24 replies to this topic

[Sci-2]

Apparently Redshirts isn't out yet. Almost bought Old Man's War, but haven't even started Firethorn so I figured I need to hold off.

ETA: Recs appreciated.

Still, this guy apparently has a lot of shorts online. Read two of them:

The President's Brain is Missing

Pretty funny, not the anti-Bush satire I thought it was going to be. Noticed the cast was very diverse, which was interesting.

The premise is a little wonky, but it does come together relatively well for a short.

=-=-=

Alien Animal Encounters

Very quick, amusing, worth reading.

Will probably read some more of this stuff over the next few days and comment.

Edited by sciborg2, 21 May 2012 - 06:48 PM.

[kcf]

I like his stuff. It's generally fun, fast reading. Old Man's War is space opera with a nice concept and as I said - fun and action-packed. As you've probably picked up, his writing has lots of humor in it as well. It's not deep, nor is it hard SF.

[RedEyedGhost]

I really enjoyed Old Man's War (one of those rare books that I've actually took the time to reread), and The Ghost Brigades, but was disappointed by The Last Colony.  And because Zoe's Tale is just a retelling of the events in The Last Colony I haven't took the time to read that one yet.  The God Engines was a really fun little novella.

None of his other works have interested me, but I am really looking forward to Redshirts.

[NewsToTom]

I've read most or almost all of his work-Old Man's War, Ghost Brigades, Android's Dream, Last Colony, Agent to the Stars, Zoe's Tale, God Engines, and Fuzzy Nation. None of them are deep, and all of them are fast, fun reading with humor.

Last Colony and Zoe's Tale are in the same universe as Old Man's War and Ghost Brigades; read OMW, GB, LC, and ZT in that order. LC and ZT take the series in a bit of a different direction, less mil space opera, and they didn't work as well for me.

I think Agent was his first novel, and you can tell.

I really liked the premise of Android's Dream, but am not sure I loved the book. I remember finding it particularly amusing, though.

I've never read Piper's original of Fuzzy Nation, but if you've read some 50's/60's sci-fi, you can see how it's a bit of a throwback to that era. That wasn't really a surprise, as OMW is in the same vein.

FWIW, these have all been library reads. As I'm not a Trek fan, Redshirts is not very high on my priority list, though I'll probably grab it at some point eventually if the local library picks it up.

[Lan the Clever]

I only read Old Man's War. It's a fun, fast-paced, action-packed space opera. The main bad aspect of the book is the absense of an antagonist. There are many antagonists, but they are just random bad guys for the most, with little depth. Worth reading, though.

[Rob B]

The only novel by Scalzi I haven't read is Agent to the Stars and I just started Redshirts this morning.  So far, it is as humourous and engaging as his other novels.

The Old Man's War books are very good, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Zoe's Tale considering it is a retelling/mirror novel.

Fuzzy Nation was quick, but very gripping reading. I found some of it to be very emotionally moving, which again caught me by surprise.

So yeah, he's the type of writer of which the SF genre needs more - he smartly balances the appeal to core genre readers and non-genre readers.

[Castel]

I read Old Man's War and couldn't get through it. He has...issues with characterization sometimes, relying on too much tell I think. I just don't empathise with the characters. Someone summed up the book in a way that captured everything I felt about it and made it difficult to take seriously: "It's Starship Troopers but less relevant".

[Sci-2]

Scalzi interviewed about Red Shirts on Geek Dad, capsule review in Geek Mom

Quote

She also read Redshirts by John Scalzi. She didn’t just read it, she devoured it! It was every thing she could have hoped for in a book that both spoofs and plays homage to the science fiction television genre, making use of and poking fun at ridiculous technobabble, bad science, plots that make no sense, and so much more. Laugh out loud funny, this book is a must read once it is released June 5, 2012, especially if you are a true fan of science fiction television. If you are a Star Trek fan, especially a TOS fan, this book will tickle you in even more special ways.

[Jojen]

I've read Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades and will probably read Redshirts. I'm not a huge Trek fan, but I read the first two or three chapters online and it really had me laughing.

