The Big Idea: Marie Vibbert
Posted on April 28, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
Though humans have a strong desire to be an individual, slightly stronger is our innate need to not be alone. Humans are not solitary creatures, so why do we try so hard to act like we are all just individuals with no ties or connections to those around us? Author Marie Vibbert wonders if we wouldn’t all be better off as a hive mind in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Multitude.
MARIE VIBBERT:
Over 11,000 tons of discarded clothing lie in the Chilean desert. These are garments that never sold, from low and high brands, and almost entirely made of petroleum-based fabrics: rayon, polyester, acrylic. It’s a major environmental problem. The clothes catch fire, leak chemicals and microplastics, and just… keep coming.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, they are looking for new, industrial applications for wool because this renewable clothing resource that doesn’t spontaneously combust sits rotting in warehouses, unable to compete with the subsidized price of polyester.
Humanity has a problem. A communication problem that creates wasted effort and wasted resources. Food being thrown out while people starve. Diseases like cholera running rampant when their cures exist. I could go on and on with examples. Why can’t we put our efforts where they are needed? Why do our systems dictate so much cruel irony?
When you look at humanity as a whole, we are tearing ourselves apart, starving ourselves, killing ourselves. We don’t seem to understand that we are us?
These were my thoughts going into a project whose first note was: The Borg, but friendly?
I thought it would be a short story. Something quick. Get in and get out. A hive mind comes to Earth, tries to communicate with humans as a hive, fails, and sees what a mess we are. Nudge the reader toward empathy, toward seeing problems between “us” and “them” as an insufficient definition of “us.” I figured it’d hit about 2,000 words long. But the more I thought about it, the bigger the problem became. How to show the perspective? How to encompass humanity and then move the camera back to show us in perspective?
How do we look, to a hive mind? What would they expect?
Humans are, in many ways, a collective creature. A single human can no more build a skyscraper than a single ant can build a mound. Even writing a novel is a collective act, when you consider that this language that I am using is a vast collection of consensuses on symbols, meaning, and parsing. English, on a certain level, is a stack of inside jokes passed down and expanded every generation.
Beyond that, every work of fiction builds on and reacts to those that came before. I am writing in a genre, science fiction, defined by all the works labelled as such, and in turn defined by the pressures and uncertainties of our society that caused the first authors to write things not of this world, the first readers to like that and want to emulate it, and on, and on.
I was on a panel at WorldCon on Hive Minds in Science Fiction when it occurred to me that an assumption I hadn’t seen tackled yet was that collectivism automatically meant a repression of individuality. It seems an easy conclusion? If my family votes democratically on dinner, my individual desire to eat nothing but spaghetti every night is subordinated. Yet, the four of us are still individuals as we enjoy my spouse and child’s preferred chicken and rice.
Why wouldn’t a hive mind contain room for the individual? Does a Borg stop loving spaghetti once it absorbs the thoughts of thousands of chicken fans? Wouldn’t it be more of a conversation than a dictatorship? If it’s truly collective, why would there be dictators? And, come to think of it, don’t we, as large groups, change our opinions over time? Americans once ate more chipped beef on toast than chicken fingers. We thought the Edwardian S-bend corset and the mullet were a great ideas. We went from loving elephant leg jeans to skinny jeans. Collectively. Like an individual goes through phases of loving fly fishing or obsession with one particular series of books, societies go through a group fondness for orange or dark wood paneling.
At the risk of making this blog post nothing but rhetorical questions, why do we assume innovation is a characteristic of the individual? Why do we assign conformity to the collective alone?
I tried to imagine myself a hive-member. Many advantages came immediately to mind. I wouldn’t have had to gamble on picking a college major; I’d have access to the needs of the society around me to help find work that was needed. I wouldn’t be competing for the access to share my stories, I’d just tell them, and my hive would hear them and like them or not.
Competition is not just the “healthy” activity of small businesses or inventors, of students seeking academic awards. It’s also war. All around the world, humans are killing humans so that they can avoid sharing resources. Humans are defining others, drawing lines around some of their siblings and excluding others, to limit access to resources. Yet to a non-human observer, we are one species, one sprawling community, alike in our needs and wants and behaviors.
And humans can be so kind, too.
In 2023, I had to travel to New York City because I had to get a Visa to attend my first Hugo awards as a nominee, and as I sat in Central Park waiting for my appointment, admiring the unnatural warmth of the post-climate-change day, I saw a middle-aged man patiently leading a group of elderly people. He looked so happy. I dashed off four pages in my journal about him, imagining his life taking care of elders. I wondered why my science fiction stories weren’t as easy or as fun as simple character portraits. I enjoyed the flashes of lives I’d seen in short stories by Mary Grimm or Maureen McHugh, or the prose poems of Mary Biddinger.
I used to love to climb into a character’s head and walk around, show her worries and fears and daily chores, and then I’d show my work to science fiction writers and be told I had no plot, or perhaps I was “just” a poet. Because of this critique, I chose to wall off the desire to write the way that came most naturally, eschewing character-study and stream-of-consciousness in favor of sentences that “did something.” (My own term.) I began to focus on ideas, on technology, on concrete consequences and violent action.
Eventually, I got pretty good at it, good enough to feel its limitations. I opened up my old “plotless” stories and found them not so plotless, after all. Rather, they reflected my own sense of helplessness as a teen and early-twenties writer, and that point of view was uninteresting to the science fiction editor of the 90s and 2000s, who focused on competent characters moving the plot by choice.
At the young age of 47, I revised one of those 20-year-old “plotless” stories and sold it to a market paying the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s professional rate of eight cents a word. Not to brag. (Yes, to brag). In some ways, the genre itself has moved on from rigorously espousing action and certainty from its heroes, but also, I had learned how to structure a story through the mechanics of action, and this helped me see the similar structuring of non-action-based stories.
Part of the literary legacy my writing depends on is science fiction’s desire for logical, action-driven plots, but the origins of this project are the literary flash fiction piece, rooted in character and moment, and my desire to return to it, now that I have proven myself in the plot mines.
Which brings us back to the beginning: How better to show the individual in the collective of humanity than through a series of very short point of view pieces? The result is an introspective novella I wrote in thousand-word chunks around other projects. More than any other book I’ve written, I feel naked in its pages, exposing my deepest, most personal self. I felt free to do this because it was something I thought would never sell: too literary, too experimental.
Well, I sent it to Apex Books and they disagreed. I hope you enjoy, and be kind to my Space Cephalopods.
—-
Multitude: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Moseying Around Cincinnati’s Asian Food Festival
Posted on April 28, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 21 Comments
I still have more posts to do over my trip to Colorado (I cannot seem to get through that dang trip!), but I wanted to post about my experience at Cincinnati’s Asian Food Festival because it just happened this past weekend and I thought some fresh content was a good way to get me into a writing mood.
