Hey, I Was on NPR’s Weekend Edition Today, Talking About Monsters of Ohio If you missed it, here’s a link to the NPR site and the audio of the interview. The transcript is not yet up but when it is, I’ll post it too. It’s a good interview! But then I am biased. Just two days until the book is out! — JS https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/11/01/hey-i-was-on-nprs-weekend-edition-today-talking-about-monsters-of-ohio/ #npr #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

When the Cat Steals Your Chair The sheer effrontery of this cat! I was planning to sit there! Does the cat not understand his place in a hierarchy! I suppose one might say that we have differing opinions about who is at the top. I will need to have a serious discussion with Saja about this. One of us buys the Churu around here. If he wants any more he’s going to have to change his seating arrangements. That’s right, I’m not above bribery. — JS https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/30/when-the-cat-steals-your-chair/ #cat #saja #churu #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Big Idea: Chris Gerrib Bank robbers have always made for exciting characters, and author Chris Gerrib got inspired by a real life robbery while working at a bank. Hop in your getaway car for a drive through the Big Idea for The Third Person in the Room. CHRIS GERRIB: “They were alive when I left them.” That’s the first line of my new book The Third Person in the Room, and figuring out what happened after the speaker left is the through-line of this book. Like many authors, and unlike Our Host, I have a day job. For many years, that job was as the head of IT for a community bank. Fairly early in my tenure at that job, one of our branches got robbed. It was a small building, about the size of a standalone fast-food joint, and on a wintry Friday night a masked man with a gun walked in. He marched the two employees into the back room and walked out five minutes later with around a quarter of a million dollars in cash. As I was pulling (useless) video from our new digital camera system that night, I thought that if you only committed one such robbery a year and not in the same area as where you lived, you could make a nice living. So thus life handed me a Big Idea. Unfortunately, unless I was going to write a very short story, something needed to happen to cause complications. Then, during the banking crisis of 2009, my employer started to buy other banks. These were all smaller than us and failing. I saw a lot of shenanigans going on at those banks. At one of them, we had the police put out a BOLO on a former employee who we thought was skipping town after defrauding his institution for mid-six figures. (The real story wasn’t as exciting- no fraud – just a lot of sloppy bookkeeping and questionable banking practices.) My previous mystery novel, Strawberry Gold, was set in a fictional small Central Illinois town. This town was conveniently a few hours’ drive from Saint Louis, Indianapolis and Chicago, thus making a nice base for my fictional robber. Small towns with quirky characters are interesting to write about, and I didn’t have to reinvent one. My second Big Idea came much later in the drafting process. I am a pantser, AKA “discovery writer” which means I don’t start with an outline. I was having a real problem with my main character, Mr. Bank Robber. Then one day it hit me – I had a character already made. Vincent Bisceglie III, who had been a main character in Strawberry Gold. And since this novel was set 23 years after the first book, reading the first book was not a requirement to enjoy this one. The nice thing for me about writing mysteries is that I can tell fictionalized versions of real stories. For example, I did not voluntarily leave that bank I was working at. I could write a character who felt some of the same disappointments I did and dial it up to eleven. I actually had a lot of fun writing her. Frankly, I had a lot of fun writing this book, and I hope you will have fun reading it. The Third Person in the Room: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Instagram https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/30/the-big-idea-chris-gerrib-5/ #bigidea #chrisgerrib #thirdperson #bank #strawberrygold #room #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Big Idea: Sharon Shinn Bursts of inspiration are all a writer can ever hope for, but how do you flesh that inspiration out into a coherent story? Not just coherent, but a good story. Author Sharon Shinn shares some of her personal experience with this topic in the Big Idea for her newest collections of short stories and poems, Tropes: Stories and Poems of the Fantastical. SHARON SHINN: In my 9th-grade creative writing class, my teacher walked in one day holding a small potted plant. “I want you to write a story about this,” she said—and then deliberately dropped it to the floor. Dirt and terra cotta shards went everywhere. My fellow students and I stared for a few moments, and then grabbed our pens and paper. Sadly, I can’t remember what story I turned in, but I do remember that it was