Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies: Selecting Writings from Whatever 2013–2018

"Virtue signaling," as described by Hugo Award-nominated Scalzi (The Consuming Fire) is "discount[ing] other people expressing the idea that it would be nice if we could all be essentially and fundamentally decent to each other," of which the author himself is infrequently accused. The book collects essays posted on Scalzi's blog Whatever, covering a particularly turbulent half-decade in America and elsewhere. The expected topics—Obama, Trump, #MeToo—are given thorough deconstruction and commentary via Scalzi's cutting (but always humane) humor and intelligence. Whether one agrees with his observations and/or findings, they're refreshingly well informed. Aside from pointing out positives, negatives, and frivolity attendant to such matters, the entries chronicle an ever-increasing sense of hostility and fragmentation across Internet culture and into workaday life. Taken from the perspective of a reasonably successful author living in small-town Ohio, this strikes a note of concern: but Scalzi's calls to action lay bare a global erosion of common sense and—worse—empathy.