John Scalzi (from Authors@Google)

John Scalzi (author of Old Man's War, Android's Dream, etc) proves, here, to be a very engaging, lively speaker--the best of the Authors at Google episodes that I've seen. Scalzi does a particularly good job laying out how he's used the web to advance his fiction writing career. A big part of that is his popular, long running blog Whatever.

I've only read his first novel, Old Man's War--which got a lot of attention, for being a follow up to the famous (or infamous) Heilein novel Starship Troopers. Having read so much about it before I read the actual novel, I was expecting deep thought about war, aging, longevity, etc. In the end it was kind of over-hyped: I thought it was an entertaining, not too deep adventure, but promising for a first novel. (Some of the ideas about the necessity of war are presented very crudely and I didn't find his older character very believable as an older man in these situations.) In this video, Scalzi proves to be intelligent, likable and very able at promoting himself--which does make me want to try more of his novels. Sucked in by the hype once again!