rather more lurid than my classmates’ tales of cats pushing pots off of windowsills. Since I’ve became a published author, dramatic writing prompts have seldom come my way. But they’ve been replaced, at least now and then, by the flashes of inspiration that catch me at unexpected moments. Sometimes they’ll arrive as images, inexplicable but insistent; sometimes as phrases or sentences that seem melodic and hypnotic. Sometimes they will just manifest as ideas. What if… Often these tantalizing flashes just camp out in my mind for months or years before I decide what to do with them. In idle moments between other projects, I’ll examine them again, trying to figure out how they might fit into a story, what would come beforehand or what would follow after. As most writers would tell you, the idea is the easy part. Fleshing it out is the challenge. That’s the case with three of the pieces in my new collection, Tropes. I’d had the prompts for years. I just wasn’t sure of the rest of the stories. In the case of “Blessing in Disguise,” a novella set in my Elemental Blessings series, the flash was an image. Of a broken derelict of a man sprawled before a temple door, waiting out a rainstorm. In this world, whenever a newborn is five hours old, a family member goes out to find three random strangers at a temple to draw blessings that will guide the child for life. So I knew that someone was going to show up to demand that this man participate in the ritual—and that he would try to decline because didn’t feel worthy. Why? Was he a criminal? An assassin? An addict? What had brought him to this point? How could the simple act of choosing a blessing alter the trajectory of his life? Who had come to the temple asking for this favor? How would that person’s life be changed by this meeting? And how could this story fit into the overarching narrative I’d built over five novels? It was a long time before all the pieces came together. Another novella in the collection, “Rescue,” was inspired by an opening scene that I thought was compelling but had no idea how to develop. A woman is bound to a stool in the middle of an arena. A unicorn is brought in to determine whether she’s a virgin. The woman realizes the two of them have three things in common: We had both been brought here in the hopes that we would please the prince. We were both in fear for our lives. We were both pregnant. But—but—then what? Does the unicorn certify her as a virgin, even though she’s not? Why would the unicorn care? Who’s the father of the baby? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? And why introduce a unicorn into a story if you’re not going to make some kind of magical use out of it? But what? That one took a lot of thinking, too. But the line from this collection that I’ve had in my head the longest is this one: Uncle Joe’s house used to eat people. Loved the line. Had no idea where to go with it. Obviously, if you’ve got a carnivorous house, someone’s going to get devoured along the way. But who? Why? Who’s telling the story? I don’t write a lot of short fiction in general—most often when I’m invited into an anthology—and no anthologies had come along with a theme that seemed to fit this sentence. So it floated around in my mind for years before I decided to sit down and figure out the rest of it. It turned into the short story “The Secret of the Spiral Stair.” Even when it takes me a long time to write the attendant stories, I love these lightning strikes of inspiration. And I love that other writers have experienced similar moments. In a fascinating 2009 TED talk, writer Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the creative process, which at times can feel “downright paranormal.” She says, “I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify.” She talks about poet Ruth Stone, who, while working out in the fields, would feel a poem coming at her over the landscape like “a thunderous train of air.” Stone would race back to the house to grab pencil and paper so she could collect the poem before it abandoned her in favor of another poet who was paying more attention. I’m not sure where those mysterious flashes come from, whether the sources are internal or external. But when they stick around, I know it’s my job to fashion them into something more corporeal, and then maybe they’ll start haunting other people as well. Tropes: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop Author socials: Website|Facebook|Bluesky https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/29/the-big-idea-sharon-shinn-5/ #sharonshinn #bigidea #authorsharon #tropes #sometimes #poems #blessing #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

