Science Fiction’s smiling sociopath, John Scalzi, declares he is GLAD and DELIGHTED to be ruining science fiction:
Today I saw a rant on Reddit about me ruining science fiction, and I was all, “YES I AM AND I WILL RUIN IT FOR ANOTHER 13 BOOKS AT LEAST”
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015ALL OF SCIENCE FICTION WILL FALL TO MY RUINATION WHICH CONSISTS APPARENTLY OF HAVING THE OCCASIONAL FEMALE CHARACTER WITH AGENCY
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015IN THE END THERE WILL BE ONLY ME AND THE BONES OF THE GRANDMASTERS I’VE POOPED UPON or something really it’s kind of confusing to me tbh
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015But, yeah. If you think I’m ruining science fiction you’re just gonna have to suck on that shitsicle for another decade at least. Enjoy!
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015(To be fair to Reddit, someone there was merely excerpting the rant from elsewhere. It’s not Reddit’s fault! This time!)
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015I’ll note the fellow whining I was ruining SF was also self-evidently racist and sexist, so I’m ESPECIALLY glad to ruin SF for that jerk.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015Seriously, words can’t express how delighted I am to vex and annoy bigoted turds like this one, simply by existing and publishing. Because I do exist. And I will publish! The contracts are signed! Barring death itself, there is no way to stop the decade-long flood of my ruination of the science fiction! Best of all, I don’t have to do anything other than publish to irritate this sad sack of crap. And I was going to do that anyway. It’s the perfect storm of least effort on my part.
Here’s the thing: If I ruin the genre of science fiction for you, or if the presence in the genre of people whose politics and positions you don’t like ruins the genre for you — the whole genre, in which hundreds of traditionally published works and thousands of self-and-micro-pubbed works are produced annually — then, one, oh well, and two, you pretty much deserve to have the genre ruined for you. It doesn’t have to be ruined, mind you, because chances are pretty good that within those thousands of works published annually, you’ll find something that rings your bell. And if you do, why should you care about the rest of it? It’s literally not your problem. Find the work you’ll love and then love it, and support the authors who make it, hopefully with money.
But if you’re determined that I or any author, or feminists or socialists or whomever are ruining the genre, then you’ve given those people the power to ruin the genre for you, whether they care what you think or not, or whether or not they even know you exist. And, speaking personally, if a sexist, bigoted cloacal squirt of a human wants to give me that power, then sure, I’ll be happy to ruin the genre for them through no additional effort of my own. Why, yes, I am destroying science fiction! With glee! And I’m going to be destroying it a lot over the next ten years at least.
So, you might want to pack a lunch, chuckles. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be here in science fiction a nice, long, productive time. I’m going to write what I want to write, how I want to write it, and I’m going to have a hell of a lot of fun while I’m at it. And if you think that ruins the genre, then that’s your problem, not mine.
Perhaps John Scalzi is going to write what he wants to write, write it how he wants to write it, and have a hell of a lot of fun while he’s at it.
But Tor Books isn’t going to publish it….
“Tor has decided to wait until 2017 to release the next new one.”
As one of my friends in the industry commented, “I thought it was going to take until the fourth book was due before Scalzi couldn’t deliver. He couldn’t even come through on the first one!”
Then again, maybe this is just his way of secretly endorsing the Tor Books boycott through sabotage. Wheels within wheels, my friends. Wheels within wheels.
UPDATE: Johnny Con says the problem isn’t that the book has been rejected, but rather, he hasn’t written it yet.
I understand that one of my constant detractors is asserting that the reason the first book of my new contract comes out in 2017 and not 2016 is because I turned in a manuscript and it was terrible and now Tor is trying to salvage things. This is the same person, if memory serves, who asserted that Lock In was a failure and Tor was planning to dump me, shortly before Tor, in fact, handed me a multi-million dollar contract, which included a sequel to Lock In.
Now, as then, his head is up his ass and he’s speaking on things he knows nothing about. I haven’t turned in a manuscript; there’s no manuscript to turn in. They (remember I’m working on two) haven’t been written yet. To be clear, the only thing I’ve turned in to Tor since submitting my manuscript for The End of All Things is my contract for the next set of books. That was accepted without any additional revision, I would note.
For the avoidance of doubt, you should assume that any speculation about me or my career coming from that quarter is based on equal parts of ignorance, craven maliciousness, and pathetic longing for my attention, and almost certainly false. Anything said by that person about me is likely to be incorrect, down to and including indefinite articles.
SJWs always lie. I have never claimed that Lock In was a failure or that Tor was planning to dump John Scalzi. Here is what I actually wrote about Lock In:
It’s so typical of SF/F’s Bernie Madoff that he claims I am “so very wrong” when events have gone EXACTLY as I predicted they would. It’s not that Lock In has been a massive failure; most, though not all, books by a reasonably known author that have been pushed as hard as Tor has pushed Lock In will be similarly successful in its first month. Initial “success” in the publishing industry is, to a great extent, predetermined by the publisher’s decisions concerning print runs and marketing budgets….
So, it’s no surprise that Lock In is superficially successful, as Tor has invested a lot of money (relatively speaking) in the marketing of the book in both obvious ways, such as the author’s nationwide book tour and the reviews in various media outlets, and less obvious ways, such as buying the book onto the New York Times Bestseller list.
The point isn’t that Lock In isn’t successful, it is that it isn’t successful enough to justify the investment PNH is making in Scalzi, or the opportunity cost that their marketing efforts in it represent. Notice that I even anticipated his new contract:
In any event, Scalzi is spinning his “success” in the same way that an
NFL running back’s agent spins it when he’s angling for a new contract.
Angling successfully, as it happens. But he’s spinning, always spinning, even trying here to retroactively salvage his past lies: “Anything said by that person about me is likely to be incorrect, down to and including indefinite articles.”
After all, if you can’t trust Mr. Two Million Monthly Views, who can you trust?
UPDATE 2: LT has the scoop on Scalzi’s big new book!
Scalzi has a great new book coming out in 2017. The big evil is Vahkks Gayder, and MaryJon saves the galaxy by xerself, using the Snark.