John Scalzi is an American science fiction writer and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He grew his reputation as a writer from the three novels in his Old Man’s War series and his blog, “Whatever.” I tuned into Scalzi some years ago with his novel “Redshirts.”

Turned out it won a 2013 Hugo Award for best novel, but I didn’t know that when I discovered it. “Redshirts” is a parody of “Star Trek.” The novel gets into why so many “redshirts” — the basic security officers in “Star Trek,” particularly the original series — die off so often during away missions. And it was a blast.

You don’t even have to be a “Star Trek” fan to laugh from the jokes in “Redshirts.”

Then I moved on to Scalzi’s next novel, “The Kaiju Preservation Society,” in which a secret organization monitors kaiju — giant monsters akin to Godzilla, for example — and works to protect the Earth from the beasts. More fun stuff.

Now “Starter Villain” is his latest novel, so I’ll have to read that.

I grew my love of science fiction in my youth from the works of Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon and many more. Some hard sci-fi, sure, but much of that was philosophical. Little of it was comedic. Scalzi’s works probably fall more into the latter category, but really it’s just plain goofy fun.

These are the kinds of books you can read — or listen to — on lazy spring or summer days. They will make you laugh. And sometimes that’s more than enough.