The Myriad
The Myriad
R.M. Meluch
I found about about The Myriad the old fashioned way, from an ad in the back of another DAW book. It had a blurb that promised guilty space opera goodness and was enough to rope me into a library request. Hard to imagine that back before the interwebs made SF fandom so much easier, this, author acknowledgments, and the Science Fiction Book Club were all we had. (I suppose some people subscribed to magazines, but I was stretching the allowance with Boy’s Life already.) That said, I can’t remember the last time this sort of analog advertising convinced me, so maybe I should ping DAW on Twitter to let them know that it still works.
The first thing to think about with The Myriad is the nature of storytelling twists. In some cases (The Sixth Sense), the twist turns the narrative on its head, but in a way that illuminates the hidden corners of the story and makes the audience say, “Oh! Now I understand!” In others (Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, though this is hardly the book’s only fault), it undercuts the story, chopping it off at its narrative knees and leaving the reader wondering why anything that came before even mattered. Pretty much any story that ends with, “And it was all a dream!” falls into this category. I mention this first because The Myriad has to stand or fall entirely on its last chapter, no matter the quality of everything that comes before. More on this to follow.
The book itself threatens space opera, what with the man eating space bugs and all, but settles more firmly into military SF territory. These aren’t mutually exclusive of course, and the book hints at enough subgenres to call itself whatever it wants. Still, if forced under pain of xeno-bug digestion to choose, MilSF it is. One viewpoint character is the dashing ship’s captain, a bold and cheerful leader who just happens to be amazing at captainly duties. He is also handy with a sword, which certain plot details cause to be necessary. Another character is the loyal, competent, and somewhat dense sergeant whose job it is to ride herd on the jolly band of marines. We’ve already met the space bugs, but the other troupe of bad guys is a neo-Roman Empire, complete with Latin, legions, and martial glory. The League of Earth Nations (eat that UN!) politicians are smarmy and spineless. There is valor, loyalty, and discipline; all the book needs now is a grave commander who mourns the fine young men and women he sends to their fiery deaths in his vast battlefleet to hit all of the requisite MilSF notes.
Did I mention that the crew are all Americans, protecting US interests in space because the League of Earth Nations is lily livered? And yet, for every Pournelle-esque “What the world needs now is an enlightened despot” moment, there is a sidelong wink that pricks the overinflated balloon of jingoism. Meluch plays coy with the politics, but seems too self-aware to sell out completely to the Baen Books crowd. This is without getting into the bizarre Romans, who apparently arose from a secret society that survived both the barbarians at the gates in 476 A.D. and two subsequent millenia. We don’t see much of the Romans, save for one Augustus, who has mental superpowers and is forwarded to the hero’s ship to assist with the war against the ravening space bugs. He is for me the most interesting character by a large margin. Besides his genetically enhanced intellect, he hates the Americans and tweaks them whenever possible, but is also dutiful and has a heart of, if not gold, then maybe nice bronze. He is also handy with a sword, which is convenient when the space bugs are boarding the ship and have to be beaten off with cutlasses. Yes, this book is just as strange as it sounds.
One final point before moving on. I was surprised that most of the reviews I checked of The Myriad had nothing to say about one of the female characters, including a couple of reviewers that really have no excuse for glossing over it. Meluch treats one of the women, the “morale officer” of the squad if you will, horribly. At one point, putting her in danger of being molested by an alien, the men say something like, “Well, she puts out for everyone else, so what’s one more? I’m sure she’ll like it in the end.” Egad. This wouldn’t be as shocking if the book didn’t basically condone this attitude. If a male author were to write this, it would be decried. It may be though that because Meluch’s first name appears to be Rebecca, this sort of thing is alright. I have no idea, but it was every bit as icky as an Anne McCaffery dragon lady being forcibly taken by whatever dragon rider was lucky enough to see his trusty steed chase down the queen.