I was so excited for this festival. I had it on my calendar for two whole months prior because I couldn’t wait for it. I told multiple friends about it out of excitement. I ended up going with Kayla, Brad, and Bryant, and we went on Saturday, since it’s only a two-day festival and Saturday just worked better for everyone instead of Sunday.
The Cincinnati Asian Food Festival has been going on for fifteen years, with this past year surpassing 125,000 attendees, and they have over 60 different vendors. Most of these are food and drink vendors, but there’s also some other goods for sale and even a ZYN station set up, just in case you really needed your nicotine fix.
I am sad to say I didn’t have a super positive experience at the festival, despite my initial excitement for it. As you can imagine from hearing the words “125,000 attendees,” it was very crowded. On one hand, I’m happy that something like an Asian Food Festival would be a popular event and that all these businesses are getting a ton of traffic, but on the other hand, when you cram that many people into a three block radius, it gets very difficult to walk around.
Long lines impede the flow of foot traffic (what little flow there is) because they jut right out into the street everyone is trying to walk down, every line to order is at least twenty minutes long and then you have to wait to actually receive your food. If you’re with your friends you will absolutely lose them in the crowd unless you’re literally holding hands. You will get shoulder checked by multiple people and almost kick a pug you didn’t see. There is absolutely nowhere to sit and eat or even stand and eat. There’s also almost no shade.
For what it’s worth, these issues are not limited to just the Asian Food Festival. This is pretty much all food festivals ever. And I go to a fair amount of them. I’m honestly very tired of these issues, and I feel like the Asian Food Festival just so happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. You can’t have a literal food festival and then have nowhere for people to eat. You need to figure out better line control so people can actually differentiate between the line and the sea of people, and where the end of the line is.
At one point, I ordered something and then tried to move to the “pick up” area to wait for my food, but it was so intensely packed that I couldn’t move from the ordering spot. I tried to step to the side in the other direction but was met with another wall of people. The cashier ended up telling me to move, and I got frustrated because I was actively trying to, but there was nowhere to move to! Like, yes I am well aware of the line behind me, I promise I’m not just standing at the register for fun.
I mean look at this!
Imagine trying to get through this if you have a stroller, or are in a wheelchair? You’re gonna have to run someone over if you want through. There were so many points where literally just nobody was moving. Like a traffic jam, but just people standing completely still and there’s no way around anyone. So you just stand there and wait a few minutes until you can continue taking tiny-half-shuffle-steps and try not to step on the back of the shoes of the person in front of you.
Also, I know you’re probably thinking that I just happened to go during the busiest time. Well, it was open from 11am to 10pm on Saturday, and I got there at 11:45am and left at 7pm. So I was there for a hot minute. I’m sure 9pm might’ve been less crowded, but I’m also sure a lot of places would be sold out or closing down for the night by then to prep for Sunday.
Okay, so now that I’ve gotten my population qualms and lack of seating issues out of the way, let’s talk about the actual food and drinks I got.
Oh, I almost forgot, parking in a public lot nearby was $30. So, that fucking sucked. And, yes, there’s more financially savvy options of taking the bus or walking, but I live two full hours away from the Court Street Plaza where it was held, so yeah, I need somewhere to park my dang car.
It always takes me a couple passes of everything to figure out what I want to try first. I knew I wanted to start off with a coffee, and Lotus Street Foods had a Thai Iced Coffee for six dollars:
Bryant so kindly modeled my beverage for me because I was holding the actual food item I got from Lotus. Here’s their Asian fried jerky for nine dollars:
I actually really liked the flavor of the jerky. It had a sticky, sort of sweet glaze, but it was definitely hard to bite through and chew. Wasn’t quite the same texture as jerky but wasn’t the same texture as regular meat. The rice was unfortunately cold and extremely bland. Great flavor on the meat though!
For the coffee, I would’ve liked a little more condensed milk in it. It wasn’t quite creamy enough for my taste and was just a little too plain coffee-y flavored. I like a sweeter, creamier coffee though, so I know I’m not the best judge of coffee when it actually tastes like coffee. I just think the balance was a little off. And for what it’s worth this wasn’t my first time trying this drink, so I have some sweeter ones I’ve had in the past to compare it to.
Kayla really wanted to try the elote from LALO Chino Latino, especially since it wasn’t listed on their online menu that it was going to be offered:
She said it was totes delish last year, but sadly this elote missed the mark this time around so bad that she barely ate half. She let me try a bite and yeah, it was rough. The corn itself was cold and had no flavor, and was tough and almost rubbery in texture. It felt like something you shouldn’t actually be chewing on. The sauce was lackluster, and honestly if the corn itself isn’t good then the dish isn’t going to be good no matter what you put on top. So that was unfortunate.
However, I did get the Vietnamese Birria Beef Taco from them for six dollars, and their horchata coffee, also for six dollars:
I didn’t finish the Thai coffee, so I was hoping this horchata coffee was going to be the redeeming caffeine fix of the day. While I did like the horchata coffee better than my first coffee, I can confidently say it was totally lacking in horchata flavor. There were some notes of cinnamon in there, but I would not go so far as to label this as “horchata” coffee. Kayla got one too and agreed that it’s more like if you added a little bit of cinnamon to a regular latte. So that was a little disappointing.
As for the birria taco, it was so good! I know you can’t see the inside, but there was plenty of tender birria, and the cilantro and onion on top was nice and fresh. The consommé had a lot of good flavor, the outside was golden brown, and I was wishing I had got a second one.
The next place I stopped was Evolve Bake+Shop. Though it was only about 1:30, this stand was almost completely sold out of baked goods. By the time I did another once through the street, they were sold out and had gone back home to bake more goodies for Sunday. The owner was so sweet and apologetic, but honestly I’m thrilled for them that they sold out so quick. I managed to get my hands on two of their few remaining cookies: their gluten-free ube crinkle cookie, and their strawberry matcha oatmilk cookie for four dollars each:
I actually didn’t know until I looked them up on Instagram for this post, but all their baked goods are 100% vegan/plant-based! It’s nice to know there are some vegan options at the festival.
I shared the ube cookie with everyone, and the consensus was that it was pretty good, but the gluten-free aspect of it made the mouthfeel just a little bit odd. Gluten-free stuff tends to have that sort of sandy texture sometimes. But it was dense and had good flavor.
As for the strawberry matcha cookie, I had that all to myself (as I am writing this post) and it was the bomb dot com! It’s super moist and soft, and has a great balance of sweetness and earthy matcha flavor. I think these cookies were well worth the four dollars. Evolve also won Best Desserts for the third year! I’m glad for them.
