This is the last day to donate to the “Send Scalzi to the Creation Circus” game. Come on, people: if ever you’ve read one of his books, you know you want to torment him. Go ahead, get even. (Hmm…appealing to the extremely tiny population that has ever read a Scalzi book may not be the most potent strategy for mustering contributions I’ve come up with.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’ve wanted to read Scalzi for some time. I know he’s got a lot of fans. Now with all the talk about him, I’m planning to buy The Android’s Dream and Old Man’s War.
The problem with Old Man’s War is that it contained the ideas of several excellent books but Scalzi couldn’t decide which one to write so it ended up being one good but somewhat confused book that can’t decide if it’s a Heinlein style adventure story, hard speculative fiction, or sci fi with social commentary.
Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigade are practically perfect Sci-fi. Nice and scienc-y without being overly dry and boring. Decent characters and quick moving so it didn’t bogged down in details we don’t care about.
Android’s Dream I’m not such a big fan but it’s worth a read.
Old Man’s war was good, though just a tad scattered as Dianne notes. Ghost Brigade is better than Old Man’s war, but you really should read Old Man’s war first. Lost Colony, the 3d book in the series, is also good.
I like Scalzi. He is a smart writer who isn’t afraid to admit that today’s ideas are built on the ideas of the past and freely admits that he borrows heavily from the best Military sci fi. He also notes that he did market research (well, asked at a bookstore) to see what kind of sci fi sold best and deliberately tried to write a salable book. A little mercenary, perhaps, but I guess that is ironically appropriate for military sci fi, and I like his writing well enough that I want him to succeed.
Now, as to making him suffer? I dunno, I’d have really know him well to wish the Creation Museum on him. As a fan I’d hate to risk his losing IQ points by visiting…
I have read Old Man’s war. It’s a good read. The characters are well drawn out and the story flows at a steady pace.
The Creation Museum sounds like a laughable waste of effort. From the photos that I’ve seen, it looks like they put a lot of work into their miss-information machine.