John Scalzi pretty much owns the internet,2 so there's not a lot to add to his accolades here.
I'll do so anyway.
He's funny, engaging, and his characterization and plotting skills are stupendous.
"Old Man's War" Trilogy...and Ongoing Series
The first two books, "Old Man's War" and "Ghost Brigades," are rocket-fueled romps through a world where the elderly become our greatest military asset against a universe full of hostile, and sometimes just politically disagreeable, aliens.3 The third book, "The Last Colony," was also quite good, zeroing in on a family trying to make life work in this crazy new 'verse. Then Scalzi lost me. There were two plot points in the third book I was unclear on,4 and the fourth book, "Zoe's Tale," manages to clear them up. But other than those two brief clarifying sections, all it does is re-tell the third book from a different perspective. And it didn't really add anything.5 The fifth book was a scatterbrained collection of stories in the "Old Man's" 'verse that are...fine, I guess, but leave you wishing they more connected and conclusive.6
"Agent to the Stars"
This is hilarious from beginning to end. Scalzi mixes Hollywood politics and satire with a terrific, twisty tale of alien first contact.
"The Android's Dream"
The man knows how to hook ya. Opening line: "Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out." It's a mixed bag from there. LOTS of rambling tangents and a too-large cast of characters. It veers wildly between total farce and futuristic thriller and ends up accomplishing neither.7 Lots of good bits and clever ideas, though. Hard to stay mad at a book that manages to build an entire story around a fart joke.
"Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded"
Scalzi has other non-fiction collections8 but this one snagged a Hugo Award, so this is the one I read. The man is funny and smart, no doubt. And there are some CLASSIC articles in here. But this definitely could have been edited down a bit. He makes the same points over and over and over again and his politics are preachy. Even when I agree with him, I'm like "Jeez, crack a walnut with a sledgehammer much?"
"Fuzzy Nation"
This is an odd one- a literary reboot of a book I'd never heard of- H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy." Tangled origin story aside, it's a twisty, compelling, and ultimately sweet and satisfying tale of a boy and his fuzzy creature. With lots of hard sf detail and thrilling courtroom battles. This and "Zoe's Tale" are the only two Scalzi books that are all-ages appropriate. If your sensibilities are more delicate, this is definitely the one you want to start with.9
"Redshirts"
This also has a tangled background- it's basically set in a world where "Star Trek" is real. It exists as a seemingly-fictional TV show from our reality, but the events on the show are actually happening. Like when a character on the show says something dramatic before a commercial break, everyone in that world freezes and then kind of stands around awkwardly for a few minutes before the "show" starts again, then they start walking and talking again. That's interesting enough, but this tale is told from the perspective of the show's disposable "redshirt" characters. They're tired of getting killed off all the time and decide to take action. And from there- we're off on a wild adventure through space and dimensions!
"Lock In"
Great sf, great thriller. A future disease causes "lock-in," where people are still fully aware, but unable to move their bodies. So a company makes a fortune with a robot system for lock-in victims with which they can move around and interact in our world. And then a robot murder mystery happens. I'm not a fan of murder mysteries, but this one grabbed me and kept its grip tight all the way through.
* * *
1. It's probably OCD. And that's AOK.
2. And he has the most-updated blog in the world, which I've long since given up on trying to follow: http://whatever.scalzi.com/
3. It's fair to call it "Ender's Game" in reverse. The age, instead of the youth, is the soldiers' strength. However, the book's big "twist"- regarding how the elderly are turned into soldiers- is revealed in the first act, as opposed to the final "Ender's" twist.
4. So were his readers, apparently- Scalzi admits in the foreword to the fourth book that it was writing it to pacify all the folks that cried foul on those two narrative leaps.
5. Now Orson Scott Card did the same thing with "Ender's Shadow," but he told a TOTALLY DIFFERENT story there from the one in its parallel book, which I seem to be referencing a lot in these footnotes. I've read other stuff, too, I assure you. Heinlein. There you go. That's another thing I've read that's relevant to these books.
6. I understand there's another collection coming out this year that will have more closure-"The End of All Things"- and that this book was a setup for that one. Meh. If your book isn't gonna be self-contained, give us an advance warning.
7. The book's title is a reference to Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" but the book isn't very Dick-ish. It's more Douglas Adams-y, with all the lengthy satiric background descriptions interrupting the narrative while providing context and setting up punchlines.
8. Too many for someone late to the game like me- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi#Non-fiction_books
9. And possibly end on- he's pretty salty with the language in his other works.
-Phony McFakename
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