John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is best known for taping bacon to his cat
, though his science-fiction writing comes a close second.
Scalzi is primarily known for three series and several standalone novels:
- the Old Man's War series, a series that started as military SF before evolving into a space opera
- The Interdependency series, another space opera
- the Lock In series, an SF / police procedural Genre Mashup
- Fuzzy Nation, an affectionate H. Beam Piper tribute
- Redshirts, a comedy of SF television
- The Kaiju Preservation Society, a cheerful parody of, well, Kaiju stories.
Additionally, he has published other comedic sci-fi: Agent to the Stars and The Android's Dream. Agent to the Stars is available for free on Scalzi's website. He also wrote The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. It's an April Fools' joke. That was nominated for a Hugo Award.
Scalzi was a creative consultant for the TV show Stargate Universe. He has also written audiobooks (The Dispatcher series), serialized e-books, and four collections of his essays from his blog, Whatever.
Scalzi has won dozens of awards, is frequently on bestseller lists, and received a well-publicized large contract from his publisher in 2015 covering 10 years and thirteen (!) books. He is a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In his younger days he was known for being Extremely Online and a frequent target of trolls. He still maintains an active Twitter account and blog.
Four of his short stories, "When The Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story", "Missives From Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results", "Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind from the Era of Humans for the First Time", and "Automated Customer Service" were adapted into individual episodes of the animated anthology Love, Death & Robots.
Works by John Scalzi with their own trope pages include:
- Agent to the Stars
- The Android's Dream
- The Dispatcher
- The Interdependency series
- Lock In
- Old Man's War series
- Redshirts
- Fuzzy Nation
- The Kaiju Preservation Society
- Starter Villain (2023)
Other works by John Scalzi provide examples of:
- Continuity Reboot: Scalzi is rebooting the H. Beam Piper "Fuzzy" series, starting with Fuzzy Nation, a re-imagining of Little Fuzzy.
- Line to God: His blog, Whatever.
- This Is My Human: A delightful example in his short story The Other Large Thing.