Anyway, philosophical quibbles aside, the book holds together far better than it should. The characters are engaging, the plot moves along rapidly, and actual Science even pops its head in from time to time. There are a couple of “wait … what?” moments, but nothing too egregious. If I were to start this review by saying, “American marines and Romans fighting xenocidal space bugs with swords – it works,” my loyal readers would probably try to lock me up. But …. it works. Right up until it doesn’t.
Several things I’ve read say that The Myriad really can’t be appreciated until one reads the second book. After that, the whacko twist at the end of The Myriad makes total sense and is actually brilliant. This may be so. Unfortunately, I have to deal with the book on its own, and I wanted to toss it out the bus window. Meluch let her characters paint themselves into several corners, but this was not the resolution I was looking for. Maybe I’ll change my mind after reading the next book, because I will eventually read the next book, but for now I reserve the right to feel a bit cheated. Still, like an LA Lakers victory, eventually the foul taste wears off and we only remember the good times. I’ll be sure to read and review the next book, leaving this for now with a conditional recommendation.
Rating: Chelsea-Liverpool, 2008 Champions League at Anfield. Liverpool dominates and seems intent on their second straight CL final before inexplicably heading in an own goal in extra time. They have never been the same.
Falkenberg’s Legion
Falkenberg’s Legion (The Prince)
Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling
My introduction to Jerry Pournelle came through his frequent collaborations with Larry Niven. (Niven, of course, was my Hard SF gateway drug.) The public library had only the Janissaries books, so I missed out on John Falkenberg in my impressionable youth. Many years later, that name came up frequently in discussions of essential military SF, so I set out to read about him. This is somewhat easier said than done, since the Falkenberg books have been published as short stories, short novels, longer novels, compilations, and compilations of compilations. Baen Books has combined everything into The Prince, which is probably the best way to go about things, but I read the books as four novels. Pournelle alone wrote the older stuff, S.M. Stirling joined him for the two Sparta novels later on.
The Falkenberg stories are Mil SF in the style of David Drake or Gordon Dickson, but form a bridge to the more politically incendiary books by Heinlein and the Baen Books crowd. Like Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, Pournelle is sympathetic to the grunt’s cause and the realities of being a pawn when diplomacy is carried on by other means. His soldiers are much less concerned with Honor and Valour, and more worried about not being killed in gruesome fashion. But while Drake and Dickson tend to leave things with the soldiers, Pournelle addresses bigger political questions as well. While he is more subtle than, say, David Weber or John Ringo, some of his philosophy is every bit as disturbing as Starship Troopers at its loopiest. Indeed, I have seen him inaccurately called “fascist” and “Right-wing” in various forums. First off, who hasn’t been called fascist recently? Second, he is not Right-wing in the contemporary sense. (Aggressive, Libertarian Christianity.) Instead, Pournelle is a throwback to the less well known H. Beam Piper; readers of Space Viking will recognize many of the same ideas about government and democracy.
As a pacifist and progressive liberal, I find that Pournelle’s politics aren’t always palatable, nor his solutions to problems the solutions that I would pursue. He takes a pretty dim view of democracy, which I am sympathetic to for wholly different reasons, and an overly optimistic view of monarchy. The recurring theme in the series is democracy being compromised by selfish or evil men, then unable to save itself because of the inherent weakness of democratic institutions. Again, this is a reasonable fear, but Pournelle is quick to dispatch the enemies of freedom in paroxysms of violence. Falkenberg is his avenging angel of freedom initially, and the torch is passed to Prince Lysander in the Sparta books. In all cases, the good guys win when someone finally realizes that sometimes we must unshackle ourselves from the demands of democracy and open up a proverbial can on the bad guys.
