I don't remember the first SF book I read, but I can clearly recall the first SF book I read that made a serious impression on me: Ringworld. As I've written before, I was completely taken in by its scale and reach, and it was the first time I understood that SF could be more than just a story that involved robots or rocket ships. It's one of those rare books, like Ishmael that divides my life into "before I read it" and "after I read it."

I loved Ringworld, and quickly devoured most of Niven's other works. I didn't really branch out into other SF authors until years later with Neuromancer, which started what is now known as "The William Gibson phase." I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently I'm one of those readers who authors love: if I like one thing an author writes, I'm pretty much guaranteed to exclusively read that author's entire catalogue until it's finished or I encounter more than one work that lets me down (I'm looking in your direction, Piers Anthony.) When I picked up The Caves of Steel, it started an Asimov phase that lasted for well over a year before I grudgingly admitted to myself that I was never going to be able to finish his collected works, and there was probably a whole other world out there that I was missing out on (I'm looking in your direction, World of Warcraft obsessives . . . and now I am ducking and fleeing from you. Hey, at least I've got chicken.)

Eventually, I achieved escape velocity from Wheaton's Author Singularity, and became a much more well-rounded bibliophile. I recently flew too close to the Alan Moore Nebula and went in for a closer look at Supernova Warren Ellis Sigma, but still managed to dock at Starbase Vanity Fair and Deep Space The Onion at least twice a month. Right around the end of December, I got too close to John Scalzi's event horizon, and I've been happily stuck here ever since.

Silly wordplay that is probably only amusing to me aside, John Scalzi is an author -- who does much more than SF -- that I've recently grown very fond of, not just because he writes great stories that appeal to the geek in me, but also because he's a very accessible, humble, real, unpretentious guy who truly loves what he does. I don't think it's a coincidence that his writing, whether on his blog or in his fiction or non-fiction books, is equally accessible and unpretentious.

Oh, it's also really fucking good, and today I'm going to share a little about some of Scalzi's work, and a little bit about the man himself, who I don't know well enough to call "friend," but as well as one can know someone from reading his blog and trading a couple of e-mails, where I try my best (and frequently fail) to not sound like the eponymous host of The Chris Farley Show.

Scalzi's first novel, Old Man's War, is a first-person narrative about a man named John Perry, who on his 75th birthday leaves Earth forever to join the Colonial Defense Forces. According to the book's jacket, "The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce - and aliens willing to fight for them are common. The universe, it turns out, is a hostile place."

Old Man's War is a book that can be totally ruined by spoilers (trust me, discovering completely unexpected things as the story unfolds contributes mightily to the reader's enjoyment) so I won't give away any of the details . . . well, just one, which I advise you not to click:

The story follows John Perry's transition from old man to soldier, and while there's a lot of really awesome action and weaponry and aliens and battles, it's the relationships among the main characters I loved, and kept me reading pretty much non-stop from the moment I first picked up the book. There aren't many SF writers who can write characters you really care about and put them into fantastic worlds and situations, but Scalzi is certainly in that exclusive club. If you're looking for it, you can also find some thought-provoking allegory about wars of aggression and self-defense, the human condition, and where those things intersect. If you're not looking for it, Scalzi is smart and clever enough to respect that, and doesn't beat you over the head with anything (I'm looking in your direction, first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

Scalzi says that he was inspired by Heinlein, and lots of reviewers have compared the two authors. I haven't really read any Heinlein (I've started and stopped Stranger in a Strange Land more than once) but when I finished Old Man's War I wrote to John that if Heinlein was anything like him, I'd have to give Heinlein another try.

Old Man's War was followed up by The Ghost Brigades, which follows the elite Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, who are created from the DNA of the dead, grown in a vat, and unleashed on the galaxy as a deadly fighting force. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it, but so far it's one of those sequels like Aliens that works as a stand alone, but is quite rewarding to anyone who is familiar with the first installment in the series. It's got a wry sense of humor in it, as well, evidenced by an alien who -- after being captured through the ingenious use of what is essentially throwing rocks at his base -- tells his human captor, "leave it to you humans to bang the rocks together."

However, Scalzi's most recent work is easily his most fun. In The Android's Dream "A man solves a diplomatic crisis through action scenes and snappy dialogue." In this self-described "popcorn" novel, Scalzi manages to sneak in some of what I assume are his trademark characters-that-the-reader-cares-deeply-about, thrust into fantastic situations but behaving in entirely believable and realistic ways. The book is hilarious -- it starts out with what is pretty much a chapter-long fart joke, which is a great way to weed out readers who aren't willing to just relax and take the trip -- and builds to a tremendously satisfying climax. Like Old Man's War there is a deeper message here if you're really willing to look for it . . . or maybe it's just brilliant and enjoyable satire.

John Scalzi is much more than just a science fiction author, though. According to his bio he's written "critically acclaimed novels, best-selling humor books, nationally syndicated newspaper columns, magazine cover stories...and ad copy, corporate brochures and Web site headlines, too." Among all that work, he also manages to write almost daily in more than one blog, and it's in his personal blog The Whatever that I found some writing that profoundly impacted me as a writer.

Last year, John edited an issue of an SF magazine called The Subterranean. It was a special SF Cliche issue, and John asked me if I wanted to write for it. I wouldn't even have to do the obvious story. I was equally excited, flattered, and terrified. I think I do a pretty decent job writing very short narrative pieces, and longer essays, but actually sitting down to write a full-on story, with character arcs and dialogue scared the shit out of me. I've tried to write fiction before, and every time I do, I end up feeling like I'm using someone else's hands and someone else's voice to play "Hey! I'm a writer!" I've never been able to get past that internal critic who assures me that if I attempt fiction, I'll get "caught writing" (the literary equivalent of an actor getting "caught acting" which is the dramatic equivalent of being "caught bluffing" which is the poker equivalent of being "caught speeding.")

However, my friend and I came up with a story idea, using the Child Genius in Space cliche, assuming that there would be some additional metahumor in me writing that particular cliche. It was a short story about this kid, who is trying to make it from one end of the ship to another to meet up with this girl he likes, but he keeps getting stopped by adults who want him to solve their problems. It's told from his point of view in his personal log, and he tells the audience -- but not the other characters -- how irritated he is that the people are so fucking stupid, they can't solve any of these problems on their own. I tried like crazy to make it work, but it was essentially one joke that was good for 1500 words or so, but would get tired by the time I got to 5000. Or so I thought. I wrote exactly one paragraph before I was seized by paralyzing performance anxiety, and quickly chickened out.

Over the next several months, I read a number of posts on John's blog that he pretty much wrote for aspiring writers like me. In them, he talked openly and directly about how he makes things come together creatively, how he got published, and what it realistically takes to be a full-time writer. That material worked its way into John's book You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing. With this material, John pulled back the curtain on writing in a way I haven't seen since Stephen King's On Writing . . . and in doing so, he really helped me as a writer. I finally have the courage to attempt fiction, and a bit of a roadmap so I'm not fumbling around in darkness, convinced that there are monsters behind every corner, while I make try to deliver an idea from my brain to an audience.

And that's the real reason I admire and respect him as much as I do. It's incredibly rare that an author consistently turns out worthwhile material (everyone misses from time to time) but it's even more uncommon to encounter one who is so willing to interact with his readers, and tell those writers among them exactly how he does it, so they can do it, too.

Wil Wheaton is just this guy, you know?