For years, it has been a dream of mine to try Tang Hu Lu. If you don’t recognize the name, I’m willing to bet you’ll recognize it when you see it. It’s hard to mistake the glassy, shiny, iconic strawberries on a stick. I got this Tang Hu Lu from Tenji Sushi for ten dollars:
I was a tiny bit disappointed by the presentation of this, because the pictures they had of it showed it having mandarin orange slices and more grapes, so only getting one grape and no orange slices was a bit of a letdown, but honestly I can’t be too mad because these strawberries were so good. They were juicy and sweet and perfectly firm without being that hard unripe texture. If you’ve ever had an urge to eat glass shards and not get hurt, this is the perfect food for you. The glassy sugar coating shatters apart and crunches so damn good, sort of like rock candy. I do think ten dollars was a lot for four strawberries and one grape, but at least I finally got to try the street food I’ve always wanted to.
There was no shortage of different Asian cuisines that were represented at this festival, including Indian dishes. Kayla ended up getting these chicken lollipops and cheesy naan bites from Khaao Macha, who were the Best of Yums winner last year:
I didn’t try the chicken, but Kayla said it was good (I did sniff it and it smelled like Taco Bell’s mild sauce packets). I did try some of the naan and it was definitely yummy. I mean, you really can’t go wrong with cheesy naan. The chicken was ten dollars and you got two of them, and the naan was seven dollars. I would say the naan was sizeable for the price, and good for sharing.
At this point, we took a little break on food and watched some of the free entertainment on the main stage:
I think taiko drums are cool so this was really awesome to see, and then there was a Nepali dance performance right after this. It was very neat to see different culture’s traditions and performances. I like that the entertainment is free and they have such a variety of performances.
Back to snacking, I finally got to try my most anticipated item from the online vendor menu, Chhnagnh’s Pot Ang (roasted corn with sweet coconut sauce). I also tried their lemongrass beef skewer, and Kayla got their chicken skewer. The skewers were six dollars each and the corn was seven.
I can honestly say I’ve never had Cambodian food before, but this looked very promising. I absolutely loved the corn, it was roasted so perfectly and had great flavor. The coconut sauce wasn’t really giving coconut, but it was sweet and creamy so at least it added some texture and flavor, and weirdly enough the green onion went really well with it all. It just added a nice fresh component without overpowering anything flavor-wise.
Kayla let me try her chicken skewer and it was pretty good but the chicken was just a little dry. The beef was so delish though. It had just the right amount of lemongrass flavor in it without being overwhelming and was very tender and warm. This was my favorite savory food I tried all day.
The last thing I ate was from Fusako, and I hate to totally bash a place, but y’all. What I was presented with was egregious.
Here’s the menu on their truck:
This looked so good and impressive. Everything looked filling and decked out in garnishes and sauces and I had high hopes. I got the Mexican street corn gyoza, which was supposed to be crispy fried dumplings stuffed with sweet corn, with cotija cheese, a chili-lime aioli, lime zest, and green onion. Sounded amazing. Here’s what I got for eight dollars:
Two tiny gyoza, covered in a mess of sauce and corn, with no lime zest or green onions in sight. It looked so haphazardly thrown together. It was totally cold and the gyoza were tough instead of crispy. The entire thing lacked flavor, and the wait was so long. I was really disappointed.
I hated to leave on an L, but it was getting late.
Oh, and earlier in the day I had a really terrible yuzu mule for ten dollars.
In total, I spent $88 dollars before tip (I bought Kayla’s chicken skewer and a Thai coffee for Bryant), and usually I just chose the 15% tip option but I’m not gonna do all that math. We’ll just say around a hundred bucks.
Overall, I just wasn’t really impressed with the food or drinks I had gotten throughout the day. There were some good things but my experience overall with how crowded it was and the prices and lack of seating just kind of made for a less than ideal experience. They clearly need to open up more blocks for the festival to spread out.
I always get so excited for food truck festivals, and I keep being let down by them. Is it me? Am I the problem? Am I just not cut out for the food truck lifestyle? I hate waiting in lines and I hate standing to eat. I don’t prefer fast, casual service, and I usually like my food to come on real dishes. Oh no. Maybe it is me.
Huge shout out to the Library Square public library for keeping me from having to use a Porta-Potty. Very happy to use actual toilets and wash my fucking hands. And get some AC for a second.
I am glad I got to experience something new and hang out with my friends, but I think I won’t return next year unless they implement some kind of crowd management or cap tickets.
What sounded the best to you? Have you been to any of the previous years of the festival? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
Music For Your Monday: Tame Impala’s “Dracula”
Posted on April 27, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 6 Comments
I heard an absolute banger of an earworm this past week, and have been listening to it nonstop ever since. I want to bestow upon y’all Tame Impala’s new song, “Dracula.”
If you had asked me a week ago if I liked Tame Impala, I would’ve said I was completely indifferent about him and couldn’t even name a song from him. That is still true except for “Dracula.” This song is an absolute home-run of a bop, and there’s even a remix version with JENNIE which is also very good. Here’s both versions for your listening pleasure!
And the JENNIE version:
I have been debating which version I like better, and honestly it’s so hard to decide. I listen to both an equal amount, and both are great. Can’t go wrong with the original, but I love JENNIE’s ethereal voice and the harmonizing with Tame Impala.
My favorite part of the song is how they make “Dracula” rhyme with “spectacular.” Stellar stuff, really.
I hope you enjoy this bop, and that it helps you get movin’ and groovin’ through your next week!
-AMS
This Week’s Weird Sideswipe by Current Events
Posted on April 27, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 12 Comments
Apparently it’s true: The fellow who came to the Correspondent’s Dinner the other night with a bunch of weapons (and who, it should be noted, came nowhere near the president or anyone else in the ballroom), liked four Bluesky posts of mine in the last month. Which ones? I have no idea, although a cursory view of my last month of Bluesky posts shows nothing particularly spicy in a political sense. This does not surprise me, as I usually send all my really spicy political takes to Threads. Most of the last month of Bluesky posts for me were about JoCo Cruise, whacking on “AI,” photos of cats and Krissy, and talking about writing. Maybe this dude liked cat pictures? He’s arrested now and his Bluesky account is down in any event. We may never know.
My feeling about this is pretty much the same feeling I have about being in the Epstein Files: What the fuck, it’s not great, and also, it doesn’t actually have much to do with me, I’m mostly being sideswiped by this weird damn moment we’re in. I certainly don’t condone attempting to kill the president. Any president, and also, this one in particular. Among other things that would take away the fun of watching him one day rotting in prison along with the rest of his corrupt and horrible family and administration. Keep him alive! For justice!
