8) The Last Colony, by John Scalzi

So, I've now finished all the novels on the Hugo shortlist, and can get started on the short fiction. Some of you will remember my exchanges with Scalzi on the first book in this series, Old Man's War, which I took as an endorsement of kick-ass militarism and a mockery of the concept of conflict resolution. (refs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) Scalzi explained to me then that his narrator was unaware of the true facts of the situation, and indeed the political message of The Last Colony is one I have much more sympathy with: humanity is dragged into an unwinnable war with the rest of the galaxy by the lies of its own political leadership, and our hero ends up as the one man who can resolve matters. So no complaints on that score.

However, I find Scalzi's narrative style rather wearyingly unvarying; almost all the characters speak with identical voices. And the plot is both complex and reliant on fortunate accidents of timing. There are touches I liked - Charles Stross makes an appearance as a genetically engineered super-soldier, and I appreciated the subtle "Commodore Perry" riff at the end of the book - but this is going fourth on my ballot.

Here. Certainly the best comment on the subject I have seen.

Martin McGrath and Jonathan McCalmont on John Scalzi, me and criticism.

One of the fun bits of the episode for me was the commenter on Scalzi's website who accused me of lynch mob tactics because I had said I wouldn't put the book very high on my Hugo ballot. I replied that he had clearly been very fortunate in his experience of lynch mobs.

I am fortunate enough to read many interesting things on my friends list. Here are some of them from the last week to share with you all:

John Scalzi is right (about Catcher in the Rye).

homais in Yemen.

wyvernfriend finds wisdom in MASH.

peake on mild fame, and on online vs printed reviews.

rozk's TLS review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (spoilers).

Speaking of which, mizkit has been fortunate enough to receive the "Best Fanmail Evar".

bellatrys has been reading Norman's Gor books, and finds that they have no redeeming features.

Top tip from slimmeroftheyea: don't leave small children within reach of the handbrake, especially if you have parked on a slope.

lizw on tea.

smhwpf discovers a personal link with Freema Agyeman.

And finally, agirlnamedluna is worried about Belgium.

It's only because I am on holiday that I have the time to acknowledge all these pieces of wisdom (and there are a couple more in unlocked posts which I have really enjoyed reading but won't link to here, including a fascinating piece about the pros and cons of getting married, and a really offensive cartoon from the Daily Mail). Keep it up folks; I enjoy reading you all.

John Scalzi puts me 35th out of the top 51 blogs on science fiction and fantasy. That's very nice of him, considering the things I said about his book! Of course, you don't have to believe him; you just have to believe in the power of Technorati.

Well, my post on Old Man's War pulled in 23 comments, and the related discussion thread on John Scalzi's blog is up to 29, which is something of an Event. My thanks to John Scalzi for engaging with this reader's comments as thoughtfully as he has done, and to (most of) those others who have chipped in.

Obviously, I have had to revisit one of my core assumptions. I completely withdraw my assumption that John Scalzi is a slavering warmonger who does not care about civilian control of the military. I also withdraw my accusation that the character of "Bender" is a deliberate piss-take of former Senator George Mitchell, and accept that the striking similarities between their two careers were not intended.

( Having said that, with spoilers... )

6) Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

After reading Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, I declared that I knew which novel was getting the top vote in my Hugo ballot. I now know which of the nominees is getting the lowest vote, though the middle three will need a bit of sorting out.

It's not that I actively dislike military sf. It's not particularly my thing, but I will read it from time to time, as I will occasionally read horror, romance, etc. My preference is for well-thought out fantasy sagas, and for sf of the Asimov's variety. And I think Scalzi does the military stuff here rather well: even if the plot and structure and ideas of the book are mainly a homage to Starship Troopers (Heinlein gets an explicit thank-you in the afterword) and a response to The Forever War (Haldeman is, however, not mentioned), there is more actual evidence of serious thought of what military strategy and tactics might look like in the standard sf interstellar setting than in either of the precursors.

Two things lost me however. One was a fairly minor flaw, comparable to the flaws of other Hugo nominees. Quite simply, the characters are supposed to be 75 years old when they are recruited to the space army, and then get rejuvenated to become fighting machines. Nothing wrong with that, but I found the dialogue between the 75-year-old characters simply unconvincing, sounding more like what you would hear around the table from sf fans in their mid-thirties. They just did not sound old, and that robbed some of the credibility from the set-up, and removed some of the zing from the rejuvenation process.

That on its own might well have left me pondering Old Man's War's merits equally with Learning the World, Accelerando, and A Feast for Crows. But one passage in the middle of the book not only failed to convince me on its own terms but also exposed a glaring weakness in the set-up. Of course, my own experience gives me a particular vantage point here, but I think it's worth going into details. If you don't want spoilers, ( don't click here! )

So, not really recommended, I'm afraid, unless you feel comfortable with the author's politics. And I don't.

Edited to add: OK, prodded by autopope and davidweman's responses below, I popped over to Scalzi's blog and had a read: and it's pretty clear that his political views are, in fact, a lot closer to mine than is apparent from the novel. Which in my view makes the situation slightly worse. There is already enough of this militaristic stuff out there being written by people who believe in it.

Further edited: Ulp, see reply by Scalzi himself below!

Finally edited to add: See my follow-up post dealing with some of the points made here and on Scalzi's blog.

Thanks to pnh's generosity and a mishap with the Belgian postal system, I have an extra copy each of John Scalzi's Old Man's War and Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, both of which are Hugo nominees this year.

Anyone interested? Especially people who are within range of Brussels or Leuven, and who are likely to write about them on their own lj's?