John Scalzi’s The Last Emperox

I am about to start a serialized podcast reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, whose first hour I’ve already got in the can. It debuts later this week on the Podapalooza festival, a pay-what-you-like, virtual podcasting festival that benefits Givedirectly, which makes direct cash grants to families affected by coronavirus — and I’ll be putting it in my feed next Monday.

In the meantime, I have been casting about for something to read into this week’s podcast; this weekend, my friends Doselle Young and Gretchen Ash stopped by and sat at the end of our driveway while my wife and I sat on our porch and we all ate tacos together (socially distanced socializing!) and I mentioned this to them and Doselle suggested that I read aloud John Scalzi’s new novel, The Last Emperox, and I texted John and asked if he’d be up for it, and he was, and here we are.

The Last Emperox is the final volume in the “Interdependency” trilogy that began with “The Collapsing Empire,” a novel about a galactic civilization that depends on wormholes that allow for faster-than-light travel, just as those wormholes start mysteriously failing. The first book came out at the same time as my 2017 novel Walkaway and John and I toured our books together back then.

John was supposed to be on an intense, national tour with his book right now, but, of course, he is not. He is one of the first wave of writers experimenting with what book publicity looks like in the age of pandemic, and is blazing the trail for those of us who will come later (I have three books out between now and Christmas, so this is something I’m watching very closely). A lot of the future of authorship is going to rely upon mutual aid, so getting a chance to plug Scalzi’s (excellent) new book in the podcast (MP3) is something I’m really excited about.