Scalzi Things

Posted on March 31, 2007 
Filed Under Books

This post isn’t a predictive post or a better ending. I consider this more a public service announcement/ review. Lately I’ve read a couple of books by John Scalzi. http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/ If you like science fiction, and you have a sense of humor you should check out his work. I’ve been lurking his blog for awhile now and have read two of his books so far, and I intend to read more. His writing style is wry and conversational, and his characters are very human (even when technically they aren’t). There’s a real sense of humor in his writing, although I would not characterize it as “science fiction comedy”. But if you expect your science fiction to be serious and dry it might not be for you.

The first Scalzi book I read was an earlier one called Old Man’s War. It’s very solid well crafted science fiction. There’s some real science content and a great plotline. Old Man’s War is set in a relatively near future where the human race is in near constant conflict with a plethora of alien species for the few habitable worlds. To help fill the ranks of the fighting forces senior citizens are being recruited. They’re enticed by the promise of a new enhanced and youthful body to fight in, and assistance in settling on an alien world if they survive. The story revolves around the experiences of John Perry, one of these senior soldiers as he signs up on his 75th birthday. He quickly finds himself off world for the first time in a young strong body fighting strange alien species. I thoroughly enjoyed this book; it has a real taste of one of the classics of science fiction and is generally a fun read to boot.

A more recent work by John Scalzi is Android’s Dream. This one is a more irreverent and satirical book about political intrigue and infighting around earths relations with a fourth rate alien power. It follows the story of Harry Creek a low level diplomat as opposing wings of earth’s government play a game of high stakes cat and mouse diplomacy with earth’s only real alien ally the Nidu. Pivotal to Android’s Dream is the Church of the Evolved Lamb. A religion started when a wealthy widower, Hayter-Ross, coned a con artist who tried to scam her by claiming he had divine inspiration and insight. From the ensuing religious nonsense a very real, successful and powerful church was born, with full knowledge of its heritage. This church set out to broker its influence and power to make the con man’s predictions come true. Really fun stuff. Not to mention that the first chapter is entirely devoted to a diplomatic incident where a human diplomat assassinates his alien counterpart using flatulent enabled technologies. I highly recommend this one, check it out you’ll be glad you did.

Comments

Leave a Reply