Herein lie the differences with both the current crop of angry Mil SF and with my worldview. A typical politician for John Ringo (in what little I have read) is venal, self-serving, and blind to reality. Dadgum pansy gubmint commies get in the way, regulate everything, and (in SF at least) get us all killed by aliens. (Come to think of it, a hilarious Tea Party sign would be something like “Big Govt. allows the Posleen to eat children.”) Pournelle’s politicians, on the other hand, are generally committed to protecting democracy and the people, but are so hamstrung by their dedication to justice, peace, or some other ideal that the bad guys slice and dice freely. Pournelle (and Piper, and Heinlein) disturbs me because, like his politicians, I am none too eager to toss our scruples in the bin and lower ourselves to the bad guy’s level. If we fight brutality with brutality and injustice with injustice, we are no better than the enemies we face. And that is where we all just agree to disagree, and also why I don’t read much John Ringo.
Now for some fun. The Co-Dominium is one of my favorite future histories. It’s nowhere I want to live, but world is carefully reasoned and very compelling. Readers born in the 1990s will probably be nothing but baffled with all the Cold War imagery, but those of us old enough to remember will find it chilling. The atmosphere of corruption and degeneration oozes off the pages. The idea of the US and USSR gradually becoming each other is not unique to Falkenberg, but I can easily imagine an early 1970s Pournelle looking at the Soviets on one side, and Nixon and Kissinger on the other, and being thoroughly gloomy. As the action moves into the second half and a new set of characters takes over on a new world, I found myself a little less interested. I’m uncertain how much of my dissatisfaction is a general reflection of the second half, or if I’m just clinging adolescently to heroes from the first stories. I will confess to enjoying the Falkenberg parts of the book more than the battle for Sparta, but I’m not entirely sure why.
I have a lot of books on the burner right now, leaving me jumping from series to series, trying to sample as much as possible and coming back later to pick up the sequels to the books I liked the most. Once I started Falkenberg, though, I read it straight through. Rarely do I stick with one series, or even one author, for four books in a row. Of course, anyone reading The Prince will just barrel through, so maybe my experience is less than indicative. Still, they are good books. Pournelle is under appreciated outside of the Mil SF crowd and should be read more widely. Inside the Mil SF world, John Falkenberg is up there with Alois Hammer, the Dorsai crowd, and all the faceless Starship Troopers that Heinlein feeds to bugs in The Pantheon of Influential Old Stuff.
Rating: The Magnificent Magyars. A Cold War relic, Hungary’s early 1950′s football team was the best in the world. Look it up.
Mobile Suit Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam
I am finally getting to the last of Japan’s Big Three SF Anime. (The other two are Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Space Battleship Yamato. Say what you will about the Japanese, but they sure like long, descriptive titles that may or may not make any sense.) Gundam is probably the definitive science fiction experience in Japan; it is comparable to Star Wars or Star Trek here. One can watch Gundam movies (possibly based on Gundam comics or books) while building plastic models from the show, then re-enact the whole thing in a video game, and finally tell friends about it later at a Gundam convention. There is even an anime series called Gunpla Builders that tells stories about, I kid you not, kids who build Gundam models and enter them in competitions. The original series came out in the late 1970s, the current series gets its next scheduled theatrical release in November of this year. It’s pretty much impossible to understand Japanese SF without confronting the Gundam behemoth at some point.
The best news? Many (but probably not all) of the Gundam stories are worth experiencing. On the surface, there aren’t many things sillier than gigantic robots, piloted by angsty teenagers, flying through space and whacking things with glowing swords. And yet, somehow Tomino Yasuyuki, the Gundam mastermind, pulls it off. It probably helps that he appears to be manic depressive and uses these stories to confront his personal demons. In Tomino’s hands, what should be moronic, adolescent fantasy turns into a dark meditation on the confluence of war, violence, and growing up. There are also giant fighting robots, crap blowing up, and occasional gratuitous shower scenes. (Note: the robots do not, repeat not, transform in this series. They only bash things and fly.)
