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In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?

I have many thoughts about this and I’m going to try to make sense of them here, as much for myself as anyone else, so this may be messy and discursive and long (seriously, 3600 words, y’all), but, well, welcome to me. So, ordered by how these things come out of my head:

1. Stop Idolizing Creative People. Creative people are easy to idolize because they create the art you love, and that gives you permission to feel things, and to see yourself and your desires reflected in that art. That is a powerful thing, and from the outside, it can feel like magic, and that the people who do it are tapped into something otherworldly and admirable. Plus, they often get to have cool lives and get to know other cool creative people. They do things that are removed from the day-to-day aspect of a “normal” life, and they’ll even post about them on social media where you can see them. Sometimes, independent of their art directly, they’ll speak about their life, or life in general, and they’ll seem wise and considered and kind. I mean, what’s not to like?

But please consider that this is all an extremely mediated experience of this person. The art is the edited and massaged result of hours and days and weeks and months of work, into which the work of many others is also added. My novels originate from me, but it’s not just me in there, nor is the final form of the novel an accurate statement of who I am as a person, not least of all for the simple reason that I am not trying to tell my story in my novels. I’m creating fictional characters, and the world in which they make sense, for the purpose of the story.

Despite how it might look from the outside, this is not sorcery. It’s years of experience at a craft. It’s not magic, just work. A completed novel (or any other piece of art) won’t tell you much about the specific, day-to-day life and inclinations of the individual who made it, other than a general nod toward their competence, and the competence of their collaborators. Likewise what you see of their lives, even from the illusorily close vantage of social media, is deeply mediated. Lives always look admirable at a distance, when you can only see the lofty peaks and not the rubble at the base — especially when your attention by design is pointed at those lofty peaks. There’s much you don’t see and that you’re not meant to see. The vast majority of what you’re not meant to see isn’t nefarious. It’s just not your business.

Now, before I was a professional creative person, I was an entertainment journalist who spent years interviewing writers, directors, movie stars, musicians, authors and other creative folks. Since I’ve been on the other side of the rope, I’ve likewise met a huge range of creative people from all walks of life. Please believe me when I assure you that creative people are just people. Richer and/or more famous? Sometimes (less often than you might think, though). Prettier and/or more charismatic? Especially if they’re actors or pop stars, often yes! But at the end of the day they are just folks, and they run the whole range of how people are. By and large, the day-to-day experience of getting through their life is the same as yours. Outside of their own specific field of work, they don’t know any more about life, have no more facility for dealing with the world, and have just as few clues about what’s going on in their own head, as anyone else.

They’re just people. Whose work is making the stuff you like! And that’s great, but that’s not a substantive basis for idolizing them. It makes no more sense to idolize them than to idolize a baker who makes cookies you like, or the guy who comes and trims your hedges the way you want them to be trimmed, or the plumber who fixes your clogged drain. You can appreciate what they do, and even admire the skill they have. But holding them up as a life model might be a bit much. Which is the point! If you’re not willing to idolize a plumber, then you shouldn’t idolize a creative person.

(“But a plumber doesn’t make me feel like a creative person does,” you say, to which I say, are you sure about that? Because I will tell you what, when my sump pump stopped working and the plumber got in there, replaced the pump and started draining out my basement which had an inch of standing water in it, that man was the focus of all my emotions and was my goddamned hero that day. My plumber that day did more for me than easily 90% of the great art I’ve ever experienced.)

Enjoy the art creative people do. Enjoy the experience of them in the mediated version of them you get online and elsewhere, if such is your joy. But remember that the art is from the artist, not the artist themselves, and the version of their life you see is usually just the version they choose to show. There is so much you don’t see, and so much you’re not meant to see. At the end of the day, you don’t have all the information about who they are that you would need to make them your idol, or someone you might choose to, in some significant way, pattern some fraction of your life on. And anyway creative people aren’t any better at life than anyone else.

Which brings up the next point:

2. Fuck idols anyway! People are complicated and contradictory and you don’t know everything about them! You don’t know everything even about your parents or siblings or best friends or your partner! People are hypocrites and liars and fail to live up to their own standards for themselves, much less yours! Your version of them in your head will always be different than the version that actually exists in the world! Because you’re not them! Stop pretending people won’t be fuck ups! They will! Always!