A Lovely Stay At Cleveland’s Fidelity Hotel Remember a couple weeks ago when I asked for Cleveland recommendations from y’all? Well, the time finally came to go to Cleveland with my dear friend Lily, and we had an absolute blast. I want to spend the next few posts regaling you with my exciting tales of Cleveland, but I figured it made the most sense to start with the place we stayed at. While some people feel like a hotel room is the most unimportant aspect of a trip since it’s just “where you sleep,” I find that I require a certain level of accommodations and comfortability. So, after careful consideration, I chose Cleveland’s Fidelity Hotel. I booked a petite suite for us because I believe in balling out when a friend comes from out of state to visit. This was undoubtedly the correct choice. I could not have asked for a more perfect hotel experience. From the moment we pulled up to valet, to the quick and easy check-in process, to seeing our room in person and getting a plate of chocolate chip cookies delivered to our room as a welcome gift from the hotel, it was a fantastic first impression. At check-in, the front desk lady and I were having a conversation about some of the places we planned to go and where we had reservations at, yada yada. When I mentioned the only night I didn’t have dinner reservations for was Sunday, she quickly and enthusiastically suggested a place called Jaja’s. After looking it up, I booked it for dinner on Sunday and later on told her we went ahead with her suggestion, and she was so excited for us! She said she wanted to hear all about our experience and see pictures of the food. A+ recommendation from her! (There will be a post over Jaja’s because it was so good.) Anyways, our room was super clean and comfortable, and had some seriously beautiful features, like the bath tub and bathroom tile: There were two super comfortable robes available for us, one pink and one maroon-ish, and the bathroom has its own thermostat so you can make the bathroom nice and warm when you get up to shower in the chilly hours of the morning! Despite me very much looking forward to taking a bubble bath in that amazing soaking tub, I never did and I am so upset about my missed opportunity! Part of the reason I wanted a petite suite was for the tub! I seriously can’t believe I didn’t carve out time for a nice soak. Next time, for sure. The bed was large and super comfortable: (Giraffe not included in your stay.) Lily and I are thankfully both not bed hogs or blanket stealers, so this bed was more than enough space and comfortable for both of us. Plus there was this giant wardrobe (with automatic lights when you open the doors) that gave us both plenty of room to put our clothes in: Of course, we can’t forget about the absolutely stocked mini bar area: Not only is there a mini fridge totally full of mixers, beverages, and more alcohol than what is up top there, but there’s a whole cocktail making setup! You could get so fancy and creative at the mini bar with that cocktail shaker and muddler. Plus, there’s a gooseneck electric kettle and tea, coffee, and coffee cups, and bags of candy and snacks. Here’s the official mini bar menu: Let me give you guys a little tip here. Inside the fridge was three small shot bottles of Tito’s. They are listed as $10 for one of the 50ml bottles, so all three would be 150ml for $30. The 375ml bottle of Tito’s on top of the mini bar is $35. Which sounds like a better (and more fun) deal? And for the tequila, there’s the $12 little bottles of Casamigos, but the big bottle is Lalo tequila, which in my opinion is WAY better. So pop one of those suckers open and if you don’t finish it, take it home! That’s what I did. We absolutely loved this room, and the only thing better than the room was the service. I have never had better hotel hospitality in my life than at the Fidelity, and I’ve certainly been to a few hotels. Thinking back on it, I really can’t believe how nice everyone was. Not only did I have some seriously great conversations with them (I promise I didn’t impede their work (too much)), get amazing recommendations, and get greeted with chocolate chip cookies, but I was also given some free drink tickets to use in their restaurant, the Club Room. I was complimented on my outfits by them, welcomed in and wished farewell upon arriving or leaving, and even when I had a maintenance issue with the door to my suite, the maintenance man was a gem! I seriously felt like I had stumbled into a diamond mine of hospitality. So, huge thank you to David, Nina, Cyle, and everyone else who made our stay so amazing. Of course, can’t forget about the aforementioned Club Room. The lobby for the Fidelity is charming and elegant, and with the restaurant having velvet bench cushions, beautiful stoneware, and eye-catching chandeliers, it all feels intimate and cozy yet still elevated and intentional. Though we didn’t have a full meal at the restaurant because we had reservations for so many other places, we did get a snack and drink upon arrival. We picked the stuffed dates with pimento cheese, bacon, and pickled mustard seeds: Listen, I will always love a stuffed date, there’s no two ways about it. These were as delicious as they look (which is very!). And I wanted to try the polenta: Lily actually doesn’t like polenta at all unfortunately, but I thought this was really good. Polenta is something I almost never see offered, so I knew I wanted to try it here, and I’m glad I did. This was a nice, warm, comforting bowl of polenta with brown butter and mascarpone. Yum. And of course, our drinks! The