I’m joking here about being on a federal watch list now, but I should be clear I’m pretty sure I already have an FBI file, and also that this FBI file is really super boring, so anything relating to this will almost certainly be funneled into that. I recently did an FOIA request for my file, so I suppose I will find out soon enough. In the meantime I’ll just have to imagine.
I’ve been informed that some of the folks associated with the Sad Puppies are trying to make hay of my tangential association to this fellow, which, I guess, they would, loud bad logic has always been their MO. My first thought is that when you’re related to an actual successful presidential assassin, a failed one liking your social media posts is weak sauce. My second thought was, huh, the right-wing chudguzzlers are whining about me again, whenever they do that something nice happens with my career, wonder what it will be this time. And indeed, today I got a foreign language offer on one of my books, which I happily accepted. It’s correlation, not causation, to be sure. But it sure does correlate a lot. So keep it up, right-wing chudguzzlers! We’re having our back deck rebuilt, I could use a few more foreign sales. Thanks in advance for your help.
— JS
An Anecdotal Observation About Career Longevity
Posted on April 24, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
As most of you know I spent much of this last week in Los Angeles, taking meetings with film/TV folks and pitching things to them, both from books I’ve written and ideas I have currently not connected to something I published. The meetings generally went very well — which isn’t necessarily the same as I’m walking away with a movie deal, there’s a lot of moving parts involved with that — and I came away with a lot of interest in the things I pitched and movement as my manager sent along materials. I gave some thought on why these meeting generated as much interest as they did.
There are a number of factors for this, but the one I want to bring to the fore at the moment is this one: When I sit down with these film/TV people and run an idea or concept past them, they one hundred percent know that the idea I’m running past them is my own, not generated by or written out with, some version of “AI.” From a practical point of view this means they know there is no issue with things like copyright (“AI” generated work is not copyrightable, and rights issues are a big deal for film/TV). From a creative point of view this means they know I have actually thought about the concept I’m bringing to them — that I know it inside and out and can build it out, dig deeper into it, and can improvise with the concept rather than just go with whatever an LLM spits out from a prompt.
In other words, they know I can do actual creative work, from ideation to production, and they know when they work with me they’re not only getting an idea but they’re also getting the actual working brain behind it. That brain can efficiently work the problem, whatever the problem might be. In 2026, this is a real and actual differentiator: A functional brain, and a reliable creative partner. I rather strongly suspect the further along we go in this new era of “cognitive offloading,” the more of a differentiator this will be.
This isn’t an anti-“AI” post. It is a “the more other people claiming to be writers use ‘AI’ the more secure my gig gets” post. If you want to use “AI” to generate ideas or create your prose or whatever, by all means, be my guest. The next twenty years of my career thanks you in advance for your choices.
— JS
Construction Time Again
Posted on April 24, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
Spoiler: We are not going to die. But we are going to get a new porch railing, as the much of the last one was blown out by 80 mph winds we had a few weeks ago. The porch railing was 30 years old and as our contractor told us, had support beams that were too small for the weight put on them anyway (this is additional proof that the fellow who had the house built, also its first owner, had contractors who cut occasional corners on him). This was one of the reasons the railing blew out in the first place. The railing we put up will be burly and strong.
Here’s what the porch looks like at the moment:
Those are the old support beams. Please enjoy your time with them. They are soon to go off to a farm upstate, to play with other retired porch support beams.
The same contractors who are redoing our porch are also going to be providing us a new back deck, because, again, after 30 years, the back deck is in need of repair, and also Krissy wants a cover for it, so her husband can sit out there with her and not have his pale little head turned a shocking shade of lobster red. So the whole back deck is going, replaced with one of her specification.
Needless to say, all of this is going to be loud. Fortunately I do have my office at the church to go to if I need to get work done without the sound of pneumatic hammering.
Also needless to say, all of this is going to be expensive. Please buy my books.
More pictures as construction progresses.
— JS
New Cover: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”
Posted on April 23, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
Because the song’s been rattling around my head for the last couple of days, particularly the Bryan Ferry cover version. So when I got home I thought I would give it a whirl. I hope you like it.
— JS
Getting Tatted On A Tuesday
Posted on April 22, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 12 Comments
My mom and I both had three tattoos. One of hers was from before my time, and she got two more while I was a kid. I got my first one at eighteen; a matching one with my two cousins who are practically like my sisters. It was all three of our firsts. My second one at twenty was not perfectly matching but very samesies with my lifelong bestie. My third was just for me, and it represents a promise to myself.
My mom and I always knew we wanted matching tattoos eventually, it just took us both four to get there. But we’re finally here, with the matching tats we’ve wanted for years. We just kept not getting them, and another year would pass. I asked her to look at artists, find some she likes, and I’d do the same and we’d pick our favorite. It never happened, and eventually I said, “mom, I booked us a consultation.” I was dragging her to get a tattoo because I knew if I didn’t, she’d never slow down on her own long enough to get one.
I follow a lot of tattoo artists on Instagram, but most are states or even whole countries away. However, there’s one in Dayton I’ve been following for about two years. After seeing his floral work time and time again and thinking how amazing it was, I finally just booked a consultation because I figured taking at least a step in that direction was a good idea. So, my mom and I headed to Truth and Triumph Tattoo in Kettering and met Kevin Rotramel.
My mom had sketched a design of a sunflower, and after talking with him about what we wanted and where we wanted it, he said he’d come up with a design that was close to the original my mom drew, but just more cleaned up and with more depth and detail. While we had always dreamed of color, we both knew yellow would look awful on our skin tones, and just went for greyscale, which our artist highly recommended anyway.
Before I show you how our tats turned out, I want to showcase some of Kevin’s work. I know I said his floral work is what made me decide to go to him, but check out this insane octopus:
Or this sick giraffe:
How about this super cool lantern?!
And this castle is incredible:
Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, but seriously Kevin’s work is so cool.
My mom went first, and I was starting to get nervous, but also was so excited to finally be doing this!
Finally, it was my turn:
Honestly it barely hurt for the first like half, but in the latter half of the tat I was definitely starting to get sensitive. I always seem to be chill for about an hour, and then right at the hour mark I’m like, “ooh okay I want to be done now.” But I hung in there!
And here they are, our matching sunflowers:
I am so happy with these! I appreciate Kevin for putting mine up a little bit higher than my mom’s so it wasn’t just straight up in line with my other two. I do love how my mom’s looks as her only back one, though. It’s framed so nicely! They’re the perfect size and aren’t too wild, just something pretty and simple to remind us of each other.
I absolutely love how they came out, and I’m just thrilled to finally have a matching tattoo with my mom. I know it’s corny, but sunflowers have always been a symbol of our love for each other, because we are each other’s sunshine, and we make each other happy when skies are grey. I love my mom and our tattoos, and I only wish we had gotten them sooner.
