I enjoyed John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. So, when I heard he had a new book out, I suggested that AJM buy it for me for my birthday as a “Homer buys Marge a bowling ball” type gift. Something we both can enjoy. We went all out to support John Scalzi and local business and plunked down the full $24.99 list price for the hardback at BookPeople. As it

The saga continues. And we’re back to first person narrative and the voice of John Perry. Yay! I think John Scalzi finally gets the balance between dialog and description right. (Except between pages 199-203.) The Last Colony is a very satisfying tying up of story lines and themes. Quotes and Notes 2011-03-02. Added after reading all three books in the series. You never forget where you come from. — p

The Ghost Brigades opens with a rock. I didn’t find this the most promising of starts. If just finishing Old Man’s War hadn’t left me with the desire to explore more of John Scalzi’s universe, I would have been tempted to stop after the first page. Luckily, the importance of rocks pans out quickly so I didn’t feel too cranky having to sit through description. Contrast it with the opening

AJM encouraged me to read some science fiction that was written a bit more recently. After all, just because I started reading science fiction in the 1970s and stopped reading science fiction in the 1970s, doesn’t mean I should restrict myself to reading science fiction from the 1970s. He suggested Old Man’s War for two reasons; it is an alternative riff on the themes of brain transplant and identity that

Spoilers Ahead The premise is much more intriguing than its execution. The brain of a dying rich old man is transplanted into the body of a young woman who has been murdered. The whole book could delve into the meaning of identity and gender but all it does is talk about sex. I don’t think it ever actually describes anyone having sex (current romance fiction is more explicit). But everyone

I pulled The Mote in God’s Eye off AJM’s stack of books to be discarded. I’d read another Niven-Pournelle novel, Oath of Fealty in the mid 1980s and enjoyed it. AJM didn’t like their style and abandoned The Mote in God’s Eye early into it. One of the things Niven-Pournelle do well in both books employ an ensemble cast to tell the story from multiple viewpoints. They even include a