Salty Paloma and the Desert Oasis: Both of these were really excellent, and that’s such a bright and vibrant slice of grapefruit to accompany it! I also went for breakfast one morning and got a stack of pancakes: These were perfectly dense and a good treat to start my morning with (though I’m not very hungry in the mornings so I only ate one and then took the other two back to my room). Now, when I booked the Fidelity Hotel, I actually booked one of their packages they offer. Their All Access Night Out package comes with two drink tickets from their bar, a $20 minibar credit, half priced valet, and complimentary late checkout at 1pm (which Lily and I definitely ended up needing). Since valet is usually almost $60 a night (with in and out privileges), the half priced valet saved me almost a hundred dollars. Oh, and the drink tickets I got with the package are separate from the ones the lovely front desk girl gave me as a gift. After some really great conversation with her, she even bumped me up to VIP status because we were vibing so well, and then we complimented each other’s nails! I’m serious, their friendliness is unmatched at Fidelity. For three nights in the petite suite, valet, minibar charges and restaurant/bar charges, yada yada, it was around $1300. The Fidelity Hotel is definitely a luxury priced place, but I do think the experience is unmatched in Cleveland, and maybe even all of Ohio. It is definitely worth splurging on if you’re going to be in Cleveland for a couple of days, or for something special like an anniversary night. We certainly enjoyed our stay, anyway. Have you been to Cleveland’s Fidelity Hotel before? Or maybe their Cincinnati location? I would love to stay at the Cincinnati one. Are you a valet type of person or a “I will find parking myself” kind of person? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day! -AMS https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/28/a-lovely-stay-at-clevelands-fidelity-hotel/ #fidelityhotel #cleveland #stay #jaja #sunday #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Big Idea: Wole Talabi Big ideas don’t always have to start out as grand bursts of inspiration. Sometimes a big idea is made up of smaller ideas over a long period of time that all snowball together in perfect harmony. Author Wole Talabi explores this idea as he talks about his newest novel, The Fist of Memory, and cites some other great authors that lent some of those small ideas to him. WOLE TALABI: When I look back at the process of writing The Fist of Memory, I don’t see a single big idea that anchored me through it. I see many small ideas orbiting a glowing spark of motivation like a protoplanetary disk that eventually coalesced into a novel. So yes, I could tell you that its inspired largely by a lot of the action media I had consumed growing up, woven together with my deep and endless fascination with first contact SF narratives like some weird Nigerian lovechild of John Woo’s The Killer and Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem. I could tell you it features assassins with direct neural interfaces and is set in a grounded but ultimately hopeful near-future world where the impact of climate change is impossible to ignore. I could tell you that it tries to unify uniquely African traditional beliefs and philosophies like Sankofa (which emphasizes the importance of remembering and learning from the past to shape the future) and Ubuntu (that interconnectedness is what makes us who we are) with modern scientific understanding of the nature of reality anchored in quantum mechanics. I could tell you that the world of the novel is shaped by the uniquely Nigerian brand of political violence and turmoil extrapolated from the country’s real-life complex political history of coups and behind-the-scenes power struggles. I could tell you all this, but these are all fragmentary ideas and inspirations and influences and intentions, and they don’t tell you much about why it took me so long to finally put them all together and what they all add up to. Besides, I can’t tell you the one really big idea behind The Fist of Memory without spoiling at least some of the plot. So instead, I’ll tell you about the place stories come from, where small ideas can connect to become more than the sum of their parts because the big idea behind this novel is about connection anyway. SF’s big mama Ursula K LeGuin described the production of great art as a journey into the self to pull from the “collective unconscious” – a Jungian idea that beneath the individual unconscious there lies something collective: patterns, myths and archetypes shared by humanity. I’ve always been fascinated by this concept but never applied it to my own writing. It seemed like an abstract way of explaining why so many stories across cultures seemed to share some DNA or seem to draw upon something ancient and fundamentally human to speak about the present day. And that’s all it was at the time – an interesting theory. But when I first started to write this novel, it quickly became clear to me that I was reaching for something larger than I could consciously