-AMS
The Big Idea: Samantha Mills
Posted on April 22, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 1 Comment
Family ties aren’t always a prettily done bow, sometimes they’re fraught with fraying ends and tricky knots, all woven together in the branches of family trees. Love ’em or hate ’em, everyone’s got parents, and everyone’s relationships with them are vastly different. Nebula Award-winning author Samantha Mills explores these varied relationships in her newest collection of short stories, Rabbit Test and Other Stories.
SAMANTHA MILLS:
Assembling a short story collection is an exercise in self-reflection. Material written over the course of years is placed side-by-side for the first time. Themes emerge. Preoccupations become clear. Where one story can be read in isolation and stand on its own terms, a collection can’t help but blare its author’s recurring fixations.
If there is one big fixation recurring throughout Rabbit Test and Other Stories, it is parenthood—specifically, the many ways that parent-child relationships buttress, cast shadows over, and intersect with so many other aspects of our lives.
Nearly every story here includes parents (usually mothers) and/or children (usually daughters). Frequently, this relationship is ruptured. Someone is missing, or dead, or dragged away by forces beyond their control. In “Strange Waters,” a fisherwoman is lost in time, struggling to get home to her children. In “Spindles,” a young fairytale princess has been separated from her mother during an alien invasion, and is struggling to make it to their rendezvous point before being captured. The settings change, the anxiety remains. What if, what if?
Parent/child separation is not something I keep writing about on purpose, but it’s a worry I can’t shake. When my first baby was born and then immediately whisked away for a 3-day stay in the NICU, I felt fear like nothing I had ever experienced before. I looked at that tiny face and felt the weight of the generations stretching behind me, the future spiraling uncertainly ahead of me, and I thought: oh no. I’m going to be scared for the rest of my life.
Weirdly, this was what leveled up my writing, though I didn’t realize it right away. About six months after giving birth, after years of fits and starts, I finally figured out how to craft a proper short story. The immensity and clarity of those new mom emotions were what tipped me over the line from knowing how to write a pretty sentence to knowing what I wanted to say.
Having kids forced me to think more deeply about my own childhood, both what I wanted to carry forward from it and what I wanted to leave behind. I was looking forward and backward at the same time—and god, I was so sleep-deprived! It was in this fevered state that I began to think about society generationally in a way I hadn’t before, reflecting on the ways that traditions or traumas (or traumatic traditions) are passed down from one generation to the next.
That tension—being caught between generations and deciding what, if anything, to do differently—surfaces in several of these stories. In “Rabbit Test,” the main character is prevented from getting an abortion by her parents; later, she has an opportunity to give her own daughter the choice she didn’t have. In “The Limits of Magic,” a repressive patriarchal state is passed down in the nursery by women who never saw a way out for themselves, and a new mother can’t bear to follow in their footsteps. In “A Shadow Is a Memory of a Ghost,” a pair of nemesis witches have to face the fact that, in trying to avoid the harms of their father, they’ve hurt their own children in entirely new ways.
There are good parents, here, too (the aforementioned fisherwoman; the fairytale queen; a tightknit family surviving in a mining colony company town in space), but even they make mistakes, because who doesn’t? What keeps drawing me back to this topic is the sheer variety of possible perspectives. I could write a thousand more stories and still not feel I’ve adequately conveyed the many facets of this experience. We do not all become parents, but we’ve all been children. We all spent our formative years utterly dependent on the adults in our lives—some up to the task, some not. It’s a bond that can be a comfort and joy for the rest of one’s life, or a fragile, fraught connection, or a disaster to be worked out in therapy for years to come, and whether we like it or not, this affects how we see ourselves and how we move through the world.
Now, don’t get me started on siblings.
Rabbit Test: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Still in Hollywood
Posted on April 22, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
Although this picture is actually of the Pershing Square Metro Line escalator, nowhere near Hollywood in terms of actual Los Angeles geography — look, we’re going for the metaphor here, okay. What I’m saying is that I am still out here, on my third day of meetings, all of which seem to be going pretty well. It’s nice to keep busy.
Nevertheless I’ll finally be on my way home tonight after a week away, and I’m looking forward to seeing family and pets and being a massive introvert in my comfy office chair for several days. Los Angeles is wonderful. Home is even better.
— JS
The Big Idea: Christian Bieck
Posted on April 21, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 2 Comments
Just because something is created with a younger audience in mind, doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed by all. After all, whomst among us doesn’t love the idea of magic cats? Author Christian Bieck is here today to show us the result of his NaNoWriMo creation, A Basquet of Cats.
CHRISTIAN BIECK:
At some point early in their writing journey, every writer learns that a good way to start a story is by having an interesting what-if. So one day a few years ago I asked my family, “What if cats had magic?”
“That’s not a what-if,” our son said. He’s a walking encyclopedia, and generally knows what he’s talking about. “Cats do have magic. They can turn invisible.”
“Mrt?” Rex, our ginger tabby, said from behind me.
I turned to him; he was sitting on the back rest of the sofa. “Where did you suddenly come from?” I asked.
“And they have short-range teleportation abilities,” my wife said.
“And some mind magic,” our son said.
Rex said nothing, but his smug look clearly told me I should have known that.
“I did know that,” I said to him. “So what do I do now?”
I’m going at this Big Idea essay all wrong, aren’t I? Let’s try again:
It all started with a family game of Microscope.
For the less nerdy among this blog’s readers, Microscope is a cooperative world-building/setting-creation game. Players create a fictional timeline, and then events and people within that timeline to any depth desired. Afterwards, you can jump in and roleplay a scene.
We set the game in an alternate Earth medieval France. And the “people” to cats—cats that have even more magic than our real-world ones. Our main character was the friend, companion, familiar, however you call it, of a human mage, the Archmage of France and Spain. (Mages obviously also existed at the time.) Other mages were visiting his tower with their own cat companions, and something happened to them: the first event. Now the cats had to find out what had happened. Murder mystery with cats!
We spent a pleasurable afternoon fleshing out the story, as it was, ending up with a stack of index cards, but without an answer to the question what happened to the mages. Didn’t matter, it was fun. That was in December 2019.
Fast forward to late October 2021. An online article reminded me of the annual writing event called National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to take up the challenge and restart my fiction writing after a ten year break. My first NaNo attempt in 2009 had been successful in that I did finish a novel, but less so in terms of quality of output. So around 2011, I had decided to put fiction writing on hiatus and focus on improving my craft through the non-fiction writing I was doing in my day job.
So, what to write for Nano 2021? What if I used that Microscope game as a basis for my novel? What if, on top of their normal, natural magic, there were special cats with special skills? With mind-based magic, a magic that was quite different from that of human mages. And a mind-to-mind connection to said humans. And what if something happens to the main character’s mage, and the protagonist and his friends have to set it right?
