John Scalzi’s non-blogging universe
Friday, August 29th, 2008
In this week’s story “Books vs. Blogs,” I talked with author/blogger John Scalzi about how his popular blog Whatever launched his career as a science fiction novelist. Scalzi serialized his “space opera”novel Old Man’s War as posts on his blog, believing at the time that “This is where it will live forever. Instead, a senior editor at Tor Books discovered it, liked it and was interested in purchasing it, despite the fact that Scalzi had given it away for free, as it were. Old Man’s War is no longer on-line, Scalzi says:
I took it down when it got sold. One can probably still find it online if one looks hard enough, but not legally. “Agent to the Stars,” however, is still on the site.
Scalzi has a “Sampler” page for his on-line fiction, including short stories, unused chapters and a complete novel. I admit that I haven’t read much of that, but I have read all the books in his Old Man’s War universe — in old-fashioned book form. Overall, they’re enormously appealing and accessible reads that can entertain non-sci-fi buffs and hardcore fans alike. Here are capsule reviews, in order, of the four books in the Old Man’s War trilogy. (Wait a minute, that can’t be right.)