The Gundam universe is a somewhat near-future creation, where humanity is split between Earth and several orbiting space habitats. The Earth-bound folk are The Federation, while the break-away orbitals are part of the Principality of Zeon. In the original series, Zeon are the rebel scum and the Federation are scrappy and decent. These roles are fluid though, with the sides trading white and black hats depending on the creator’s mood at the time. This being a Japanese story, there are multiple factions within each side, and ever-shifting degrees of good and evil. Char, the chief antagonist, is the epitome of this. He fights for the bad guys, but is operating for his own mysterious purposes in ways that both harm and help the heroes. He is also much cooler than the whiny protagonist and more sympathetic than any of the truly evil bad guys. Char and his clones play a major role in the Gundam universe, but now is hardly the time to delve into what has become a complex and detailed mythology.
Mobile Suit Gundam crashes merrily along a cliché ridden path. The hero is young and must come of age. (He’s also a dork for the first two thirds of the story and I had no compelling reason not to wish for his horrible death.) He literally falls into the cockpit of a Gundam (the giant robot) and demonstrates almost supernatural gifts for piloting it. Everyone is shocked, though if they had any idea they were in an anime TV series, they would immediately realize that of course the hero can drive the robot. After all, he used to bulls-eye wamp rats back home in Beggars Canyon, and they’re not much bigger than two meters. Whoops! Wrong dork who comes of age. Fortunately for all involved, the hero doesn’t find true love this time around. This is Japan, so most love is either tragic, unrequited, poorly executed, or some combination of the above. (A reflection of real life??) Again, there is no way this should work. And yet! I enjoyed it and plan on watching more.
Gundam benefits this time from finding a length sweet spot. I have complained in other reviews that Yamato was too short to engage and Macross needed to lose about one fourth of its episodes. Gundam clocks in at about nine hours across three DVDs; Tomino condensed the 30+ episode series and is, according to something I read somewhere, happiest with this length. I concur – three DVDs forces the editor to cut out clip shows, side stories, and other narrative fat, but allows enough room to build a convincing world and facilitate a rapport between audience and character.
I realize that in this review I have spent more time talking about the world, mythology and context of Gundam than I have the actual series. This may be appropriate, as a friend of mine explained to me that Mobile Suit Gundam is basically Tomino’s world building exercise, and that the story really gets going in the second series. This may be true. The first series is interesting, I’m glad I watched it, and I plan on watching more, but I think it leaves plenty of potential untapped. I consider it to be must-see anime for anyone who is serious about understanding Japanese SF or who just likes big robots, but suspect that Gundam’s best days are waiting for me on a different set of DVDs.
Rating: Pre-season friendlies. Fun to watch, full of useful scouting material, and an endless source of gossip and speculation, but not to be confused with the meat of the regular season.
All You Need is Kill
All You Need Is Kill
Hiroshi Sakurazawa
All You Need is Kill, one of the earlier titles released by my favorite publisher Haikasoru, is rather like what might happen if Hammer’s Slammers crashed the set of Groundhog Day. Other reviewers have disagreed on which iconic military SF comes in the first slot, but everyone agrees on the Groundhog Day part. (To be pedantic, Steakley’s Armor is probably the best fit. The Slammers drive tanks rather than one-man suits, but Starship Troopers isn’t nearly bleak or bloody enough.) Further, while Groundhog Day is a no-brainer as a comparison, All You Need is worlds away from the positive, uplifting message that Bill Murray stumbles upon. Instead, the book is heavily informed by video game conventions, as the author explains in an interesting afterword.
The first part of this review will address the usual: plot, execution, characterization, etc. The second will look more at Japan and its place in the book, since that is what interests me at least as much as the story. Anyway, onward and upward. Keiji is a new recruit and we join him in his first ever battle. He and his battle suit are quickly obliterated by the Mimics, a bizarre alien invader. I’m not spoiling anything here, as Keiji lies dying on the ground within a few paragraphs of the opening. Then, suddenly, he is alive again, preparing for his first battle. Then dying yet again. And again, and again. It is clear by about page 15 that something strange is going on; Keiji is trapped in a loop, doomed to fight this battle over and over.