I couldn’t find the index cards from the game anymore, but I didn’t really need them. I had my main characters and the inciting incident in my head; the beats in 3 disaster structure were quickly sketched out, and the story of A Basquet of Cats practically wrote itself. With the active help of Rex, and our female gray tabby Neko, who helpfully provided dialogue. (Have you ever had that thing where you look at the companion animals living with you, and comic-style speech bubbles pop up over their head, telling you exactly what they would be saying in that moment? No? I am sure John knows exactly what I mean . . .)
Okay, maybe “wrote itself” is a bit of an exaggeration, because even for a fantasy novel you need a (to naive me) surprising amount of research if your setting is alternate history Earth. What time exactly? (13th century, when Aquitaine was English.) How does the magic work? (No spoilers, just that Basque is the human language of magic, and “Abracadabra” in Basque is “Horrela izango da!”) How close to real cats are my cats? (Close. But they are cats, and that has consequences for the way they see the world. And how they behave. And communicate. And, and, and.) Do other animals feature? (Yes! But the PoVs are all cats!)
And then there was the question: for what audience was I writing Basquet? A story with animal protagonists feels like a kids’ book, so that was my starting point. I ended up writing a story that I would have wanted to read as a teenager, and be happy to re-read at any point later in life: an adventure story, a story of friendship, of responsibility, and of learning to value the good things in life and in relationships. My publisher calls it “For young adults and animal lovers of all ages”, and he’s exactly right.
I dream that Rex and Neko would also read and be pleased with the story.
(Full disclosure: I made up that dialogue at the beginning. But it could totally have happened that way; after all, real-life cats do have magic. Don’t they?)
A Basquet of Cats: Amazon US|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Linktree
Read an excerpt.
Old Man’s War Series a Hugo Finalist in the Best Series Category
Posted on April 21, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
This is fabulous news: The entire Old Man’s War series, from OMW to The Shattering Peace, has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo this year. What a lovely accolade. Here is the entire category:
- Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey US; Orbit UK)
- October Daye by Seanan McGuire (Tor US; DAW)
- Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Tor US; Tor UK)
- The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison (Tor US; Solaris UK; Subterranean)
- The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone (Tor; Tordotcom)
- White Space by Elizabeth Bear (Saga Press; Gollancz)
And here is the full list of finalists for this year. In my category as well as in others are writers and editors and artists and others who I like and admire. This is an excellent year for the Hugos, and I’m delighted to be part of it.
Also, yes, I will be attending Worldcon this year. In addition to anything else, I am DJing a dance!
— JS
When the Moon Hits Your Eye the Winner of the Astra Book Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Posted on April 21, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
The Astra Awards are an award given out by the Hollywood Creative Alliance, and in previous years have been primarily for film and television, but this year they have branched out into books as well, across seventeen categories including Best Science Fiction Novel. And what do you know, in this inaugural year for the book awards, When the Moon Hits Your Eye was the winner. I am, of course absolutely delighted.
The awards were livestreamed, which I have posted above, and you can see my acceptance speech starting at 28:56 (if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the full list of finalists and winners is available here). In my speech I specifically thank my editors Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Mal Frazier, as well as my agent Ethan Ellenberg and my manager Joel Gotler, but also generally everyone who worked on the book up and down the production chain. There would be no book without their work.
In any event, how cool is this? It’s made my day. Winning awards is fun.
— JS
The Big Idea: Dan Rice
Posted on April 20, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi
When we explore our minds, our thoughts, and who we are as a person, we don’t always like what we find. Author Dan Rice takes a deep dive into the idea of accepting one’s true self, even if some facets are uglier than others. Grab a mirror for some self-reflection and follow along in the Big Idea for his newest novel, The Bane of Dragons.
DAN RICE:
Sometimes you have to go down the rabbit hole.
The challenge I faced when writing The Bane of Dragons was to send Allison on an adventure with a climax that ended her story and the series with a bang instead of a fizzle. Luckily, Allison had rabbit holes to go down, one that she had explored many times before and another she had only ever gazed upon.
The rabbit hole Allison spends much time spelunking is her inner self. In those dark tunnels she wrestled with, negotiated with, and sometimes was defeated by her literal internal monster that always pined for escape and to supplant her. This device provides ample ongoing conflict throughout the series after the monster wakes up in the first book, Dragons Walk Among Us. Allison’s titanic clashes with her inner monster, which she comes to understand is another facet of herself, mirrors the struggles young adults face as they pass from adolescence to adulthood, albeit in dramatic and often bloody fashion.
The other rabbit hole Allison must explore is the slipstream, described as a superhighway through the multiverse. Since encountering this pathway to alternate dimensions in the first book, she has dreamed of traveling it, and, while both sleeping and awake, has been commanded by a stentorian voice to enter the slipstream. It is something she both yearns for and fears. In The Bane of Dragons, it’s a yearning she must give in to and a fear she must face. The only way to protect everyone she loves is to travel the slipstream and discover exactly what’s waiting for her on the other side.
What Allison and her motley companions discover are strange worlds and monstrous aliens. They are captured by angry, terrestrial octopi, whom they attempt to negotiate with, with nebulous results. Instead of taking the fight to the monsters threatening Earth, Allison is handed over as a prisoner to her nemesis, General Bane. But not all is what it seems on the surface, and even the deadly General Bane, with whom Allison shares a kinship by way of her inner monster, is a prisoner of sorts, pining for freedom.
To free Bane and hopefully protect everyone she loves, Allison must finally come to ultimate terms with her inner monster. In the end, that means looking into the mirror and accepting herself, both the human and the monster with its fangs and claws and transgressive desires. Only by becoming one with her monster can she communicate to Bane and others like him how to break the bonds that hold them.
Just like in real life, young adult characters sometimes need to go down the rabbit holes, both those that spark curiosity and those that cause dread. It’s the only way to learn, mature, and find self-acceptance.
—-
The Bane of Dragons: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-A-Million
Happy Birthday Krissy
Posted on April 18, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 69 Comments
Shown here in the midst of prepping our taxes for our accountant, not this week but a couple of months ago, because she’s organized about that, and that is, in fact, one of the many, many things I love about her.
Krissy and I actually do a terrible job of being in the same place on her birthday. Last year she was in California visiting her family, and this year I am California for the LA Times Festival of Books, where I have a panel and at least two signings tomorrow. Last year I made up for my absence by getting her real estate. I think this year I am likely just to take her to dinner when I get back. You can’t do real estate every year.
