I recently read John Scalzi's The Human Division[1] (on my Kindle, not that Amazon gives me anything to mention this, the chintzy jerks -- hey, Bezos, you promised to spend all my Amazonbux on Blue Origin, remember?).
It's good stuff, classic SF ideas presented in the modern style. Set in the same universe as his Old man's War, it (mostly) follows the efforts of a Colonial Union diplomatic team in the aftermath of the split between Earth and CU. My guess would be that some fraction of reviewers will compare it to Keith Laumer's "Retief"[2] short stories; but where Laumer is satirical and sharply critical of most of his diplomat-characters and their organization and the hero triumphs in spite of their pettifogging and myopic focus, Scalzi's crew, for all they are something of a bunch of diplomatic misfits, work doggedly and to the best of their abilities against rather grim odds. Some of the byplay and dialog -- and the tone -- reminds me of Eric Frank Russell's connected short stories (collected in Men, Martians and Machines) about the adventures of crew of the spaceship Upskadaska City. (Though, of course, there'll never be another Kli Yang or Jay Score). And Ambassador Abumwe is as nicely drawn a portrait of a difficult, talented, dead-ended high-ranker as I've found in SF. The ambassador is not our main focus; many of the stories spotlight the work of Harry Wilson, an apparently unambitious Colonial Defense Forces officer and Hart Schmidt, underachieving third-tier bureaucrat. Jame Retief and Ben Magnan, they're not -- but they get the job done, in plausible, engagingly-told tales.
If you've been following Old Man's War and sequels, you'll get more from this collection than if you haven't -- but if you don't mind starting in the middle, it would make a good introduction to that fictional universe. Recommended.
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1. Or most of it, via the one-story-a-week release schedule. If you buy the physical book or compiled collection, there's two extra yarns in 'em, all part of How e-Books Kept An Author From Starving In a Garrett.
2. Why hasn't anyone brought Retief to film yet? He'd out-Bond Bond and leave most movin'-pitchers SF in the dust! Scalzi has at least been optioned; so one can hope for an eventual film. Maybe it won't be Starship Troopers.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
13 comments:
Sorry, but I haven't forgiven Scalzi yet for his Little Fuzzy reboot. Couldn't get past the first chapter. Thankfully I didn't pay for it.
I did like Old Man's War etc. and when I get over my snit fit with the author, I'll probably try these.
PS: I love Retief. You're right, someone needs to option that stuff.
Problem is, it's fairly intellectual stuff. The filmmakers would actually have to tell a story rather than rely on CGI and starship shoot-em-ups. Probably the same reason Piper doesn't get optioned.
I enjoyed the book...but was left with an empty feeling. We knew going in to the book that there was a mystery (that someone was trying to tear Earth from the Col. Union permanetly)...and we end the book with the same mystery. I enjoyed the stories...but the whole left me unsatisfied.
Fuzzy, maybe because I've never read the original...I loved the Fuzzy book!
I read Old Man's War last year. Hated it. After years of reading mil-fic by guys who have been there, not to mention actual combat journals by guys who have been there, Little Mr. Liberal's attempt at mil-fic came across as stupid, tacky, tasteless, profoundly juvenile, and unbearably cartoonish. I don't think I'll be trying anything else by him. There are better books to spend my money on.
It's not especially deep or subtle -- it's entertainment. If you weren't entertained, spend your money elsewhere. I did not notice any huge political slant go the work but my politics are seriously askew to the left- right axis; they look a lot alike from where I'm standing.
I got through the 1st three, and recommend them. Not sure what sidetracked me from continuing.
Unrealistic combat in sci-fi doesn't particularly bother me, any more than it does in fantasy books. It's fiction, so I don't expect battles involving wizards and disruptor beams to hew to, e.g., the Napoleon's field tactics. It's the author's universe, after all, and if that's how combat works in it, well, so be it.
The only things I wasn't too fond of in the Old Man's War universe were the super-duper Consu race, and how the skip-drive worked.
Speaking of Sci-Fi, RIP Jack Vance. And, if you haven't already, check out the Rifters trilogy be Peter Watts.
LCB, for me it's like this: "John Scalzi, I knew Pappy Jack Holloway. Pappy Jack Holloway was a friend of mine. And this character you've created is no Pappy Jack Holloway."
Heck, I still question whether Fuzzy Bones should be considered canon -- especially since they finally found Fuzzies and Other People :)
Is the the William Tuning follow-on or the Ardath Mahar?
*Mayhar,* that is. And she's gone, passed away in Feb 2012. :(
Tuning, but Ms. Mayhar basically took Tuning's storyline and ran with it from the other side.
I do think that both of them at least got the Fuzzies right. And that Tuning's book was at least a logical extension of the originals. I actually enjoyed them both. It was just their bad luck that somebody found the Fuzzies and Other People manuscript after all those years.
Piper did not want to write the third Fuzzy book, you know. But he had no choice; the fans pretty much forced it. And then the publisher told him it was too derivative and couldn't stand alone...it's amazing he didn't destroy the manuscript. Finding it did raise some hope that other things like Only The Arquebus might also surface someday.
Just for the record, who here knows Eric Frank Russell's politics?
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...He was way, way Left. Red as can be, in the older sense of the term. Fairly non-authoritarian, which is how we get gems like, "...And Then There Were None." He was also a bit of an SOB in person, according to those who knew him.
People are who they are. We tend to remember only the parts of their personality or work that we like.
Why no Retief movies? First, Laumer's aliens cannot be played by humans in latex, and often the unique alien anatomy played a key role in the story. At the time he wrote the stories, they'd have either had to re-write much of them, or do an animated feature - and animation was for kids. That's no longer such an issue, but just because it's *possible* to combine realistically animated CGI aliens with live humans doesn't mean the budget will be reasonable. Not yet...
Second, every Retief story was politically incorrect even in the 1950's. It suggested that collectivists of any sort (and the "conservatives" of that era were just differently-oriented collectivists) were a threat, that peace could not be achieved by talking unless your talk was backed by sufficient force, that the "peacemaking" diplomats lauded by liberals - and a lot of the so-called conservatives - were bumbling fools, and that the UN ranked somewhere between "pipe dream" and "dangerous nonsense". Hollywood has always been too leftist for such storylines.
I'm just glad that no one thought of giving Retief a re-write like Starship Troopers.
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