[Sci-2]

Coulton, of Portal Fame, wrote a song to go with Redshirts.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I just finished Redshirts it was an amusing if implausible exercise in navel gazing.

[Sci-2]

Ser Scot A Ellison, on 08 July 2012 - 07:14 AM, said:

I just finished Redshirts it was an amusing if implausible exercise in navel gazing.

My understanding is it pulls the kind of plot twists we got in Vertigo comics during the 90s.

Spoiler

Characters escaping the fictional universe and confronting their authors.

[Ebenstone]

Loved Redshirts. It's been a while since I single-served a book and I did with this one. I read it in less than 24 hours. This has been a great year for really good books.

[MisterOJ]

So I picked up the novella "The B Team" by Scalzi the other day as I was browsing and saw that it was being sold free of DRM at the request of the author and the publisher. Since I hate DRM, I felt like I had to support this venture based on principal alone. (Okay, the synopsis sounded interesting too. Honestly, I wouldn't have bought it on principal if I didn't think I'd ever read it.)

I've really enjoyed the book so far and am about two-thirds through it. But in looking into it a bit more, I realized that this series is actually a continuation of his Old Man's War series. I'm wondering now if I should go back and read those books before continuing with this current series of novellas, or just continue on with the new books.

Does anyone have any suggestions on which direction to go next?

[kcf]

I enjoyed The Old Man's War and it's various sequels. I haven't read the B-team, so I don't know how it compares with his other writing, but I imagine it's more of the same. I also imagine that you don't need to have read OMW.

In case you didn't realize - the b-team is part of serialization that will be released over a period of time (for about $.99 each). The whole collection will be released as a single volume later.

Also, Tor and Tor UK have gone all DRM-free with their books. A great step in the right direction.

[MisterOJ]

kcf, on 30 January 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

In case you didn't realize - the b-team is part of serialization that will be released over a period of time (for about $.99 each). The whole collection will be released as a single volume later.

I knew The B Team was the first in a series of weekly serials, but I didn't know they would be collected at the end of the run. Which makes sense, really. I like the idea of a weekly serial though. It's kinda different and refreshing. So, I'll probably just get caught up and follow along with them. And then I'll likely go back and read the earlier novels like Old Man's War and so on some time later.

[Werthead]

Redshirts

Quote

Andrew Dahl is a newly-assigned crewman on the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union. Initially what appears to be a plum assignment turns into a nightmare. Almost every away mission turns into a lethal showdown with hostile aliens and crewmen are frequently killed, although oddly the bridge crew seem to survive every one of these encounters. As the situation becomes more bizarre and crew are slain by robots, alien worms and - somewhat unexpectedly - ice sharks, Dahl becomes determined to find out what the hell is really going on.

Redshirts is John Scalzi's tribute to all of those unfortunate extras and minor characters whose sole purpose in life is to show up for ten minutes and then die in a feeble attempt to make the audience believe the main characters might be in danger. It's a huge, nerdy in-joke that anyone who's ever sat through an episode of Star Trek should appreciate. Anyone who hasn't (and Star Trek and its cheesier tropes - distressingly - are getting a bit long in the tooth these days) might find the book pretty pointless.

The book starts off as a look at the workings of such a ship from the POV of the regular crewmen rather than the command crew (and yes, The Next Generation did a whole episode about that) but rapidly escalates into being a funny commentary on the aforementioned TV tropes before moving into a metafictional storyline about fictional characters coming to life before skewing sideways into a very ill-advised attempt at pathos (which falls completely flat due to a lack of decent characterisation, meaning we don't care). Scalzi seems to be aping funny SF authors like Harry Harrison, Terry Pratchett (whose Guards! Guards! pursues a vaguely similar premise, but altogether more successfully) and Douglas Adams. However, the premise of the novel is one that Douglas Adams threw into a TV documentary about his own life, explored and moved on from in about five minutes. Stretched over 300 pages, the premise becomes rather thin. Scalzi is a funny writer (though not in the same league as the aforementioned writers) and the laughs keep things ticking over, but despite a couple of attempts to make serious points (most notably in the codas, where the laughs dry up but the prose style improves markedly) the novel is pretty lightweight and disposable.

Redshirts (***) is an entertaining, easy read which will make you laugh for a bit but you will also completely forget about within a week. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

[banjax451]

I found Redshirts very frustrating, mostly for the opposite reasons from most reviewers I've read. I loved the last portion of the novel, particularly the codas at the end (which I found to be some of Scalzi's best writing). Where I was frustrated was most of what lead up to that point, which I felt was hindered by two things:

1.) Too many attempts at pushing all the "geeks will love this book" buttons with deliberate Star Trek allusions, etc.  This I can forgive. People seem to love this portion of the novel and seem to get upset when it goes away.

2.) Much more to the book's detriment is that the first two thirds of the novel contain "the ur-Scalzi" character. You find this in just about every Scalzi novel: the snarky funny protagonist that appears to more or less be a surrogate for Scalzi himself. John Perry in the OMW novels, Jack Holloway in Fuzzy Nation, Harry Creek in Android's Dream, Thomas Stein in Agent to the Stars, Harry Wilson (in the serially published Human Division) and here...Ensign Dahl.  It's basically the same character...repeated and given a new name and new trivial background details.

What I loved about the codas is that this character is completely missing.  Gone. Not present in any way.  And suddenly...the novel improved for me. And I think I would have enjoyed the first half without that character there. I've felt Scalzi is using this character as a crutch and it seems clear to me he'd be better off without him.  I enjoyed this character early on...and now...I think I'm done with him.

There was a good book that could have been written here, but it wouldn't have been nearly as popular as Redshirts was.  You could have made an excellent and serious novel that went meta and got serious and explored issues of why tropes get used, etc. But instead, Scalzi went for the laughs in the first half, and when he takes them away at the end...Wert is right that it doesn't pay off because we've been given no reason to care.  I cared about the characters in the codas - they seemed more real than any Scalzi characters I've ever read before. But he had to take away the snark.  And the snark is what sells for Scalzi.

Scalzi has good ideas...but I wonder if in whatever he does next, he might not just drop the comedy. I think he's a better writer than the stuff he's putting out now, which seems to be more of the same...just change the situations around.

[Galleymac]

I'd like to see Scalzi writing earnestly.  I haven't read all of his works, but I do find that his characters tend to sound like him -- or, at least, his blog persona, clever, light, snarky -- which is distancing.  But then he'll get to that one scene that's all-out emotional and he manages to touch something deeper.  I'd like to see what happened if he trusted that and just went for it, novel-length.

[Memory Lane]

Werthead said:

Redshirts is John Scalzi's tribute to all of those unfortunate extras and minor characters whose sole purpose in life is to show up for ten minutes and then die in a feeble attempt to make the audience believe the main characters might be in danger. It's a huge, nerdy in-joke that anyone who's ever sat through an episode of Star Trek should appreciate. Anyone who hasn't (and Star Trek and its cheesier tropes - distressingly - are getting a bit long in the tooth these days) might find the book pretty pointless.

I understood them, but I see what you're saying. It's been nearly eight years since a Star Trek series has been on the air, and the more iconic series have been off the air for more than a decade (nearly two decades in the case of The Next Generation). I haven't seen more than a handful of any Star Trek TV episodes, so if I hadn't seen the movies, I would have no idea what Scalzi was making fun of.

It felt like a pretty black comedy, but with a definite tension between the snarky spoofing of Star Trek and the subject matter dragging it to a darker place. These crew members should be more fucked up, and desperate to get off the ship as soon as it returns to base. The officers should be more troubled by the fact that they go through periods where they have absolutely no control over what's going on, and make bad mistake after bad mistake.

banjax451 said:

I cared about the characters in the codas - they seemed more real than any Scalzi characters I've ever read before. But he had to take away the snark.  And the snark is what sells for Scalzi.

Pretty much, and Scalzi's always been open about the money-making objective side of his work. That said, I suspect it's also where he's most comfortable as a writer.

I also think it works most of the time because we have a relative lack of snark in a lot of new SF. So much of it takes itself so seriously, and there's a perception that SF isn't "serious writing" unless it's So Serious and talking about Issues Today. Light-hearted writing livens things up.

Edited by Snow Bass, 26 February 2013 - 02:49 AM.