This sounds more pessimistic about humans than perhaps it should be. When I say, for example, that people are hypocrites and liars, I don’t mean that people take every single opportunity to be hypocrites and liars. Most people are decent in the moment. But none of us — not one! — has always lived up to our own standard of behavior, and all of us have had the moment where, when confronted with a situation that would become an immense pain in the ass if we stuck to our guns, or demanded the inconvenient truth, decided to just bail instead, because the situation wasn’t worth the drama, or we had somewhere else to be, or whatever. We all choose battles and we all make the call in the moment, and sometimes the call is, fuck this, I’m out.

Every person you’ve ever admired has fucked up, sometimes really badly. Everyone you’ve ever looked up to has secrets, and it’s possible some of those secrets would materially change how you think about them, not always for the better. Everyone you’ve ever known has things about them you don’t know, many of which aren’t even secrets, they’re just things you don’t engage with in your day-to-day experience of them. Nevertheless it’s possible if you were aware of them, it would change how you feel about them, for better or for worse. And now let’s flip that around! You have things about you that even your best friends don’t know, and might be surprised to learn! You have secrets you don’t wish to share with the class! You have fucked up, and lied, and have been a hypocrite too!

You are, in short, a human, as is everyone you know and every one you will know (pets and gregarious wild animals excepted). And all humans are, charitably, a mess. This doesn’t mean there aren’t good people or even exemplary people out there, since there are, along with the ones that are, charitably, a real shit show. What I am saying is that even the good or exemplary people out there are a mess, have been morally compromised at some point in their lives, and have not lived up to their own standards for themselves, independent of anyone else’s standard for them.

One of the aspects of being an “idol,” I think, is that higher standard that other people expect of you — that in every situation where the aspect they idolize you for is in play, you will act in a manner that is right and correct by their standard, which of course you will likely not know about because you don’t actually know them (or often know that they exist). This is, by definition, an impossible standard to be held to — you didn’t agree to it, or to engage with it — and an impossible standard to hold other people to without their direct consultation. Every human made to be an idol is destined to fail at the job. You don’t even have to have feet of clay! You just didn’t know you were on a pedestal to begin with.

(This does not excuse shitty action. The fact people should not be idols in the first place is not exculpatory for the choices one makes on one’s own. If you’re sexually assaulting people, or being a racist or sexist or homophobe or other flavor of bigot, or using your situational power coercively (as just a few examples), then hell yes you are going to be called out on it. And to be clear, it is not unreasonable, to put it mildly, to expect people not to sexually assault other people, or not to denigrate other humans for being who they are, etc. But this only adds to the point about idols, now, doesn’t it. You don’t know what you don’t see, and you don’t know what you’re not seeing, until it is hauled out into the light one way or the other. If it is hauled out into the light at all.)

I don’t think anyone should idolize anyone, ever. It’s not great for them, and it’s not great for you, they probably didn’t ask to be idolized (and if they did, holy shit, fucking run), and in the end unless you’re so completely wrapped up in their lives that they have no secrets from you — which is never — you don’t know enough to make that call. People do it anyway, and then disappointment happens, but they shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Stop idolizing people. It’s not fair for anyone.

What to do instead? Enjoy their work, if they’re a creative person. Appreciate the kind and good aspects of their life that you can see, and the decent actions they undertake in public, with the knowledge that what you see of them is a mediated and elided version. Understand that we all have a different version of ourself for every person we meet, and that every person we meet has a different vision of ourselves in their head, and very often, those two versions are not the same. Like them, based on what you know of them! Love them, if it comes to that. And when and if you learn something new about them that you didn’t know before, let empathy guide you to a new understanding of them and what they mean to you.

And now, taking all of the above into consideration:

3. Absolutely 100% do not idolize me. I don’t deserve to be idolized because no one deserves to be idolized, but also, holy fuck, I do know me and I’m a mess. There have been lots of things in my life that I’ve done that have not been admirable or kind. I can be petty and shitty and competitive and cruel. I am lazy and inattentive and when I let things slide (which is often), I end up jammed up on my responsibilities, which makes me irritable and no fun to be around. I have a temper which goes from zero to sixty almost instantaneously; if I’m not actively paying attention to it, I can become a sudden, unreasonable rage monster, which is a burden to people I love, and I hate that fact about myself (pro tip: don’t travel with me, the rage monster comes out a lot then).

I can be controlling and demanding but I want other people to handle the details, i.e., executive asshole. I am strategic in a way that can be bloodless. When I’m insecure I brag a lot, which is unflattering. If you cross me, I won’t go out of my way to make your life miserable (that would require effort on my part), but I will absolutely enjoy when you take a literal or metaphorical tumble down the stairs. God knows I’ve enjoyed the failures of the people who have spoken ill of me, almost as much as I’ve enjoyed the fuming, spittling rage they’ve felt when I’ve succeeded. I spent years cultivating a snarky persona online and while that was fun (for me), I’m increasingly aware that when the tally is added up for Who Ruined the Internet, I’m not necessarily going to be where I want to be on that particular ledger.

And these are only the bad qualities of mine I wish to admit to you at the moment. There are others, I assure you.

So, yes: Who wants to idolize me now?

“But you seemed so nice when I chatted with you online/met you at the convention/saw you at that one place that one time.” Well, thank you, I’ve been in the public eye in one manner or another for three and a half decades now and I understand my assignment; my public persona is friendly and engaging and sociable and mostly fun to be with. It’s not a fake version of me — I am all those things! Honest! — but, again, it’s a mediated version of me designed not only to be a positive experience for the people who meet me but also to get my actually introverted ass through a whole day of events at a convention/festival/book tour/whatever. When I’m done I collapse into an introverted hole. When I came back from Worldcon this week, I slept for 15 hours the first day I was home. It wasn’t just because of jet lag or con crud.

I rather famously call my public face “performance monkey mode,” and likewise what I say about my (current) online mode is that I’m cosplaying as a better version of myself, one that is kinder than I used to be online, and more patient than I am in the real world. If you meet me when I am “off” then you will find that, again, these versions of me are me, just with some things dialed up and other things dialed down. But even that is still a different version of me than, say, the version of me which is at home (which is in fact extremely boring; that version of me doesn’t talk much and mostly stays in my office).

Many of you who have followed me over the years are familiar with me saying things like this, of course, and are likewise familiar with me pointing out that there are a number of things about my life that I don’t mention in public, for whatever reasons I choose. But it’s also true that I’ve been actively online for 30+ years now, and people feel reasonably confident that they have a good bead on me and that there’s not much about me that will surprise them or change their understanding of me. So to bring home the point there are indeed things you don’t know, allow me to surface just one previously unaired fun fact:

I have a concealed carry license.

(Or did; it expired this year and I didn’t renew it, because Ohio changed its laws so that you no longer need a permit to conceal carry in the state. These days in Ohio you can just wander about with a handgun stuffed down your trousers without training or licensing because that’s a real good idea, now, isn’t it. Nevertheless, the license is not necessary anymore so there was not much point in renewing it, although if the law had not changed, I probably would have renewed.)

Why did I have a concealed carry license? Well, ultimately that’s not important. The point is I had one. I didn’t talk about it before because, among other things, the point of a concealed carry license (to me, anyway) is that its existence is not meant to be known by anyone other than that great state of Ohio itself. I am aware, and this is a dramatic understatement, that I am not a person most people would expect to have had such a thing. The fact I had one will cause a number of people to reconsider what they know about me, for better or for worse. Which is also my point. All y’all have just learned this thing about me! Think about all the other things you don’t know!

Oh, God, this is where Scalzi starts admitting to terrible, terrible things. No. I feel pretty confident I live a tolerably ethical life. Part of the reason for this is that I have what I think is a decent operating principle, which is: If I’m thinking of doing something, and Krissy called me right then and asked “what are you doing?” and I would be tempted to lie to her about it, then I don’t do that thing. Because Krissy is the most important person in my life, and I don’t want to lie to her about what I’m doing (I have lied to her exactly once. She knew instantly. I haven’t bothered lying to her since). This is not replacing Krissy’s ethics with my own; it’s me knowing whether by my own ethics, I would be ashamed to tell to her what I am up to. It works very well. As such, the Krissy Test is an operating principle I highly suggest to others, although I’d suggest replacing Krissy with whomever in your life is most important to you.

Be that as it may, my ethics are not universal and some others might not find them sufficient, for whatever reason. I am well aware I still disappoint many people, and that there are people who find my life choices, known positions or public statements (or lack of them, as the case may be) problematic, or who simply wish I would be other than what I am. I can’t help them with this, but again, this is the point. Given the fact that I am a fallible human who has an entire stratum of his life not visible to the world — and the strata of his life that are visible cause significant numbers of people to be irritated and exasperated — is it not better just to not hold me up as an ideal person, or the “good dude,” much less an idol of any sort?

I mean, shit. What Would John Scalzi Do? Solidly half the time, I have no fucking idea. I have to think about it, whatever it is. I have to think about whether I know enough to do or say something about it. I have to decide whether it’s something I want to engage with at all, and whether my engagement with it is something that would be of value to anyone, me included. I have to decide whether engaging with it is worth the shit I will get for it. And then I have to figure out what it means that I am engaging with it, since like it or not I’m a Dude of Reasonable Significance in My Field. I try to be a decent human, when people are looking at me and especially when they are not. But I also know me, and all my flaws and weaknesses and compromises.

What Would John Scalzi Do? The best he can, in the moment. Is that sufficient? For me, yes, most of the time. Is that sufficient for you? That’s up to you.

The point to this all is that people are just a big fucking mess, including the ones you might for whatever reason find admirable. I am no different than anyone else, and you should not be under the illusion that I am anything other than a shambling collection of flaws embedded inside a human form, which also, in its defense, has some pretty excellent qualities as well. We’re all this way! You too!

And while I want you to like my work, and to enjoy the version of me that you see here and elsewhere, don’t put me, or any other person, on a pedestal. Pedestals are wobbly and and don’t give actual humans a lot of room to move. We will inevitably fall off. Keep us with our feet on the ground. That way, when we stumble, there’s a chance we can get back up, and keep going.

— JS

The Locus and Nebula winner spoke with Nerds of a Feather about his writing process, the varieties of horror, and why some monsters just want to be friends

Arturo Serrano: You seem to have created a solid niche for yourself as the writer who sympathizes with the monsters. Do you apply the same approach to classic monster stories? Do you look for an angle to empathize with Dracula or the xenomorphs?

John Wiswell: One of the things that compels me to write Fantasy and Science Fiction is finding the unexplored angles in worlds. We love rigorous worldbuilding that thoroughly explains what it is to live as a special hero or an average person in a fantastical world. But whose stories aren't told? Whose perspective is erased? This certainly extends to classic monster stories. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's creature is infamously sympathetic. But what is the life of a wraith trapped at a summer camp forever? The locals say that the shapeshifting lump at the bottom of the well is out to kill all humanity, but what is its point of view? How do we look through different eyes? That's fundamentally compelling to me, especially as someone who has spent most of his life feeling barely human. It's an invitation to care. And that is a great place for a story to begin.

AS: Do you generally come up with the plot first and then the monster, or the monster first and then the plot?

JW: The funny thing about monsters is I usually conceive them with contexts. Without a context, a dragon is just a dragon. Smaug has to have stolen the dwarves' home mountain and terrorized the lake men to be a monster. So when I created someone like Shesheshen for Someone You Can Build A Nest In, I immediately conceived of her as a shapeshifting creature trying not to blow her shot at a relationship with a wholesome nerd. When I created 133 Poisonwood Avenue for "Open House on Haunted Hill," it was simultaneously a haunted house, and a lonely one that was willing to be gentle and caring if a family would stay in it. The context of the creature tends to be part of its essence, for me. Their claws and fangs are just as important as their insecurities.

AS: As someone who'd rather hug the monsters than slay them, what do you actually find scary?

JW: The U.S. healthcare system.

AS: Your stories tend to have elaborate, poetic titles. Do you have a process for choosing titles?

JW: My approach is pretty simple! I'll open a text document, or live out the cliche of turning over an envelope to make a list. And then I will simply keep writing down title ideas, no matter how bad they are. The goal is to keep going. Do permutations on the same idea. Swap a blander or spicier verb in. Flip the syntax. If a wild idea comes up, write it down. Sometimes the very first title is perfect (Someone You Can Build A Nest In was the first title I had in mind for my book, and I never wanted to change it). Other times I'll have a screen full of titles that I think are all terrible, and only upon rereading it will I realize the thirteenth is the lucky one (this happened with "For Lack of a Bed" and "I'll Miss Myself"). The process works because it makes me get out of my own way, by forcing me to accept anything my internal critic might normally block.

AS: What is your process, as an aromantic writer, for putting yourself in the mental space of a character who is in love?

JW: I don't mean to disparage my alloromantic friends, but it is not hard to pick up on how romance works because it's ubiquitous. Sexuality and romance dominate this culture. It's in so many books, the subject of so many albums, so many advice columns, so many podcasts, so many weepy diatribes on stoops, so many embarrassing arguments people have on speaker phones in the dairy aisle... So if you're aromantic like me? You've probably heard about love already. And many aromantic writers still find romance interesting on one level or another, because it matters to people we care about, or because of some narrative hook. You know, some of my best friends are alloromantic! [Laughs] For me, a character's love arc comes from them organically. Many of my short stories have no love plots. My next novel has a little romance to it, but it's not central. Whereas in this book, for who Shesheshen was, how self-reliant she was, for how alone she was in the world and who she'd meet, for the toxic ideas of romance she was carrying and the growth that would require from her, it was purely natural that a huge part of her book would be a love story. I entered that mental space the same way she did: wary, confused, afraid she'd be hurt, and unable to not hope for the best. Because I cared about this character for all the other reasons in her life, I could go on that journey. And similarly I could go on that journey because of what it said about the need for companionship. What is said in a story can be as important as the characters. Sometimes you find yourself just wanting to write a supportive, loving married couple because you see so few of them in media and want to balance things out. Sometimes you want to capture how we change internally in relation to how we change with other people. I don't have to fall in love to understand change. I just have to care for all the people in my life who do. If I didn't care for those real people in my life, then I couldn't write anything.

AS: Last time we interviewed you, you described your creative process as "I eat darkness, and then spit out rainbows." Could you describe how that metabolism works?

JW: Ha! I love that way of posing this question. And it's a fair question. So I have a copy of Tananarive Due's The Reformatory. I'm excited to read it. I don't know what it's about, because Due is a great writer and I just trust her to deliver something that is good on its own terms. When I have the free time to read something that big, I'll take it off my shelf, and just read it, and discover its characters and premise and twists. I've heard it's in the region of Horror, if not a pure Horror novel, so I'll be ready for that sort of experience. And if it works on me, I'll enjoy the parts that work. The tone, the atmosphere, the character psychology, the social ramifications, the weird creeping things in the walls—whatever is there. But I'll also find myself wishing I could help the characters. Perhaps in mediating their fights. Perhaps in being able to stop by the side of the road when their car breaks down. Some things meant to be scary will inevitably be funny, because I'm not the one experiencing them. Some will be so shocking that they'll have a funny dimension, because shock and humor are similarly electric impulses. Things will spark. Some parts will be so grim that I'll ponder how light would change our understanding. Inevitably, I'll turn the story around in my mind, to look at it from imagined angles. Maybe that will mean I'll sympathize with a ghost or a werewolf, who to me reads as misunderstood. Or maybe it will mean I'll consider how some people taking responsibility rather than shunning it would change things, or imagine how different people's contexts would change the series of events. How could life bend towards justice? Towards empathy? Towards another end? None of this will diminish the book. Again, this is presuming the book is good, but when isn't a Due book good? They've all rocked so far. But if the book is good, considering it from angles that it doesn't consider will help me appreciate its structure and what it achieves. Meanwhile I'll carry a charge of inspiration, for how other worlds could treat people. I'll be pondering, and probably cackling, and reaching to read the next book on my list after The Reformatory. And then the next book, and the next. After enough books, and short stories, and movies, all of that fictional darkness will be counterpointed by enough light from my other angles that refraction is inevitable. And then I'll be writing something wholly different, while loving what everyone else made. That is the metabolism.

AS: You've sometimes shared details with the public about your lifelong experience with chronic pain. How does your day-to-day negotiation with your body inform your writing about characters with nonconventional anatomies?

JW: It's predisposed me for that, for sure! I have to be mindful of my body in ways other people aren't, and I've normalized awful pain, and exhaustion, and having conversations when I have brain fog. My body has turned on me in so many ways over my lifetime. I think that's also why I call some of my work Fantasy where other people see it as Body Horror. They see it from the outside, whereas to me, it's something more routine. It's a fun schism to discuss with readers.

AS: You've also spoken about the ways books saved your life. What do you hope your books will do for young readers today?