Every year, however, I so incredibly grateful that this amazing person chooses to live her life with me, and I make it my business to let her know how much I love, value and respect her. She is the reason I get to live the life I do. That’s a pretty big deal.
If you wish to wish her happy birthday in the comments, that would be fabulous.
— JS
The Big Idea: Mallory Kass
Posted on April 17, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 3 Comments
The words “stress-free” and “wedding” aren’t seen in a sentence together unless the word “not” preludes them. The copious amount of stress and issues surrounding weddings fascinated author Mallory Kass, and she began to ask the question of why people do this to themselves. In her exploration of such answers, she wrote her newest rom-com novel, Save the Date. RSVP your invite to her Big Idea, and bring a plus one.
MALLORY KASS:
Why do weddings cause temporary insanity in otherwise rational people? Take a look around you. See that woman reading Middlemarch on the subway, the one who just smilingly offered her seat to an elderly man? In ten minutes, she’s going to text her sister, “Maddie’s dress is giving whore-of-honor instead of maid-of-honor.” Then there’s your affable co-worker, Brad, famous for his pivot tables. Over the weekend, he told his daughter that if he can’t invite all nineteen members of his pickleball league, he’s not paying for her wedding.
What turns these celebrations of love into referendums on our taste, friendships, finances, and even our bodies? That’s one of the questions I wanted to explore in Save The Date, a romantic comedy-of-manners about a lavish wedding in Maine that goes very, very wrong. Because it’s not just the bride and groom whose emotions go haywire in the lead up to marital bliss. Guests participate in their own small but significant melodramas: they navigate the fraught politics of the plus-one, take desperate measures to squeeze into a special outfit, and scour social media to see if one’s ex might show up with a date.
I’ve had plenty of opportunities to ponder these questions. I attended more than twenty weddings solo before I met my husband. There were times when I was literally the only single guest. Once, my friend’s very kind, very drunk mother shouted to a large crowd, “Who’s going to walk Mallory back to the hotel? She’s ALL ALONE!”
I generally enjoyed myself at these events, especially while dancing with friends, shouting the lyrics to cheesy pop hits from our childhood. But at some point, the band would inevitably transition to a slow song and everyone would drift towards their dates like magnets, leaving me to scurry off the dance floor. That’s when I’d refill my drink and take refuge in a shadowy corner where I could observe the spectacle unnoticed. I’d clock the bride’s single sister’s slightly-too wide-smile and slightly-too-short dress. I’d eavesdrop on conversations criticizing the décor, the food, and the bridesmaids’ botched Botox. I’d note the panic on men’s faces as their girlfriends pronounced what they’d do differently at their receptions. And I’d wonder why weddings push everything to the limit, from our relationships to our budgets—and in the case of my breakdancing cousin-in-law—our kneecaps.
And so, Save the Date was born—the product of my champagne-induced melancholia, fascination with social dynamics, and worshipful reverence for movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding, Father of the Bride, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. It follows the bride, Marigold, who’s not sure if she’s marrying Jonathan for love or to prove that she’s loveable; Natalie, her maid-of-honor, who’s terrified to admit to herself—let alone anyone else—that she still pines for Jonathan, and Marigold’s older sister Olivia, who’s always cleaned up Marigold’s messes and may have finally had enough this time.
The central challenge was making each woman’s observations feel honest and specific to them. I knew if I wasn’t careful, my complicated feelings about weddings would come through at a higher volume than those of my characters. I had to ensure my social anxiety didn’t seep into “It Girl” Marigold, or that my thoughts on the excesses of late-stage capitalism didn’t bias Olivia the corporate lawyer. (I channeled those into Olivia’s love interest, Zack.) And I had to let poor Natalie make mistakes that I (hope) I’d never make myself.
Almost as difficult was painting an entertaining yet passably realistic portrait of Marigold’s rarefied world, one full of yachts I’ve never sailed on and private jets I’ve never boarded. Like Natalie, though, I spent hours tutoring the children of Manhattan’s .00001 percent in apartment buildings with heavier security than many embassies, and townhouses with multiple Picassos. I’ve witnessed how that level of wealth warps anyone’s conception of reality, which made it the perfect backdrop for the disastrous wedding that brings out the very best and the very worst in my characters.
I’m not sure Save the Date fully answers the questions that inspired it, but I had a lot of fun examining them. And I hope you have a blast reading it whether you’re coupled-up, navigating the perils of online dating, stuck in a situationship, or relishing your singlehood. I’ve been there, and I’m raising a glass to you in solidarity!
Save The Date: Amazon|Barnes and Noble|Bookshop|The Ripped Bodice
Author’s socials: Instagram
Last Night in Decatur
Posted on April 17, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 5 Comments
A couple of people showed up to see Brandon Sanderson and me have a chat.
Let’s be clear these are mostly Brandon’s folks; I was a value-add here. A very nice value add to be sure! But definitely the support act. Brandon and I have been pals for a couple of decades now and he used the event as an excuse to for us to catch up. I was happy to do it, because a) I wanted to catch up too, and b) I knew our chat would be a lot of fun. And it was a lot of fun, at least from my point of view, and it was especially delightful to see how Brandon connects with his fans. There’s a lot of mutual appreciation going on there.
Now Brandon’s off to JordanCon and I am off to Los Angeles, for the LA Times Festival of Books and then meetings next week. I’m glad we got the chance to catch up, in front of an audience and also away from it. Life keeps us all busy, clearly. You take your moments where you can get them.
— JS
The Big Idea: Cameron Johnston
Posted on April 16, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
The Scientific Method is immensely helpful, but so is literal magic. Would the power of science prove to be more powerful than the power of wizardry? It’s tough to say, but author Cameron Johnston certainly speculates on the idea in the Big Idea for his newest novel, First Mage on the Moon. Read on to see how the Space Race might’ve happened with the help of a wizard’s staff.
CAMERON JOHNSTON:
For a bunch of wise folk that meddle with reality and break the rules of standard physics on a regular basis, wizards and mages in fantasy media seem a remarkably uncurious lot. Sometimes magic users are far more interested in other dimensions and eldritch creatures than in the mortal world they themselves inhabit. How many of them look up at the stars and wonder what they are, or gaze at the moon and ponder what that shining silver disc really is…and how they might get there?
First Mage On The Moon was born from a single Big Idea (OK, OK…the idle thought of a fantasy-fan): Without science, how would wizards describe gravity? Inevitably, that grew arms and legs and tentacles and thingamabobs into: What would they make of outer space? How would they breathe in a spacecraft when they don’t even know what oxygen is or why air ‘goes bad’. What about aerodynamics? and a whole host of other questions I didn’t then have answers for. When you only have a magical understanding of the world and the closest thing to science is the semi-mystical and secretive practice of alchemy, well, then things get complicated if you want to build something to visit the moon. Magic is not going to solve everything if you fly straight up and try to hit a moving object like the moon, and don’t factor in the calculations for orbits, gravity… or indeed the speed/friction of re-entry.