articulate. I kept trying to consciously impose some kind of superstructural order on the constellation of influences I had brought with me in trying to achieve my intention. But the story and the characters refused to conform. I was trying to construct a planet when what I needed was to journey into myself to find the gravity that would naturally connect all the fragments that had accumulated inside me over decades. Something I needed to go inward to find by excavating my memories. Memories of a TV program where a professor of sociology argued that Africa and Africans in general were somehow inferior and cited the usual nonsense – present day economic underdevelopment, biased IQ statistics, etc. which triggered in my young mind, a kind of rage and anger and desire to prove him wrong and show that Africans were indeed capable and that our cultures, histories and philosophies contained ideas and concepts are rigorous and fascinating as any other. Memories of growing up in Nigeria during the brutal military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha – the political chaos, the riots and protests, the lawlessness. Memories of my father and his book of judo techniques that sparked my love of martial arts and Hong Kong action cinema. Memories of my boarding school days in Benin City, studying mathematics and physics, staring at the night sky and wondering – what was out there? Memories of reading my mother’s books on African literature, of discovering the richness and depth of Yoruba mythology and history and philosophy. I let all these personal memories flow together, as I navigated the collective unconscious, seeking connections between them and the larger human desire for connection, for survival, for care and understanding. It was then that I understood that connection itself was the story. It began to flow out of me – less like construction and more like archeology. After that, it was just a matter of editing to get the structure and tone and rhythm and flow of the story right. It’s funny now to see that the novel I had been trying to assemble from apparently disconnected fragments of myself was about the possibility that disconnectedness itself might be an illusion. One that can only be broken in the subconscious. That realization wasn’t just my method of writing the novel. It became what the novel was about. The big idea of The Fist of Memory is the possibility that, just as there are connections inside us that we aren’t always consciously aware of, what we perceive in the physical world might, at another level of reality, be connected. That things which appear separate can be part of the same continuum. Science and spirituality. Life and death. Violence and redemption. Past and future. Heroism and villainy. Memory and reality. One human consciousness and another. To quote big mama LeGuin again the idea is that, “The unconscious mind is coextensive with the universe.” Writing this book has taught me that stories are technologies by which we connect to ourselves and to each other. I hope that when you read it and are done with all the excitement, technology, politics, action and physics I’ve baked into it, that you are left with a warm glowing feeling of possibility and connection. The Fist of Memory: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop Author socials: Website https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/28/the-big-idea-wole-talabi/ #woletalabi #bigidea #fist #memory #authorwole #nigerian #bodyproblem #cixinliu #johnwoo #threebody #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Further Thoughts on the Googlebook, in Comparison to the MacBook Air I’ve had the Googlebook now for a couple of weeks, and I have gotten a chance to both use it on a regular basis, and compare it with the MacBook Air I have (it sports an M4 processor). One of the things that I was curious about is which of them I would end up using more often, and which I would prefer over the other, if indeed there was a preference at all. I’m not going to stretch this out for you: I prefer the MacBook Air over the Googlebook. This is because of a number of factors, some relating to software and some relating to hardware. The Googlebook is a fine little machine, and I’m mostly happy to own it, but it is not entirely baked, and it shows. For a day-to-day use case, the Mac Air is still the one that I reach for. This is not just theoretical: I was actually away this weekend for a convention in the Denver area. At first, I gave some thought to taking the Googlebook, but at the last minute I made the switch to the Mac Air. I was worried about things like connectivity while I was traveling, and also the ability to pull up certain applications that I would need while I was away. I ended up pulling the Googlebook out of my backpack literally as I was leaving the house, and slipping the Mac Air in. I don’t regret the choice. There are things I like about the Dell XPS version of the Googlebook over the MacBook Air that I have. For one, I like the keyboard a lot better. The one on the Air is just a smidge too squishy for me, whereas the XPS’s keyboard feels punchy and has