John Scalzi's column will have to wait. For now, 'The Kaiju Preservation Society' calls

Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi is one of the most popular writers working in the science fiction genre today. His debut novel, "Old Man’s War," earned him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his hilarious "Star Trek" homage, "Redshirts," won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Scalzi may be promoting his latest New York Times-bestselling novel, "The Kaiju Preservation Society," at this year’s Savannah Book Festival, but there was a time when he might have been sharing an entirely different book.

The fact that Scalzi is a multi-award winning novelist often comes as a surprise to the witty author.

“I’m never NOT surprised to be honest,” said Scalzi over the phone with chuckle. “When I was in high school and college I thought my path was going to be journalism the entire time.”

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Scalzi began his career as a journalist and film critic at the Fresno Bee where he found his footing following in the footsteps of his columnist idols such as H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko, Molly Ivins, and Dave Barry.

“I did get a weekly opinion column, in my early twenties,” recalled Scalzi. “Not the best idea anyone ever had, but I had a ball with it. Here was 24-year-old John Scalzi being told to give his unvarnished opinion on the news of the world every week. You can just imagine how that fed my ego. I just loved it.”

Later Scalzi spent time as the in-house writer and editor for America Online, and then as a freelance writer for magazines and corporate clients. Writing science fiction novels came as a lark.

“The novelist stuff I did mostly to see if I could,” said Scalzi. “Then once I did it I always assumed it would be, at best, a side gig. The whole idea of a science fiction writer being able to do that as a full-time gig just had not occurred to me, because most writers, most people who write books, have other jobs...But then they took off. I’ve become a full-time novelist, and every once in a while I look back and wonder, ‘When did that happen? I still want to be a columnist!’”

Scalzi’s successful work as a novelist almost ground to a halt in 2020, when a combination of pandemic and dumpster fire political landscape stole his attention away from the new novel he was laboring over. The clock was ticking towards his deadline, and Scalzi couldn’t seem to finish his book.

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“I would write and I would rewrite and try a new way and it just wasn’t working,” said Scalzi. “I think it was a combination of the world being on fire, both in terms of what was going on with the virus and what was going on with the election. Having been a journalist and having been a columnist where I had been trained to look at the news and formulate an opinion of it, I basically couldn’t look away and it made it hard for me to focus.

“Usually when I’m writing a novel, being able to go to a completely different world is great because you can just, not necessarily hide from the world, but go, ‘Okay, I’m going to let the world take care of itself. Meanwhile, I’m going to create this other world over here.’ It’s the refuge for work. But, in 2020 I wasn’t able to do it.”

The last straw for Scalzi was when he finally cranked out 4,000 words and felt like he was on track only to have the work completely disappear from his computer the next day. With a deadline two weeks away, Scalzi finally swallowed his pride and told his editor the book wasn’t happening.

“Fortunately, my editor had also lived through 2020,” said Scalzi.

To Scalzi’s great relief his editor was understanding and took the book off of the release schedule, freeing Scalzi from his burden. With the weight off of his shoulders, Scalzi’s unconscious mind somehow came to the rescue with an entirely new idea.

“I went and took a shower and while I was in the shower, as the water hit me and being relieved that that thing was off my plate, that’s when my brain was like, ‘Oh, while you were panicking and not doing that book that you’re never going to finish, I was thinking about a book about kaiju, and here it is.’,” explained Scalzi. “Literally, I felt the entire book drop inside of my skull. I finished my shower and emailed my editor and said, ‘Hey, remember when I said I wasn’t gong to have that book? Give me five weeks.’ And that is how this book happened. My brain somehow knew that whatever it was that I was going through, I needed a plan B, and it just didn’t tell me until I needed the plan B to happen. Then it was there.”

In a five week blaze of flying fingers, Scalzi completed "The Kaiju Preservation Society." The book follows protagonist Jamie Gray who is forced to do gig work for a food delivery app during COVID-19 lockdown in New York City. During a delivery, Jamie runs into an old acquaintance, Tom, who works for an “animal rights organization” of sorts where they tend to “large” animals. Jamie gets hired at the last minute to accompany Tom on his team’s next field mission.

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Jamie thinks he’s going to be working with elephants or pandas only to discover that the animals in question are colossal Godzilla-like monsters, or kaiju, that exist in a jungle-covered parallel Earth dimension. "Kaiju" boasts an effortlessly breezy tone, with fast paced action, lasers, explosions, big monsters, and “snarky people being snarky back and forth.”

The book also contains surprising scientific verisimilitude considering it is about giant creatures from another world. Scalzi is an accomplished science writer who published an astronomy book, and was a creative consultant on the television series, "Stargate Universe," where it was his job to make sure the science didn’t take viewers out of the story.

Scalzi’s philosophy as a science fiction writer is that he should accurately portray the science we already know, and then speculate responsibly one step beyond that without over explaining things.

“A lot of people who read science fiction are really heavy duty nerds and they want to figure it out in their own brain,” said Scalzi. “They’ll come to you at a book fair or convention like, ‘Okay, I figured out how you made the kaiju able to exist in the world and here’s my theory.’ Then they just spout it at you and you’re like, ‘That sounds perfect. That sounds exactly right.’.”

"Kaiju" must have been the right book at the right time because it has since become a New York Times bestseller and is currently being adapted for television.

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“The emails I get from a lot of people is that they needed a book like this,” said Scalzi. “It gave them that moment to get out of their own head and enjoy the act of reading. The catharsis I felt writing it shows up in the same catharsis a lot of people had reading it, which I feel great about.”

After scrapping his brooding, cynical book about politics in space in lieu of "Kaiju," Scalzi believes it is important to acknowledge that not every book should strive to be serious and important. He compares "The Kaiju Preservation Society" to a pop song rather than a symphony.

“Every once in a while you need something that is the equivalent of the sorbet between meals,” said Scalzi.

IF YOU GO

What: Savannah Book Festival: John Scalzi

When: Saturday at 11:30 a.m.

Where: Savannah Theatre

Cost: Free and open to the public

Info: savannahbookfestival.org

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: John Scalzi on his book, The Kaiju Preservation Society