Science is an amazing and collaborative process and Earth’s 20th-century Space Race was a species-defining moment, but what if that happened in a fantasy world of mages, golems, vat-grown killing machines and grinding warfare. What if a group of downtrodden mages sick of building weapons of mass destruction for their oligarch overlords decided to go rogue and divert war materials into building a vessel to go to the moon, the home of their gods, and ask for divine intervention in stopping the war. When you have no culture of shared science, where do you even begin?
All those thoughts and ideas stewed away in the back of my brain while I was writing my previous novel, The Last Shield. As all authors know, there comes a stage of writing a book when your brain goes “Ooh, look at the shiny new thing!” Very helpful, brain, coming up with magical rocket ships when I’m trying to write a book set in a fantasy version of the Scottish Bronze Age – thanks very much! That idea of wizard-science and magical engineering lodged there, immovable, and my next book just had to become First Mage On The Moon. Which was handy, as I was contracted to write another standalone novel.
While the US/USSR Space Race and modern science of our very own Earth was inevitably a huge influence on my novel, so too were the theories and writing of its ancient thinkers. Around 500 BCE, Pythagoras proposed a spherical world, and Aristotle later wrote several arguments for the same theory, such as ships sailing over the horizon disappearing hull-first and different constellations being visible at different latitudes (all of which may have given the Phoenician sailors and navigators certain thoughts too). And then comes Eratosthenes, Chief Librarian of Alexandria, and a very smart dude who was able to calculate the circumference of Earth by using two sticks in two locations and comparing the angles of their shadows. If those ancient Earth scholars could calculate such things, then surely fantasy mages, with all the magic at their disposal, could do more than fling fireballs at each other. There had to be some among them with the desire to explore beyond the bounds of myth and magic, gods and monsters, and given the opportunity to work with like-minds to build something that has never been done before, they would surely take it…despite the risks.
Found family, magical engineering, and mad ideas of actual science in a magical world all came together to form First Mage On The Moon. As much as I love my morally grey characters in realms of swords and sorcery, it was deeply satisfying to write something that little bit different, a hopeful story about human ingenuity in an increasingly fraught world.
First Mage On The Moon: Amazon|Amazon UK|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Waterstones
View From a Hotel Window, 4/15/26: Atlanta Metro
Posted on April 15, 2026 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
A very arboreal view today. It’s a little misleading, since if you look left from here you’ll find a not unbusy street. Still, it would be churlish to complain about a bit of green in one’s window.
I’m in the area for an event tomorrow in which I am in conversation with Brandon Sanderson, prior to him spending time at JordanCon, and me at the LA Times Festival of Books (which will not be in the Atlanta area, but in Los Angeles). Our event is already sold out, so if you missed getting tickets, I’m sorry. Perhaps there will be a audio or video recording of it at some point.
And what about today? Well, I have a hotel room to myself and no one expecting anything of me until tomorrow afternoon around this time. I think I’ll take a nap and then see where the day takes me.
— JS
The Big Idea: A.Z. Rozkillis
Posted on April 15, 2026 Posted by Athena Scalzi 1 Comment
When there’s a million and one paths in front of you, how do you know which decision to make? What if you don’t even have control over which one you end up on? Author A. Z. Rozkillis explores the idea of every decision we make, or don’t make, sending us on different paths throughout multiple realities. Journey on through the Big Idea for her newest novel, Fractal Terminus.
A. Z. ROZKILLIS:
In an infinite universe there are infinite possibilities. It’s a concept that has enamored me for decades, has led me into a career focused on space exploration and has fueled my endless love of science fiction. And that is probably why it is the Big Idea behind Fractal Terminus.
When I intentionally ended my first book, Space Station X, on a cliffhanger, I never truly intended to write a sequel. I liked the idea of leaving the speculation up to the reader about could possibly happen after an event like that. More to the point, I didn’t think I deserved to be the person to establish, canonically, what the future would hold for my main characters. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the same could be said for the space between my ears. So, I figured if I don’t want to write one follow-on outcome, and if I preferred the idea that any possibility could be canon, then why don’t I write a book where I do just that? Where I explore numerous possible outcomes from one, singularly massive event.
Fractal Terminus really digs down into the idea that with every flip of a coin, with every path chosen, with very outcome realized, there exists a separate universe (or infinite separate universes) in which the an alternate outcome could occur. I know it’s not a new idea, its just one I have felt, personally, immensely drawn to. The universe is so unfathomably endless, with there being no way for us to truly understand how vast it is. I feel that it is entirely plausible that somewhere, at the far reaches, there exists a reality in which I chose to study animal husbandry and not aerospace engineering. Or maybe I decided to eat that questionable leftover sushi rather than pitching it when I found it at the back of the fridge. Who knows? If the universe has no limit, then maybe every single possible reality is just wrapped around us.
For my characters, their personal universe is expanding too. My first book had a very narrow focus by design, because I had a main character who had reduced her whole universe down to the same five concentric metal rings of her space station. Jax refused to consider possibilities outside of that limited existence until she was forced to. Then she swallowed her pride and took the leap of faith on her feelings for Saunders. It could have gone either way, but canonically it worked out for Jax. Then they took a different plunge. Now Jax and Saunders are suddenly flung into a situation where they have to expand their view, because new experiences have that habit of broadening your perspective. This Space Station is no longer a cramped, desolate and lonely existence, but a cramped, desolate and overcrowded experience, where Jax has to dust off her social skills and mingle in order to survive. And as she lets her universe expand around her to include the souls locked in fate along side her, infinitely more universe opportunities unfurl.
Some of these are fates she realizes she can control. She can see where her actions can lead her and Saunders and she can tell when it might not be the best path. But more often than not, Jax and Saunders are at the mercy of the universe itself. Nature is a cold and uncaring master, and sometimes the coin flip is not even remotely something anyone can control.
We face these moments every day. Will this person I am talking to be an ally? Will they be my demise? Will I regret this interaction or not? Is there, even remotely, anything I could have done to change this outcome? There isn’t really a way for anyone to know, so you might as well take the chance. As the universe is expanding rapidly on a macro scale, we are, all of us, every day, making small decisions that expand our microcosm just as rapidly. Jax and Saunders expand their view on life to include the lives around them, while the universe expands to encompass every possible, even far-fetched idea of an outcome that could ever be considered. And that’s the big idea. The universe can you send you on an infinite number of outcomes, and you’ll never know which one you are in. So you are just going to have to take it on faith that you are on the right track.
Fractal Terminus: Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Space Wizards
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying