A Move to Scotland Part 1: The Prelude

If you have come to the site lately, you’ll have noticed a change to my bio. Where it once said something like this:

Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling and World Fantasy Award winning author. His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio.

It now says:

Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling and World Fantasy Award winning author. His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Scotland.

So that’s a little bit of a change.

The other day on Bluesky I posted a photo I took while me and one of my kids was out thrifting in Edinburgh:

How did I end up here?

Long story short, I’m not an American, I’m not naturalized. I hold a UK passport, and have since birth due to being born in a country that was a part of the UK the year I was born, thus giving me, through accident of birth, a UK passport. I’ve lived in the US for 30 years, but never did naturalize.

Why Leave Ohio?

Partly because I was a freelancer, and the Green Card renewal was cheaper than the citizenship application, by like many hundreds. It was always the cost of a mortgage’s difference, and renewal kept landing during a period of tight finances, so I did the smart thing each time and renewed the Green Card. Partly because, at first, I would have had to give up my British citizenship (until the very late stage of the Bush administration, when it was legalized, but I didn’t realize that for some time). And there are only two things I’ve had since a childhood of moving around, losing all my personal belongings, and starting over several times: a plush hand-crocheted dog my mom made for me as a toy as a child, and my passport.

When Tr*mp was reelected, after seeing the autocratic tendencies of his first term, my family and I had a long conversation. Reading over Project 2025, I could see that being a non-citizen in the US could become a very tenuous and dangerous position.

So, so many Americans told me that someone like me would be fine. They were only going after criminals. They were only going after people not working.

“You came the right way,” someone told me at a store once. “You’ll be fine.”

The calling of the White House of pro-LGBTQ writing and journalism, as well as anti-Fossil Fuel and pro wind energy writing as ‘seditious’ and trying to get that into legal frame works, the rolling back of legal protections, the attempts to roll back birthright citizenship (which could affect my children and leave them stateless), and the activities of ICE all factored into our math.

Then let us look at ICE.

If ICE is only going after criminals, what makes a criminal? A felony? Right now. What if misdemeanors are added to that list? Do you have speeding tickets or parking tickets in your past? I have a speeding ticket in my history. Technically that’s enough to label me a criminal. If most conservatives who saw “Bobias Mickle, deported for a misdemeanor” they wouldn’t blink.

And it’s not being deported that concerned me. It was the fact that Stephen Miller told ICE to make detainment as ‘cruel as possible’ on purpose.

There was an institutional sadism to what was happening that became clear to me from the outset. Detainees stripped of access to medicine, being released in winter storms with no clothing to die. And British citizens were getting caught up in this, I noted. American Citizens even.

I knew I was very low on a list, but I knew I was on the list to get to eventually. My country of birth Grenada, is listed on all my documents, and is on the ICE/Tr*mp list of countries to be targeted because they had the audacity of not doing something Trump wanted and thus are in his list of ‘shithole countries.’

During the first administration, I had an experience at the border coming back that… told me a lot about what was coming. And during the Bush administration, was once detained for an hour and hassled for my country of birth and general suspicion. With ICE agents now patrolling airports, I quickly stopped accepting requests to travel around the US. While I figured the chances were low, very low, if the improbably happened, I need daily medicine to control my heart rate. The risk, incredibly low, but in a developed country it should be *fucking* zero.

We know it isn’t about immigrants doing it ‘right’ as they’re getting picked up outside courthouses, or during their mandated check ins. We know it isn’t about who’s not working, because ICE is showing up at job sites.

It’s racist targeting, it’s pain, it’s institutional cruelty.

By the time we left, I knew of at least one immigrant family hiding in a basement somewhere in the US like Anne Frank.

In all my years of talking to Americans, who fought the Nazis in WW2 so thoroughly, I wouldn’t have expected this to be a country to succumb to it. But I heard my MAGA neighbors in grocery stores and what they said, not seeing my white-passing face and realizing they were talking about me. I still remember the hispanic American who said “I came the right way, the rest of them *should* be rounded up” and wonder if he’ll be safe.

And I’ll never forget the face of the border guard that detained me, those years ago, how gleeful they were at their petty tyranny. It was the same glee I saw in the faces of MAGA neighbors celebrating being on top and owning the libs.

This paints a dark picture of America.

It is a true one.

There is also another America. Another side I left behind.

It is the millions organizing against this. It’s the families taking in immigrants to their basements, and protecting them. Churches doing the same, and making sure they are fed. It’s the amazing community I found even in a county that votes 70% for Trump and the most evil/shitty congress representative, Jim Jordan, who turned his back on his students being raped in showers to keep power and wealth and influence. People who are staying, and fighting, and spreading love and building things even in these dark moments. It is these people I will miss dearly, who surrounded us with love, honesty, community, and insight.

To be honest, I don’t think MAGA wins. I have a theory about where this goes. And if I were a US citizen, I’d stay to see it. I’ll write that up in a follow up post, I’m actually bullish. But I think the next 2-7 years are going to be a mess, and I’m 47. I invested 30 years of my life in staying and fighting, and now I want to retire and build my own life up in ways I want it to be. I wanted to follow a dream that was what some would have called the American Dream 50 years ago, and the more I looked into it, the more Scotland fit that bill for freedoms for me and my family.

And even if there’s a blue wave tomorrow, there will be little change in Northwest Ohio. I won’t have access to decent public transportation there, or trains, or better education. Healthcare, maybe, if Medicare for All became real, but that is years off, even if a blue wave happens, two years at least, likely many more. Ohio is gerrymandered to lock in a Republican majority, a corrupt leadership that holds the State government in thrall. In many ways, Ohio is similar to Iran, a religious autocracy with some voting for publicity. It’s a state where non-individual solar power is largely illegal, where the US’s largest bribery scheme ever seen was one where AEP, the power company, paid Republicans to force fossil fuel to be used for the grid. Ohio has fallen to the bottom of the human development index, and on almost every vector, has fallen to the bottom of state rankings.

It is, however, the easiest place to take advantage of workers.

I think it was the moment where I looked at the life expectancy of an Ohio resident and realized that I gained almost 5 years of life statistically by moving out.

My wife had been fighting cancer when I decided to go to a therapist for the first time to help me deal with that. Then the election happened. They spent a lot of time telling me I can’t run away from something, that I had to run toward something. I rejected that, I’ve moved countries multiple times to get away from a bad situation, and it has always opened up opportunities. But, I had reasons to eye Scotland.

Why Move to Scotland?

It’s dark and rainy and the sun sets early in the winter. Why Scotland?

We flew to Scotland before Tr*mp was inaugurated to spend some weeks here. Ohio is dark and dreary, but it actually has a lot more sun than Scotland, so there’s a big adjustment, no doubt. But I already have to have a sunlamp to get Vitamin D during the winter in Ohio, and take Vitamin D to survive. I have the coping mechanisms already, I think.

In our time in Scotland, we hung around Glasgow, where it rained the entire time. But, unlike Ohio, the grass was vibrantly green, like someone had taken the saturation filter (a comment I am stealing from Allen Stroud, who I met recently) and turned it up a couple of levels.

Yes, the weather was miserable, but there was a lot of beautiful country that fills the soul in a way mud and bare trees and empty soy and corn fields don’t.

Holy shit, the vistas in Scotland: every time I take the bus or train, I put my phone down and stare out the window most of the time because there’s something to see. And it reminds me of being in the Caribbean. Things may be hard, but you could go to the beach, or go for a walk, and see things that filled the soul in a way I have to drive hours in Ohio to do. And the constant driving just drags me down and tires me. I’ve gone on more walks here in three weeks than in three months in Ohio. Maybe even three years?

The NHS. I’ve spent so many thousands a year on medical bills when I’m already paying thousands year to have insurance. It makes planning impossible. And while there is waiting in the NHS, I don’t think people in Europe realize that in the US there is tons of waiting as well, plus the added horror of just… being denied for insurance you’re already paying for.

Transportation. We wanted more walkability in our lives. In just the few weeks I’ve landed, I’ve taken buses and trains around to do things, and it’s been amazing. It’s not perfect, trains can be pricey, but as a society, the UK seems to be trying to work on this in a way the US doesn’t even try. It may not be perfect, some European systems seem shinier, but it’s fucking there and I adore it.

Consumer protections. They’re all but gone in Ohio, and minimal in the US. They’re there in the UK. For example, every service I’ve signed up for has a 14 day cooling off period that’s easy to invoke. I tried 2 different cellphone services before settling on a 3rd that had the best coverage for where I was.

Better quality of groceries. The number of recalls happening in the US are staggering. And since I’ve been here my acid reflux has faded so much I’m toying with going off my GERDs meds. That has to be about chemicals in foods, yeah?

Access to world-class cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, all on the central belt, London being 6 hours away, as well as some real cool northern British cities I want to visit. I’ve already been to Glasgow for a conference, and to Edinburgh for thrifting.

Education: in three years, once my kids have been here that long to establish residency, free university. They’re not sure about waiting that long, but… not having student loans is a gift I can’t otherwise give them.

Real estate: houses and apartments (flats) in the UK are expensive. We were in a low cost of living area in Ohio, so in the past when we tried to look at moving, we couldn’t. Scotland has prices that are still more than Ohio, but more within reach in theory. So we could entertain the idea without it being mad.

A shot at being an author again: I stepped away from 5 years of being a professor, and I’m going to try to be a hybrid freelancer/author/teacher (I still am distance teaching at Stonecoast). I’m 47, this may be my last show to go back to trying this again. Is it a great time when my freelancing skills are now being replaced by AI in so many areas? No idea, but I was pulling

These are the reasons I thought I was moving, I found more when I actually landed. Which I’ll talk about in part three.

Moving to Scotland part two will be about applying for my family’s visas and landing here.