snap to it. If we were going straight on the keyboard, I don’t think it would be a question for me. I also like the ever-so-slightly smaller form factor of the XPS over the Air. This is very much a six-of-one, half-bakers-dozen-of-the-other sort of thing, because, of course, the Air is also very small and very thin and very light, just like the XPS Googlebook. But the form factor for this one, a 13-inch screen as opposed to a 14-inch screen and so on, means that the XPS is just a little bit more convenient in places like airplanes, or anywhere else where space is at a premium. Again, both of them are perfectly small enough for most use cases, but if that is a consideration, then the Googlebook has an edge. Finally, and as I mentioned in my previous write-up of the Googlebook, the Rambler feature of the Googlebook, ported over from the latest edition of Android on the Pixel phones, really is kind of magical. I wish that every laptop had this. The ability to actually just dictate and have it come out as text with very little need to copy-edit is kind of spectacular. If it weren’t for all the other issues that the Googlebook currently has, the Rambler would in and of itself be enough to make me want to choose the Googlebook over other laptops. It’s genuinely one of the best voice-to-text applications I’ve ever used. In terms of hardware, most of the other issues are very small in comparison to the MacBook Air. The trackpad is not nearly as smooth and nice as the MacBook Air trackpad, but of course, almost no other laptop has a trackpad that’s as nice as the MacBook trackpads. The screens are pretty much a wash in terms of quality. Both are nice and clear and have more than good enough resolution. The Googlebook has a 120 Hz screen refresh rate, which is twice that of the Air, but honestly on a day-to-day basis if you’re not playing video games, you’re probably not going to notice. Both computers are very limited in terms of I/O, with both of them only having two USB-C ports, although the Googlebook pulls ahead by having a USB-C ports on either side of the chassis, whereas the MacBook Air only has them on the left side. On the other hand, the MacBook Air does actually have a headphone jack, which the XPS does not. So they’re both slightly inconvenient in their own ways. The only major hardware fuckup for the XPS Googlebook, which is also a software fuckup, lies in the speakers. The volume of anything you play gets louder and softer for no goddamn reason at all, and there’s no easy fix for it yet. When I first wrote about it the laptop, I didn’t notice there was an issue with the volume, but it’s there and it’s really, really fucking annoying. At first, I thought it was just an issue with YouTube, and I went into the YouTube settings to fix it, but as it turns out, it’s a problem with other programs as well. It’s a known issue; if you go to the Dell site, they have it registered as being something that they’re aware exists and that they are going to work to fix, but apparently the update won’t be ready until December at the earliest. It’s so noticeable and so annoying that it actually makes me not want to use the XPS. It’s just that bad. Beyond that, when the volume is near maximum on the XPS, the entire chassis vibrates and the sound distorts. It is genuinely bad, as opposed to the MacBook Air speakers, which are actually quite good. It’s not even a comparison; the MacBook Air blows the Googlebook out of the water in this case. For both the volume intermittency and the distortion, the current “fix” for the XPS Googlebook is to use a Bluetooth speaker or headphones. But I shouldn’t have to do that in order to get decent sound out of a $1000 laptop. This should have been solved before these shipped. When it comes to software, the disadvantage the Googlebook has over the Air is simply that it mostly relies on Android versions of software, which are just not fully featured as the versions that are on the MacBook. The two programs that I use on a daily basis are Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. On the Googlebook, the Android versions of these programs are just fine for quick and dirty stuff, but it doesn’t have the full set of features that I actually want and need to do my work. This is fine if I don’t have a lot of work to do, like if I’m on vacation or if I’m just doing something that I can use Gmail or Google Docs for. But this weekend, when I went to that convention, and later when I’m going to be on tour, I’ll be working on my upcoming novel. I need fully featured Word, at least. Now, to be scrupulously fair about it, I’m not going to give the Googlebook too much shit about relying heavily on Android. It’s just a fact of life for this very early version of this operating system. I don’t think you should come to the Googlebook thinking that you’re going to get anything other than perhaps slightly gussied-up versions of Android apps. But from a purely practical point of view, which is what I have to have when I’m actually trying to get work done rather than just doing email, it’s an issue. You have to factor that in. For now at least, the Air still