Things proceed from there, as Keiji slowly learns how to survive longer in battle, meets allies and enemies, and finally learns “The Secret” that explains, more or less, what on earth is going on. We see the changes developing in Keiji as the story goes on, watching as he changes from a grumpy noob to a hard-bitten veteran who crushes all comers. Some of these are obvious, as he keeps careful track of survival time and kills through each run, and others are less so. For example, early on he comments liberally on female characters’ breast size. I took this as typical Japanese fan service and wondered why the author would waste sentences on something misogynist and pointless. Later in the book though, he pushes admiring women away, saying he needs every moment to train, even though he will in all likelihood repeat the day anyway and could probably afford to dally one time through. By the end, the women are all but invisible to Keiji, intent as he is on becoming a killing machine that will survive the battle.
As long as everything is kept mysterious, the book rolls merrily along. It falls down a bit when Sakurazawa has to explain why everything works the way it does. Clearly this is a video game, with Keiji the player struggling to learn the rules, the cheats, and the secret combinations that defeat the level boss, but it is also science fiction, so there needs to be a reason why this would happen. (One reason that Groundhog Day works so well is that nobody has to explain why Bill Murray is trapped. He just is, and when he finally gets Andi MacDowell to fall for him, he isn’t.) This explanation, and the way it justified or forced the twist at the end, didn’t work so well for me. It was alright, but didn’t illuminate and enhance what had come before, just kind of explained it.
On to part two. I would really like to read this in Japanese, not just in translation. The reason, besides the original language fetish some of us have, is that All You Need has very little Japan in it. The main character is Japanese and the book takes place somewhere on the Japanese coast, but if one changed a couple of proper nouns, it could be anywhere. This is not to say that I expect everything written in Japan to somehow involve ninja, or Mt. Fuji, or something, but most things I read/watch from Japan maintain a distinct cultural outlook. The relationships between the characters and the unspoken worldview underlying the stories are just different from US-UK fare. Not so here.
I wonder if the translator somehow whitewashed this when he brought it into English, or if the original is similarly free of Japanese-ness. Certainly the swear words are new, as there just aren’t that many ways to curse in Japanese. Sakurazawa reads like a disgruntled Vietnam vet, airing his frustrations through the voice of an unfortunate grunt. There are deeper questions though. The book is utterly lacking in the anti-war sentiment that underpins so much of Japanese culture. Keiji has no use for war, but it is because he hates Army life, doesn’t want to get killed, thinks his commanders are morons, and other typical reasons. Likewise the senior-junior human relations that define so much of Japanese life are utterly lacking. This may just be a function of the plot, but is interesting nonetheless. For comparison, many of the anime I have watched (Gundam, Macross, etc.) are war stories, but reflect Japan much more than All You Need.
This isn’t a long read, so I have no qualms recommending it to all and sundry. Sakurazawa’s goals are modest, exploring military sci-fi through a video game prism, and he succeeds. He’s not looking to make a grand statement or change the face of literature, so no reader should expect much beyond entertainment. If it was a bit more of an investment, time-wise or emotionally, I might scale back my rating a bit, but for a couple of hours All You Need is Kill is worthy and plenty of fun.
Rating: The Kashima Antlers. Japan’s most decorated professional team, the Antlers (besides having a strange name) are utterly clinical. Not extravagant, artistic, or dramatic, they just win in the most efficient way possible.
Redliners
Redliners
David Drake
I was reading this on my laptop while riding the bus to work. A guy sat down next to me, looked at my screen and said, “That’s not sci-fi. That’s Vietnam.” Indeed, indeed. There are a number of interviews with Drake on the web, all of them touch on Vietnam, and all of them are interesting reading. I don’t know what went down during his Vietnam years, but according to him, it’s still right there with him 40 years later. None of this is meant as criticism. In fact, Drake is one of those authors (see James Ellroy) at his best when treading the edge of madness. There is a big difference in books before and after Redliners, but more on that later.
