Scalzi << SKAHL tsee, >> John (1969-…), is a popular American science-fiction writer. Scalzi is best known for his ”Old Man’s War” series. The books in the series are set in the future. They largely follow the adventures of a soldier named John Perry as he meets, and sometimes fights, alien life throughout the universe. Readers and reviewers have praised the stories for their exciting action and humor. The series takes its name from the first novel, Old Man’s War. Scalzi originally issued it on his website on the internet. It was published as a hardcover book in 2005. Scalzi continued the series with the novels The Ghost Brigades (2006), The Last Colony (2007), and Zoe’s Tale (2008); the short novel The Sagan Diary (2007); and four short novels collected as The End of All Things (2015). Lock In (2014) is a thriller set in the near future after a virus kills 400 million people throughout the world. Scalzi wrote a sequel, the near-future thriller Head On (2018).
Scalzi’s first novel was Agent to the Stars. It was also first issued on his website and was published in hardcover in 2005. The book is a humorous account of a Hollywood talent agent with an alien from another planet for a client. The Android’s Dream (2006) is a suspenseful novel that pokes fun at false patriotism and government officials. Redshirts (2013) is a comic novel about a group of young men aboard a spaceship who learn they are part of a television show that resembles the popular TV series Star Trek. In the short novel The Dispatcher (2017), Scalzi created a society of the near future in which death is not permanent. The Collapsing Empire (2017) and its sequels, The Consuming Fire (2018) and The Last Emperox (2020), make up a trilogy about an interstellar empire called the Interdependency. In The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022), a former delivery driver’s new job turns out to be on an alternate Earth inhabited by giant animals.
Scalzi has written a large amount of nonfiction, including several volumes in the “Rough Guides” series of travel and reference books. They include The Rough Guide to Money Online (2000), The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies (2005), and The Rough Guide to the Universe (two volumes, 2003 and 2008). Scalzi’s You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to the Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing (2007) is a highly personal discussion of writing as a career.
John Michael Scalzi II was born on May 10, 1969, in Fairfield, California. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Chicago in 1991. Scalzi was the motion-picture critic for The Fresno Bee newspaper in the 1990’s. He also writes the blog (personal web log) “Whatever.”
