Serialized novels are like, so retro, you guys.

Consider this experiment a success, I think.

The Human Division is the fifth novel set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe, but it can be read on its own if you are so inclined (although I highly recommend reading the first three books–they are wonderful).

The experiment I’m referring to is that The Human Division was initially released as thirteen separate ‘episodes’ at set intervals, and then collected together in ‘novel’ form and released as a hardcover. I say this was an experiment because it was–Scalzi has stated on his blog that Tor was the driving force behind constructing the novel this way and that they collected data during the entire process, presumably to see if publishing novels in this format is something that should be done more of in the future. I’m not sure of the economics behind all this, but I’m definitely on the side of ‘yes’ in terms of story. I mean, I don’t want every novel to be published this way because that might be agonizing for me (I waited to read this until I could read all the episodes at once), but it was a fun experience as a rare occurrence.

Serialized novels aren’t exactly a new idea, to be clear. It was THE THING to do back in the late 1800s/early 1900s.  Charles Dickens published most of his stuff that way, and Vanity Fair was famously published serially over several years (much to my amusement–my favorite bits of that novel are when Thackeray ‘talks back’ to his readers and gets all sassy with them). I believe Middlemarch was also published this way, but I could be misremembering. (It’s interesting to note those two novels in particular because they’re both so incredibly LONG–reading them serialized would have made them seem much, much shorter). The Human Division is like those novels, in that it generally follows the same characters over the course of the collective story, but it’s also more like a lightly serialized television show than it is a true serialized novel, which is one of the reasons the thirteen bits were called ‘episodes’ instead of ‘chapters.’ Both Vanity Fair and Middlemarch tell one long story mostly only split into sections by years of their characters’ lives. The Human Division tells thirteen different stories that could technically be read on their own, but like with a TV show, play better when you experience them as a whole, and in the intended order. They have contained storylines and often follow different characters, but the whole thing connects together and concludes in the last episode.

As for the plot, well, it’s a space opera, and it’s got aliens and spaceships in it, so yay! But mostly it follows a team of diplomats who work for the Colonial Defense Force (an organization that has been colonizing space and keeping Earth isolated while using it as a source of colonists and soldiers, who leave Earth at age seventy-five and are given new genetically engineered super soldier bodies in exchange for ten years of service–you know what, just read Old Man’s War). Anyway, thanks to the events in the third Old Man’s War book, Earth is now aware that it was being used, and it’s pissed. The division in the title is literal: humanity is split in two, and the consequences reverberate through this whole book. Our B-Team diplomats have to deal with it, and a bunch of other shit the CDF throws at them, and it’s funny and exciting and I liked it.

Long story short: it was fun, and I liked the new format. Excited for the sequel, The End of All Things, which Scalzi is writing now, and which should be out August of next year. The only downside until then is that I’m finally out of new Scalzi books to read, and that is sad.