wins for practicality. (You’ll notice that I’m not giving much time or space to any of the Googlebook’s “AI” functionality, and that’s just because I’m mostly not using it. In this case, it’s no different from the Air, on which I also don’t use any of Apple’s most recent “improvements” through the use of “AI”. So for my use case, they’re both about even on this score.) As hinted above, in many ways it’s fundamentally not fair to compare a Googlebook with a brand new operating system to a MacBook Air that is several generations in with an OS that has been developed over the space of decades. I’m reasonably optimistic, even with Google’s tendency to kill things off, that the Googlebook will improve, and that its OS will get better and smarter. Google has committed to 10 years of updates on this machine, and we’ll see if that’s actually going to be the case. But certainly we can expect at least a year or two of refinement out of the company. So maybe in a year’s time, or two, it might actually become a laptop that I would take with me on a long business trip. But for now, I will have to stick with my MacBook Air for any travel that requires more than the most casual of Gmail and Google Docs use. I often do have to work when I travel, and that means I need a laptop that can do everything I need it to do. That’s still the MacBook Air. — JS https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/27/further-thoughts-on-the-googlebook-in-comparison-to-the-macbook-air/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Big Idea: Kevin J. Anderson You can’t have a duology without an enticing cliffhanger at the end of the first book, and thankfully New York Times Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson managed to write the second installment in his Nether series, despite a broken ankle setting him back some. Journey through his writing (and speaking) process to see how Nether Vortex follows up on that suspenseful cliffhanger. KEVIN J. ANDERSON: I grew up as a wide-eyed kid, looking up at the stars with a Star Trekian wish to boldly go where no one has gone before. The universe was filled with a sense of wonder. But you know what? Space is also scary as hell! It’s infinitely cold, dark, empty, alone … filled with radiation, solar flares, and gravity wells (and that’s not even counting monsters, deadly aliens, or killer robots). In space, everything wants to kill you. It’s even worse than Australia. Science fiction horror should be a bigger thing. Just imagine being in a distant space station or an interstellar ship incredibly far from even a hint of rescue, where only a thin metal hull or reinforced windowport separates you from deadly vacuum, where the transmission of your terrified scream would take hours to reach the nearest listener. So where are all the scary science fiction stories? Yes, everyone can immediately cite Alien and Event Horizon, then after a pause add Pitch Black. Heck, even Apollo 13 is a terrifying space story, in its own way. How about Jason X, the first film to bring a hockey-masked serial killer into space? And who can forget Leprechaun in Space (no matter how much we try)? But I think the genre needs more. If you search for “space horror” on Amazon, you’ll find a few titles but not a lot. When Weird Tales Presents and Blackstone Publishing asked me to write novels for them, they let me choose the genre and topic. I jumped at the chance to write a cosmic horror epic: Nether Station and Nether Vortex. Now I could really buckle up and take advantage of the scenario—a haunted house in space, an isolated station on the far edge of the solar system near a wormhole that offers a shortcut to Alpha Centauri … or maybe it’s a place where the horrific elder gods have been exiled, and boy do they want to come out. I reread all of H.P. Lovecraft’s work (man, that guy had some creepy and mind-blowing ideas), and added a lot of Easter eggs in the prose. The first half of the story, Nether Station, has a controlled cast of oddball characters, mostly misanthropes (who else would want a job like that?), each facing their own problems even before the really weird shit starts happening. This novel is claustrophobic, intense, scary, and ends on a cliffhanger. The second half, Nether Vortex, is much bigger in scope, a sprawling cosmic war where countless species are being consumed by a great darkness. The two books are like Alien followed by Aliens. I’m a prolific and reliable writer, and I like to think I’m always on time. With the giant cliffhanger at end of Nether Station, I didn’t want to keep the readers dangling in the wind. You want them to feel delicious suspense and anticipation, not an annoyed sense of “Is this guy ever going to deliver the next book?” (Not that we know of anybody who’s done that to his readers…) Then the real horror happened. I outlined Vortex and was all ready to write. The deadline was looming, but not in a scary way. I couldn’t wait to get to my version of “At the Mountains of Madness” in the Martian polar ice caps, Lovecraftian SF on a grand scale. Now, I’ve long-established that I write by dictation. I live in beautiful