not had any interaction at all with the science fiction fan community until
01:07:41
Speaker
2003 at the convention where where we met Joe ah and you know ah because I'd never done it. I i had gone to a um Star Trek creation convention as a reporter in Visalia, California and it was a one day convention and Michael Dorn was the guest and so basically I stayed until Michael Dorn said what he had to say and then I hightailed it out there because I had a story to write um But as part of being part of that community, is and it was something that I was completely new to. And it was really interesting to me um to learn about it and to become part of it.
Impact of Fan Community
01:08:20
Speaker
And the fan writing came out of writing the blog and writing about the science community as I was encountering it and so on and so forth. And it was a controversial win at the time.
01:08:32
Speaker
partly because up until I won the Fan Writer Award, um which was in 2008, two thousand eight and it had basically been won by three people, Mike Gleier, Dave Langford, and I think Bob Tucker, and Dave Langford had won it 19 years in a row. It had become the best Hugo for being Dave Langford. right And so ah one of the things that I'm really proud of is that when I won the the fan writer, Hugo one, it was immensely gratifying because I did feel like it was the fan, the community saying one of us, one of us, one of us, because they read the blog. They saw that I was actually really happy to be part of this community. And this was their way of saying, yes, you are, in fact, one of us. um But the other thing I said is I got the award and I'm looking I'm literally looking at it over here in the
01:09:26
Speaker
uh and in my uh shelves and I took it I was like this is amazing never giving this to me again there are so many other writers who deserve this award please use this to look far and wide and I'm happy to say that since 2008 there has never been a repeat winner uh Mike Glier won again like, you know, 30 years after he won his last one. But on a year-to-year basis, it's always somebody new. It did the thing of reminding people that that that fan writing is a wide and diverse field that has so many people in it who are doing good writing about the community, about the field of science fiction and fantasy. So I think that was really the most important thing to come out of me winning that particular ego.
01:10:18
Speaker
ah Not that I won the Cupid, but that people were reminded that fan writing is is actually a vital part of the community, and also that the community ah acknowledges that it's the community observing itself is important. And also, like I said, because they said, yeah, Sculzy, you're one of us. John Sculzy, thank you very much for being on our podcast, Recreative. It's great to talk to you again after all this time. yeah Sorry, I missed you at Toronto. Yeah, we'll get into a time machine and fix that.
01:11:19
Speaker
Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney. Web designed by Mark Rainer.
01:11:29
Speaker
Show notes and all episodes are available at recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. Drop us a line at joemahoney at donovanstreetpress dot.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.