I hate to be that guy, but don’t judge this book by its cover. The art is lovely enough, so I mean no offense to the artist when I say that this, like so many sci-fi covers, looks like it’s gonna be capital S serious. Red alerts in deep space and stoic men and nary a woman in sight. If you’ve read any Scalzi, you know it won’t be, but if I were a new reader, this would not be a book I’d pick up immediately. […]
Scalzi Gon’ Scalzi: Funny, Thought-Provoking, Occasionally Profound
In last year’s CBR I reviewed Old Man’s War, the first book in an NYT best-selling sci-fi series by John Scalzi. The gist of the first book was that when you reached a certain AARP-like age on Earth, you could enlist in the space marines to protect humanity from…something. You’d take an elevator up to space, and then you weren’t quite sure what came next. You were legally dead on Earth. That’s kind of all you as a space marine cadet knew. Without spoiling the first […]
What Does Humanity Mean?
You can pick up any reasonably well written book and make a case for it being an exploration of what it means to be human, the state of humanity, or the universal truth of the human condition. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series is very definitely asking what defines humanity. In the universe of the Old Man’s War series, Scalzi pushes the envelope of humanity. Colonial Defense Force soldiers are created when In The Last Colony, we return to the protagonist of Old Man’s War, John […]
Fucking Humans
John Scalzi has created a fascinating sci-fi universe in his Old Man’s War series. The Ghost Brigades is as much a horror story as a sci-fi adventure. Scalzi references Frankenstein repeatedly as he plants questions about the boundaries of being human, the ethics of creating life, corporate control, and who we consider monsters. Scalzi presents some interesting and deep questions, but ultimately sidesteps the more problematic answers by wrapping up his stories with happyish endings. Which is fine. These days I’m reading for neater resolutions and happier endings. […]