Colorado, and I take my notes with me out on the trail. I’ll head into the mountains or forests and trudge along for miles, dictating my chapters. I get inspired, I’m surrounded by scenery, and I sink into the zone, lost in the story I’m creating as I walk along. I’ve been doing this for so many years that the words come out as nearly finished prose, like I’m narrating an audiobook. When I return home, I have my dictation files transcribed, then I edit them online. In fact, it’s the only way I can write my novels. Except, just when I was starting to write Nether Vortex, I hiked a beautiful trail up Beckwith Pass near Crested Butte, Colorado. On the way down, it started to rain, and the trail got muddy … and I slipped and fell off a ledge, twisted my leg, and broke my ankle. (Yes, I hike alone; I can’t dictate if somebody is walking along beside me.) So, I had to limp a mile back to my car and then drive an excruciating three hours back home. That’s the sort of experience I inflict on my characters, not something I wanted to try at home. I spent the next two months in an armored Darth Vader boot. Worse, although I could hobble around the house, I certainly couldn’t go out hiking, not even on the wimpy bike path near my home. I had a 130,000-word novel to write, and suddenly I wasn’t sure how to do it. My creative process strictly relies on walking and talking. So, I sat on the porch, staring off into space, and I tried dictating chapters, but it was ten times as hard to sink into the zone without moving. I tried pounding out chapters on the keyboard, stuck in a chair in a stuffy office while staring at a screen. (How do you guys do that for hours and hours?) But deadlines can be very inspirational, and the thought of angry readers imagining Lovecraftian punishments for me if I didn’t deliver on time after that Nether Station cliffhanger was enough for me to complete the manuscript on time. I powered through, typing some, dictating some, and the plot and characters took over. Maybe that helpless, claustrophobic, trapped situation actually helped convey the right sense for the story. (The ankle’s fully healed now, and I’m back to writing novels the “right” way for me.) I love how the Nether books turned out. I created big scary story and an immensely cool setup. Oh, there’s room for other bad stuff to happen if I want to revisit that universe, but these two novels form a complete story with a real and satisfying conclusion. I hope you enjoy the read. —- Nether Vortex: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop Author socials: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Instagram https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/27/the-big-idea-kevin-j-anderson-3/ #nethervortex #anderson #kevin #space #netherstation #newyork #timesbestselling #aliens #startrekian #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Guess What’s Arrived at the Scalzi Compound Yes! It’s here! The brown cardigan I bought that looks like I skinned Fozzy Bear for his pelt! Oh, and also, the finished hardcover copies of Monsters of Ohio, which look terrific, and which officially go on sale one week from today (which is November 3rd, in case you are reading this on a day other than October 27, 2026). There is still time to pre-order the book from your favorite bookseller! Or (today and tomorrow) to order a signed/personalized copy from Subterranean Press! You can even pre-order it from Audible, if you’re an audiobook sort! Also if you are in or near the towns of Beavercreek, OH, Franklin, IN, Chicago, IL, Ferndale, MI, Hudson, OH, Nashville, TN, Louisville, KY, Kansas City, MO, Cincinnati, OH or Austin, TX, come see me on tour! This cardigan is really comfortable, y’all. — JS (PS: November 3rd is election day here in the US. Go vote! Do it early so you have the whole day to read my book!) https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/27/guess-whats-arrived-at-the-scalzi-compound/ #scalzicompound #arrived #fozzybear #november #subterraneanpress #kansascity #ohio #chicago #cincinnati #ferndale #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Last Chance to Get Signed/Personalized Copies of Monsters of Ohio via Subterranean Press This Thursday I’m heading up to Michigan, home of Subterranean Press, to sign and personalize literally hundreds of copies of Monsters of Ohio that people have ordered through them. The folks at SubPress tell me that they still have some copies left that can be ordered, so if you want a signed/personalized copy of the book, and I’m not coming to your town on tour, this is the best way to get one. Especially if you live outside the US — SubPress ships internationally. But you have to hurry, because a) the few unclaimed copies they have will go fast, b) as of Thursday I will be done signing. Here’s the link to order. Get on it! — JS https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/26/last-chance-to-get-signed-personalized-copies-of-monsters-of-ohio-via-subterranean-press/ #subterraneanpress #getsigned #personalizedcopies #monsters #chance #thursday #michigan #subpress #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit