John Scalzi is perhaps best known as the author of the SF novels Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Android’s Dream, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale, but he is also the creator and author of an ongoing web site called Whatever, the books The Rough Guides to Science Fiction and Space, and a humorous nonfiction book on writing, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing. His latest non-fiction book, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008, like his book on writing advice, is culled from blog entries at Whatever.
This collection of “essays” is quite eclectic, mirroring whatever subject matter or topic was on John Scalzi’s mind at any given time and date (each entry has its corresponding date duly noted). The posts range from Christians who act as if the laws of Leviticus are more important to their lives than the love of Christ, to Fred of the Scooby Doo gang’s similarities with cult leaders, to whether Star Wars qualifies as entertainment (an entry titled “The Lie of Star Wars as Entertainment”). The book is filled with all of this, plus an intro by Wil Wheaton–yes, Wesley Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Whether or not John Scalzi gives a universally useful appraisal of Star Wars‘ entertainment value (he refers to it in terms of “George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot”), each of Scalzi’s blog entries holds entertainment value. Scalzi is definitely not afraid of taking a stand, of expressing his opinions, and of backing them up with reasons. If everyone agrees with him, fine, but if no one agrees with him, that’s okay, too.
Often, many people don’t agree with him. In fact, often some people vehemently disagree with him and express their opinions at his site in the form of hate mail, which Scalzi actively encourages those with contrary opinions to write. He just asks the folks writing to please give a cogent argument to explain their own reasoning, or, failing that, to try to be creative and use an array of adjectives to dis him with. In other words, the hate mail will be graded, and if he thinks it’s too hackneyed and is just the venting of an ignorant ass, he’s going to point that out to everyone.
Did I agree with everything John Scalzi writes in the entries in Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded? No, and probably no one will, maybe not even a clone of his, if cloning oneself were already common practice. (One of his more interesting entries is on the subject of cloning, and why it’d be silly to think one’s clone would be excited to do your onerous chores, when you don’t want to do them, yourself.) Will I write him hate mail, though? Probably not, because I don’t have the time or inclination to express my rage or dissatisfaction with opinions expressed in a blog, however interesting and inciting of hate mail those opinions may be. But, more power to those who do write hate mail, as they make sites like Whatever even better by keeping their authors on their toes. Also, somewhat perversely, rather than lessening the click rates of others who might be tempted to check out sites like Whatever, hate mail often has the opposite effect, helping to increase a blog author’s and the site’s popularity.
Unfortunately, except in a very brief “Addendum,” there are not many examples in the book of the hate e-mail and mail some disgruntled readers of Whatever have written Scalzi. I feel the book could have been made even more interesting if more examples of hate mail had been included–it’s one of the things about his Whatever site that makes it fun to visit on a regular basis.
Still, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded is an entertaining book that you should find to be well worth your time to check out. Don’t take my word alone for it–it also is the “Winner of the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Related Book,” meaning best book related to SF that doesn’t qualify for another category. Don’t buy the book thinking that it’s mostly about SF-related topics, though, or you will likely be disappointed, because it isn’t. Buy it because of its honesty, its integrity, Scalzi’s considered appraisals of our culture and his thoughts on God, Christ, and religion. Buy it, perhaps, because you either want to find something in his blog entries that you will disgree with, or already know you will find something to disagree with, and want to write him your own hate mail, to see if it passes the muster and gets a high grade.
If you want to check out Scalzi’s opinions for yourself, I highly suggest you both visit his blog and buy a copy of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. As the Beatles once famously sang, “All you need is love,” but, sometimes, reading the hate mail of anonymous others and the blog entries that provoked the hate mail makes for an entertaining change of pace.
I think the reason actual hate mail isn’t included is down to copyright. John owns the rights to his own writing; comments not so much.
And can you imagine the process of asking copyright permission from people who already hated him before he ridiculed the quality of their writing? I’d pay extra to read that exchange…
That could very well be the reason, or maybe the biggest one–though, as I mentioned, a few examples are in the Addendum to the book. Still, it’s a pretty entertaining book, whether or not you might always agree with Scalzi all of the time!
appealing little title, Hehe