Weekend Culture I: Scalzi

This past weekend I went out to two local cultural events.  This is a brief report on the first.

Last Friday I went to the Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Noble to hear author John Scalzi talk.  His new book Lock In was released in August and he was on a book tour.  I've been a Scalzi fan for years, since a friend loaned me a copy of Old Man's War. (If you haven't read that book I highly recommend it).  Then he put a modern spin on a science fiction classic that I read in college, Little Fuzzy by H. Bean Piper.  Scalzi rewrote it as Little Fuzzy.  

This was my first real author talk.  I've heard people (mostly politicians) who have written books talk, but a book tour talk is a little different.  Scalzi read from a new book that he's working on.  The excerpt showed his flair for humor.  He asked that the audience not tape his reading and that all we say about the new book excerpt is that the scene he read is of a group of people sitting around a table and it was awesome.  Those are his words but I'd agree with them.

Scalzi's blog has some authorized videos from the book tour.

In the Q&A section someone asked him about the recent furor in the videogame community over threats to two women writers.  Scalzi gave a very thorough answer.  He has long been an advocate for women writers and for women in the sci fi community generally.  A few years ago he said he would not attend or speak at any conference that did not have a clearly stated harassment policy, complete with a reporting procedure.  Conferences that had been dragging their feet on this for some time suddenly came up with such policies.

I bought a copy of Link In the week it came out but haven't had a chance to read it yet.  Generally speaking, anything he writes is good.