JW: It would be too much to ask that my stories save their lives, too, right? [Laughs] But my stories have already started to do what I hoped. A couple years ago I spoke on a panel about how being asexual makes some of us feel monstrous because we don't give people what they want, and afterward a young reader came up to me in tears because hearing me say that made her feel less alone. Since then I've seen an uptick in comments and emails from readers who have been in terrible times, and who felt companionship with my characters that helped them through their burdens. If a story can be there for someone when things are terrible? If it can make them feel less alone, even for an hour? Then I haven't just given someone a gift. They've given me a gift, by hanging in there, reading and fighting. I couldn't ask for more.

AS: Horror still has an ableism problem. What ways of symbolizing evil that don't fall back on the demonization of bodily deformities would you like to see in horror stories?

Beauty, handsomeness, and attractiveness are so underrated as villain traits. Historically they're tapped into for conveying a disliked group (gay-coded sexy vampires) or as a facade (Patrick Bateman looks put together, but is yet another evil "crazy" guy). I think depicting more antagonists as the beautiful, not as lust objects, but as people who feel they are above normal people physically, who wear the most expensive clothing, whose presentation drips of class that is unattainable by their victims, could do some powerful things. More damage is done to our world by people in designer suits than people in hockey masks.

AS: You take monsters and turn them into cuddly lovable characters. How do you feel about the ongoing trend of taking cuddly lovable characters (e.g. Winnie the Pooh) and turning them into monsters?

I feel like Horror has been turning lovable things into scary things for far longer than I've been turning a few monsters sympathetic. How many classic and pop songs do we have to hear slowed down and turned creepy before that becomes funny? How many children's toys have been smeared with blood, from Chucky to Annabelle to M3GAN? Clowns, who dedicate their lives to inspiring mirth, are the stuff of nightmares thanks to Pennywise and the Joker. Horror in particular has always sought to subvert what we're comfortable with in order to explore discomfort, and inequity, and the vulnerability of taking anything for granted. One of my favorite movies is Jaws, which is really just a great way to ruin the hobby of swimming for yourself. [Laughs] I love this stuff when it's done well, so long as we mind our biases. For instance, again I enjoy Jaws, but I deplore how it's inspired shark fishing. In Humans Vs. Sharks, we are decidedly the actual monsters.

AS: For your own reading, do you prefer science fiction that warns "let's not do this" or that offers "here's what we could do"?

"Let's not do this" is the standard formula for SciFi Horror, and I won't say I haven't read and watched plenty of that. Give me another techno-monster hunting its own engineers and I'll probably read it. Whereas "here's what we could do" inspires resistance and rebellion against tyranny. I thought it was so funny when YA Dystopias took off, and some of the old guard said they'd ruined dystopian fiction by giving the protagonists the opportunity of winning. But isn't that what we've needed? Stories of warning us against authoritarianism can't fully inoculate us against it ever happening. So we have stories of possibility in conflict, and of encouragement to not lie down and submit. In this way, I don't see the two flavors as in competition, so much as they both encourage kinds of vigilance.

AS: What stories have you read or watched that you think have done monsters right?

Well, there are many ways to get monsters right. John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In is one of my favorite Horror novels, and Eli is one of my favorite vampires. There is such powerful loneliness on display throughout that book, and the yearning for connection. But I wouldn't say Eli is the only way to write a vampire. The film 30 Days of Night is pretty darned intense and fun in its own way. John Fawcett's film Ginger Snaps does werewolves in a gruesome and fun way, although you could balance that with Mamoru Hosoda's Wolf Children, which is both charming and aching in its depiction of two werewolf cubs growing up with a human mother struggling to keep them safe. It's all about the angle of the story. John Gardner's Grendel is a crackling fun read that humanizes the monster from Beowulf, and makes his story not just tragic, but funny. And I'll never turn down a chance to rewatch Tremors.

AS: What are you reading these days?

JW: I'm halfway into Park Seolyeon's A Magical Girl Retires, which is a chewy little book about a heroine struggling with the desire to step away from the adventuring life. It riffs on the conventions of the Magical Girl genre, which I have a big soft spot for after watching so much Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura when I was younger. Before that, I just finished Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors, which you already know is one heck of a book. And I just got my copy of Arkady Martine's novel Rose/House, which I'm terrifically excited to start. Martine is such a splendid writer that I am sure she'll have a sparkling take on haunted houses in the era of smart homes. That is probably next!

Thank you, John, for taking the time for this interview.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.