Tag Archives: John Scalzi

Looking Back, My 2021 Predictions Assessed

Another year, another set of (mostly) failed predictions. You’d think I’d give this up! At the end of 2020, I used special tarot cards to make predictions about science fiction books to appear in 2021. Let’s see how those prophecies panned out.

  • Prediction: Disease stories. Inspired by the COVID-19 virus, there will be stories of even deadlier diseases, perhaps intelligent diseases. I see stories of pandemics, extreme isolation, and how characters deal with mass death.
    • Assessment: I didn’t see a lot of such books, but The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird is about a virus that kills only men.
  • Prediction: Rebirth. I foresee stories of characters getting back to normal after pandemics, stories about the rebirth of society.
    • Assessment: Perhaps my prediction for this was a year early. The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente is about rebirth of civilization after climate change and pollution, not disease.
  • Prediction: Private Space Exploration. Inspired by Space-X, stories of space travel will involve companies, not governments.
    • Assessment: I saw no real evidence of this.
  • Prediction: Humor. There will be a surge in funny scifi, mainly because we can all use it right now.
    • Assessment: I saw no real evidence of this.
  • Prediction: Artificial Intelligence. Writers in 2021 will continue to explore this topic as they have for decades, but with greater urgency as computer scientists get closer and closer to developing Artificial General Intelligence, and perhaps Artificial Super Intelligence.
    • Assessment: Got this one right! Check out A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, and Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells.
  • Prediction: Anti-Capitalism. I predict there will be stories pointing out, in fictional form, the deficiencies of capitalism. Anti-capitalist themes may only form the backdrop of the story, but they will be there.
    • Assessment: I give myself partial credit here. The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente concerns the aftermath of a polluted, flooded future Earth after capitalism has run amok.
  • Prediction: China. In 2021, I see an uptick in scifi books involving China in some way. Some will be written by Chinese authors, and some stories will be set in China.
    • Assessment: Again, I think I earned partial credit. Sinopticon, edited by Xueting Christine Ni was an anthology of Chinese scifi short stories. The anthology was published in 2021 and contained stories dating from 1993-2021.
  • Prediction: Fewer Aliens. Alien tales are out in 2021. Of the few that will be published, they will involve communication only, not visitations, let alone abductions or invasions.
    • Assessment: Sheesh. I couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything, scifi was awash with aliens in 2021. All these novels contained them: Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Last Watch by J.S. Dewes, The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini, A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, and Jack Four by Neal Asher.
  • Prediction: Urban Scifi. Paralleling the urban fantasy subgenre, we’ll see a lot of scifi books in 2021 that start out in a modern-day city setting, and go from there.
    • Assessment: For the most part, I got this wrong. Most scifi in 2021 was set in the future. One exception was The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi which begins in modern-day New York City.

Personal Predictions

I also included a set of prophesies about my own writing and editing. I managed to get them all wrong.

  • Prediction: The Seastead Chronicles, my collection of short stories about the future history of seasteading, will be published in 2021.
    • Assessment: Not 2021, but next year, I hope.
  • Prediction: The North American Jules Verne Society will publish its first anthology of short stories, (working title: Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne) all inspired by Jules Verne, in 2021, and I’ll be on the editorial team.
    • Assessment: Not 2021, but 2022 for sure.
  • Prediction: Pole to Pole Publishing will put out an anthology of reprinted military science fiction short stories in 2021, titled Re-Enlist. I’ll serve as co-editor of this one.
    • Assessment: Regrettably, Pole to Pole Publishing had to abandon this one. Won’t be happening.

Though I’ve failed to make accurate predictions using tarot cards, tea leaves, and a crystal ball in the past three years, don’t think I’m giving up. I’ve been working all year to perfect astrological prediction techniques. Watch this space for next week’s blog, where I reveal the truth about scifi literature in 2022.

Let’s just forget about my past failures, shall we? Starting now, you can believe all future predictions made by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 19, 2021Permalink

Yes, You Do Have Time to Write

You say you’d like to be a writer, but you’re too busy; you just can’t find the time. I think I can help you find some time, but maybe that is not your real problem.

First, let’s look at your schedule. No, don’t spend a month or even a week writing down what you do; this is a mental exercise, so we’ll do it from memory. I see each of your days has 24 hours, and each hour has 60 minutes. That’s good, and those numbers aren’t any smaller than for all the greatest authors in history. In fact, those are the same numbers for everyone. So far, so good.

Find Time for WritingSure, you say, but those great authors don’t do anything but write. Writing is their day job. That may be true for many of the great authors, but few of them started great. Most had day jobs until their books sold well.

Leaving the greatest authors aside, few regular authors make all their money from writing. Most have day jobs, families, and all the normal demands of life. Still, they find time to write. How do they do that?

If we mentally compare their schedules to yours, we see they squeeze writing into any available niche. They set aside specific periods when they can—at night when the kids fall asleep, or in the morning before everyone else wakes up. They write during their commute on the train or subway. They use a voice recorder when driving alone in their car, (though never in dense traffic). They write at work during their lunch period. Some of them—gasp!—write in the bathroom!

Even when they’re not writing, they think about writing in idle moments, when they’re preparing a meal, taking a shower, mowing the lawn, etc. That way, when they do sit down to write, they’ve already mentally planned the next scene. That’s making the most of their available time.

Again, putting their schedule side-by-side with yours, we see they have fewer time-wasting activities than you do. They spend less time watching TV, less time bantering on social media, and less time playing computer games. When they are tempted to do any of these, they ask themselves if their time would be better spent writing, and they drop the time-waster and write. They feel a little guilty when they’re not writing.

I suggest you make it a priority to find writing time in any or all of these ways. Try writing to see if you like it. If you do, time will become less of a problem. Although budding or beginning writers complain about not having time, I’ve never heard a real writer—a person with passion for and love of writing—say they can’t find time to write. They lament not having enough time, but they always find some.

That’s what I meant when I said your problem might not be time at all. You may just not have fallen in love with writing yet. When and if you do, you’ll make time for it. You won’t really have much choice.

Other writers have posted great blogs on this topic, including Janice Hardy, Melissa Tydell, Dr. Victoria Lynn Schmidt, Linda Lafferty, and—if you steel yourself for some tough truths—John Scalzi.

You’d like to be a writer, but can’t find time. As I’ve explained, the problem is the word ‘like.’ Once you love writing, finding time won’t be your problem. When you follow the suggestions in this blog post, you’ll see some new writing time has been provided to you by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 21, 2016Permalink