This weekend Locus Magazine announced the winners of this year’s Locus Awards. John Scalzi’s novel, The Kaiju Preservation Society, won the award for best science fiction novel. Shortly after the announcement, Scalzi took some criticism online for the quality of his writing. Apparently people don’t think he does it right, that his writing is too simple and informal to be taken seriously, or something.
Now, I read and enjoyed Kaiju and recommend it. It’s a fun light read. I don’t know if I would have chosen it over some of the other nominees, notably Adrian Tchaikovsky or Alastair Reynold’s entries, which are both outstanding mind bending science fiction. (I would have reviewed Reynold’s entry, Eversion, after I read it, but couldn’t see how to write anything substantive about it without spoilers.)
That said, I wouldn’t have shorted Kaiju due to the writing. I’ve always enjoyed Scalzi’s writing style, which is exceedingly easy to parse. I think his detractors underestimate just how attractive that is to many readers, and how much it plays into making him a bestselling author. His tales tend to be light hearted, often funny reads, albeit with a serious core to the story. They’re usually not particularly deep, but they’re almost always entertaining, and I can typically burn through them in a night or two. As Scalzi himself noted on Twitter, anyone who thinks that kind of writing is easy should give it a try.
More generally, I wish more writers, particularly science fiction authors, paid more attention to the benefits of making their fiction easier to read. I think a lot can be learned from studying writers like Scalzi, Andy Weir, and other bestselling authors who write prose that’s almost effortless to parse.
But the reason for this post is to call your attention to Scalzi’s latest effort, a novella called Slow Time Between the Stars. It’s part of a collection published at Amazon called The Far Reaches. I haven’t read the other entries yet, but they include stories from James S. A. Corey and Ann Leckie, both authors I’ve recommended here before. The whole series is available for free under Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime. (Or for what looks like a nominal price if you don’t have those.)
Slow Time is about an AI launched on a slow mission to the stars. It seems to assume we won’t be able to get there any faster than our current probes. The entire thing is basically an interior monologue and is far more serious and philosophical than Scalzi’s usual fare. I’m pairing up mentioning this with the Locus fracas, because I think this story shows how serious Scalzi can go, when he chooses to.
(For another example of a serious deviation from his usual, check out the novella: The God Engines. Although be warned that it’s not a happy tale.)
What do you think of authors who are easy to read? Too much catering to the illiterate masses? Not serious fiction? Or do you agree with me that there should be more of it?
SelfAwarePatterns 
I am still working my way through Eversion, on your recommendation I believe and, well, I am a Reynolds fa. And I firmly believe that authors fall into two categories: those who write beautiful works, and those who tell ripping good stories. To find an author who does both is very, very rare (Patrick Rothfuss, maybe, but he is still out so far). John Scalzi tells ripping good tales and should not be selected when you want to read prose that is so beautiful that it brings tears to your eyes. Same for Martha Wells and any number of others (Jack Vance being #1 in my book). To criticize him for something he doesn’t do is incoherent, but then I think that the awards are partly to blame. Exactly what is the basis for selecting a winner? A little like the Academy Awards, popularity and beauty often conflict.
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Hope you enjoy Eversion. It’s been several months since I read it, but I remember enjoying the Russian doll aspect of the story.
I’ve never been particularly attracted to ornate beautiful language (which is probably why poetry rarely does anything for me), but I’m onboard with all the rest, particularly with Vance being the king of ripping good stories. Although the language in Vance’s dialog is pretty legendary. Most writers who try to emulate it only make us miss Vance.
Yeah, awards are always popularity contests, frequently political ones. Often authors win because of who they are, or for particular political or social implications of their story. It’s why I usually don’t pay too much attention to awards. Most of the stuff I like doesn’t tend to win the big ones.
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“Slow Time”, cool. I wrote the beginnings of a similar theme however I determine that a singular AI would go insane. And so chose a Janus concept, one AI ran the ship, one AI ran the biological system, the one where embryos of a millions species and all the biome stuff was being shipped as the payload. I think you prolly read that, as a matter of fact.
Scalzi has a WP blog, and his twitter feed is pretty entertaining. Seems to be a pretty humble guy. I wish him all the best.
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I’m sure I did read it. I actually wrote my own somewhat similar story a while back, although never published it anywhere. Maybe someday.
The story addresses the going insane issue with a sequence where the AI explains it has no issue with doing nothing for long stretches of time, tens of thousands of years in some cases. Although at some point this becomes the same as going to sleep with a low intelligence monitoring system in place to wake you up under certain conditions. I do wonder about the feasibility of a system spending tens of thousands of years in interstellar space, with its constant bath of radiation, continuing to work without a lot of ongoing maintenance.
I wouldn’t go with “humble” for Scalzi, but he has his good qualities, and entertaining is definitely one of them.
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Fair enough. Maybe not humble. But not pretentious by any means.
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I have to agree with Scalzi: writing stuff that’s easy to read is really hard work. Definitely not something to scoff at.
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I think people have a tendency to assume that something easy to read must be easy to write.
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