FLY SOUP

  Interview: John Scalzi Part 2 By Chris Large Interview first appeared in Aurealis #82. Welcome back John. At the moment your new book Lock In, [discussed in the last issue] is a standalone novel. Are you considering writing more in this world? Or is this it? No! I’d be happy to write more in this world if there was a desire from my publisher and from my audience. I don’t ever write anything but standalone novels. Old Man’s War was a standalone novel. I wrote that one book, right? And then it took off and my editor said, “You need to write another one,” and gave me some money. I said “Okay. I see how this works.” That’s how Old Man’s War became a series. Android’s Dream was supposed to be a series. I’d signed a contract for a second book but when I started writing it, it was terrible so I stopped doing that and wrote something else. So Lock In is currently a standalone book but if my publisher comes to me and says, “Yeah, I want you to write the second ...

Interview: John Scalzi Part 1.5   By Chris Large WARNING – CONTAINS SPOILERS OF EPIC PROPORTIONS John, in your latest book, Lock In , remotely controlled robotic bodies called threeps are developed to give those suffering the ‘locked in’ form of Haden’s Syndrome a greater degree of freedom. It basically allows sufferers who are trapped in their own bodies to interact with the world, but the long game of the corporations is for the technology to be used to give older people more freedom of mobility. Do you see this as humanity simply trying to avoid getting old? Or are you suggesting this type of technology could be the next step in our evolution? I don’t want to use the phrase “next step in our evolution”. I think that’s a loaded phrase. But say if you were 75 years old and your mobility had been compromised simply by being 75. Your knees are shot, you might be overweight, or you might have a bad back or anything that makes it more difficult for you to do the th...

John was the second fly to fall in my soup. He's probably my all-time second-fave sci-fi writer after Douglas Adams, and since I can't talk to him anymore, chatting with Mr Scalzi was a big deal for me. Aurealis split the interview into 3 parts, the second of which was published on SoundCloud, but I'll load a transcript here as Part 2. Interview: John Scalzi Part 1   By Chris Large   (Love this Picture) Hugo award winning author, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (2010-2013), feminist and all-round super-powered good-guy John Scalzi spoke with me in this three-part interview in early 2015. Check out Part 1 below, originally published in Aurealis #81. John’s latest book, Lock In, is a near-future murder-mystery set against a backdrop of a world ravaged by a disease known as Haden’s Syndrome. Haden’s victims suffering from ‘lock in’ find themselves unable to move or communicate with those around them and must instead util...

Author interviews are a dime a dozen, so how many of them are worthy of your time, and how many are just white noise? I'm not saying some aren't worthwhile. There can be something to be gained by reading even an average author interview, but with every hipster and their blow-dried poodle running some kind of author interview/latte appreciation blog, there's just so much emailed-in, beige-carpet dross around, it can be a real splash of ice-water to the face to read a smack-down between two people who genuinely care about their topic of discussion. Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice I've been interviewing authors for a couple of years now (you won't find my interviews here, but in magazines and elsewhere on the inter-webz. I gave up writing for free a while back) and I've learned some really important lessons I'd like to share. The fact is, the difference between a could-find-this-crap-anywhere interview, and a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a really i...

Aurealis #81 and #82 are out and contain some great fiction from equally great authors - and a bit of banter between me and a certain Mr John Scalzi.  Check them both out for the very reasonable price of $2.99. Not bad for Australia's longest running spec-fic mag!   https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/556413

A while ago I decided I loved John Scalzi's books. First I read Old Man's War and it was awesome. Then I read Redshirts and that was awesome too. The kids and I were going on a driving holiday so I bought the audiobook of Agent to the Stars , read by Wil Wheaton, and you guessed it, it was awesome. By the time I read his latest book, Lock In , it was just too much. I needed to speak to this man so I emailed him and we caught up on Skype, just like that. John Scalzi is a great guy and an absolute dream to interview. Once he starts talking it's like a freight train of ideas blasting toward you. We discussed writing (obvs), world-building, feminism, awards, stormtroopers, redshirts and lightsaber cross-guards. If writing, world-building, feminism, awards, stormtroopers, redshirts or lightsabers interest you in any way at all, you do not want to miss the June and July issues of Aurealis. Yes, that's right. This interview is so big it cannot be contained in one issue...