Clarion Instructor John Scalzi Discusses the Writing Process

John Scalzi is a strange, scary person. I mean that as a compliment. In his latest novel, Fuzzy Nation, he “reboots” a 1962 novel, Little Fuzzy, written by H. Beam Piper—a novel that was nominated for the Hugo award—and using the same basic plot and characters, retells the story of the discovery of a sentient race of cat-like creatures on a planet a major corporation has claimed as its own and is strip-mining for its resources. Redoing classics, it seems to me, is generally not an especially good idea. We’ve all seen movie remakes that were, at best, pale reflections of the original, although one could argue that at times it works, as in the recent remake of True Grit. And Scalzi’s done this before. Zoe’s Tale, published in 2008, is a retelling of one of his own novels (The Last Colony, published a year earlier) from a different character’s perspective. I’m still not sure exactly why he felt the need to do that (perhaps because he loves pushing boundaries), but it worked in an odd way because Scalzi is a talented writer and storyteller. Here, it’s almost as if he’s channeled one of the great writers from the Golden Age of science fiction that ended in the early 60s, writers such as Anderson, Asimov, Bester, Blish, Campbell, Clement, Heinlein, Pohl, Simak, Sturgeon, and so many others, including Piper. I remember the excitement of discovery when I first encountered those authors. For me this novel evokes a feeling of déjà vu, of being 12 again, of sitting at the counter of our local cafe on a red vinyl stool, drinking cherry Cokes and reading A Canticle for Liebowitz for the first time. And yet, with its examination of greed and corporate callousness, Fuzzy Nation is as compelling as current Wall Street headlines. So, why has Scalzi done this? Because it seemed, as he says on his blog, "like it could be a fun thing to do." And it is. Fuzzy Nation is great entertainment, with a complex, fully realized protagonist and compelling writing; I tried to put it down several times (sleep is a good thing), but ended up reading it in one sitting. You’ll enjoy this novel. And if reading Fuzzy Nation encourages you to find and re-read Little Fuzzy or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress or Galactic Derelict or The High Crusade or any of those wonderful Golden Age novels that are, sadly, too often out of print, then so much the better.  
-- Guest Reviewer Terry Hertzler

How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history? I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old. Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try to make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes. It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce--and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.