Nethermore

Maybe you’ve read both Scalzi’s account of the Scalzi Award and Brandon’s as well. But there’s a story behind the award—a story rife with yellow bricks and peril.

It began on Wednesday night. Bryce Moore and I trekked through Downtown Disney looking for souvinirs—he for his son. I was looking for something for myself. Nothing jumped out at me.

But then a large yellow store arose from the mists of night and the smoke from the Disneyland fireworks: the Lego store. It loomed like, well, a giant brick with large, red, Lego doors to welcome us.

As we entered, a nine-year old boy sat outside the red doors, Legos scattered all over the cobblestones in front of him. I imagined him coming out of the store in a panic, unable to contain the pressure fueling his Lego fix. Without being able to make it back to his hotel room, he fell to the ground, ripping apart the Lego box, bricks flying everywhere. And now, on the ground, he could breathe easily as he furiously built a Lego Star Wars Jedi spaceship.

Little did I know that the boy would be me on Saturday night right after the Hugo Awards banquet.

Of all the things in the Lego store, the thing that sparked my curiosity was the big bins of bricks in the back. For around seven bucks, one could take a plastic cup and fill it with Legos from any of the bins. I made up my mind. I wanted Legos as a souvinir. And since the Hugos were given out at WorldCon, I thought it would be cool to make a rocket to take home as a remembrance of the Convention.

As the convention unfolded, it became apparent that Scalzi was the forerunner for the Campbell Award, and as a result, my friend Brandon Sanderson adopted him as his evil nemesis. When things went even slightly awry, the curse “Scalzi!” would echo down the hallways in the same intonations of the famous line: “Khan!”

The joke grew, and then I found myself one afternoon with friends Dan Wells and Janci Patterson, who both had expressed interest in going to the Lego store. Since Lego rockets were already on my mind, I brought up the idea of making an award for Brandon. We all thought it would be a great idea, and we planned on giving him the award—so long as Scalzi won.

Off to the Lego Store, and directly to the bins of bricks we went. After an hour of fiddling with bricks, and a few false starts—Dan and Janci were incredibly patient with me—we had a rocket. It should be mentioned that Dan did a great job of decorating the rocket with round pieces, and vents, and a Lego bush to act as a pilot. We pulled the thing apart, crammed it into the little bucket, and added pieces around it to fill it up and get our money’s worth of bricks.

Torn apart in a bucket with a taped-on top, the Scalzi award waited until Saturday when Dan Wells and Steve Diamond borrowed a Sharpie from the “When Did You Join Fandom?” wall and approached John Scalzi.

“Can you sign this?” asked Dan. “It’s a Lego.”

“Sure,” said Scalzi. He signed the brick and handed it back. “What’s it for?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Dan.

Scalzi looked confused. “Well, can you tell me later?”

“No.” Dan took back the Sharpie. “But maybe you’ll find out.”

Fast forward to Saturday night. Scalzi wins the Campbell Award. Our friend Bob Defendi screams “Scalziiii!” into the silence before Scalzi’s acceptance speech. The Hugos end. The group of us are walking back to the hotel with Brandon.

Dan looks at me. “Have you built the award?”

I blink. “It’s still in the bucket with all the other bricks we shoved in there.”

“You’d better hurry then,” he says.

I ran to the hotel, reverting back to past tense. The elevators had quite the wait. I found a stairwell that appeared to be for employees only because it was so narrow. Up to the seventh floor, and into the rooms I flew.

On the floor was the bucket of Legos. I tore off the lid and began madly building the rocket, wondering if I could make it exactly the same way I had back in the store a few days earlier. Just as in the movies, I got it done just as Brandon and the rest of the group arrived. (Thanks to Kimball on this one.)

Then we presented the award to Brandon. My only regret: I wish we had built a holder on it for Scalzibane.

So, that’s the story of the Scalzi Award. And at 6.95, I bet it cost a whole lot less than that Campbell Awards plaque.