Despite my fellow commuter’s comments, Redliners is not directly Vietnam. The army people are dropped into an unknown jungle where everything is trying to kill them, yes, but that is about where the similarity ends. It’s more about the aftermath of Vietnam, or any war, and what to do with all of these people that scrambled themselves psychologically in the name of freedom or democracy or The Fatherland or whatever. In this case, the soldiers work through their demons by battling real-life demons; Drake and his fellow vets faced their demons in the US, where people were angry at the military, angry at the government, angry at the returning soldiers, but everyone had to stay civil and not actually blow up buildings. I’m not sure which is more difficult.
On to the story. The plot is fairly straightforward. A bunch of soldiers on the brink are assigned to guard a new colony. Things don’t go as expected, violence ensues, a lot of things blow up. Drake is a complicated literary guy, and I say that without sarcasm, so this had to be an intentional decision. Some of his other novels are dense retellings of classical literature or complicated alternate history, but Redliners feels more like a story that a grunt would tell. Their officers don’t let them in on the big picture, so why should they tell us? So things move in a fairly straight line from beginning to end, as the nearly crazed soldiers try to protect a gaggle of civilians from The Forest Jungle Planet of Death. Whether or not they succeed is never really the issue. Rather, how the civilians and military interact, how they adapt to the hostile environment and each other, and whether or not any redemption is to be had for people like these are the questions that Drake chooses to address. That he does it with a lot of explosions and violence is part of the fun. Drake gives his own perspective on why and how the book was written here.
Promised broader repercussions: by his own admission, something in Drake unclenched itself when he finished this book. Whatever turmoil it was that provided his muse may have resolved itself somewhat. I don’t doubt that his ghosts still trouble him, but it sounds like they may not be as immediate as they were before. As for Drake’s writing, I won’t say that it is weaker now, but something is missing from his newer books. Some of it is no doubt a conscious decision to focus more on a couple of long running and happier series, but the newer stuff I’ve read lacks that whiff of danger. Reading Drake has always been a brush with demons and madness; not just on the battlefield, but all of the emotional carnage that goes with it. The demons are further away now. This is probably good for some people, but I kind of miss it.
To sum up, Redliners is an important book. I’m not a vet, will never touch the military or violence as a willing participant, and have no real idea what this kind of life is about. However, Redliners matters to Drake, apparently it matters to other vets, and is a relatively transparent window into a warrior’s soul. It’s a good read to be sure, and a seminal bit of military sci-fi, but it also puts the author’s soul on stage. Reading Redliners is having a front row seat to watch Drake battle for, and presumably win, his soul.
Rating: A Boca Juniors – River Plate match in Buenos Aires. Wild times to be sure, and something is almost guaranteed to end up on fire, but best enjoyed from a safe distance.
Old Man’s War Series – John Scalzi
Old Man’s War
The Ghost Brigades
The Last Colony
John Scalzi
What better inaugural post for Two Dudes in an Attic than John Scalzi’s subversive military sci-fi trilogy? Since publishing Old Man’s War, Scalzi has rocketed to fame among the SF community, which can’t seem to get enough of his Heinlein-ian prose, snappy repartee and gleeful violence. This trilogy, like a Pat Metheny Group album, is easy on the palate and engages both the core and casual fans. Like Metheny’s pleasant melodies though, the sugar-coated action masks underlying complexity. The reader may anticipate a breezy shoot-‘em-up, but quickly finds upended tropes careening madly through the space battles. Scalzi starts out small, with Old Man’s War content merely to tweak the conventions of mil-SF. He follows with a veiled meditation on identity and consciousness, before opening up a broadside against an entire worldview in The Last Colony.
I’ll start with some general comments first, then move into more spoilerific territory. (If you, gentle reader, haven’t taken in Old Man’s War yet, and there must be a few out there, pick them up and start. It’s quickly becoming a vital part of the contemporary SF landscape.) Scalzi, by his own admission, writes accessible, smooth prose. No doubt it stems from a successful career writing non-fiction, as his books are refreshingly free of bloat. He says what needs to be said, leaves the rest to the imagination, and keeps the story moving. Don’t get me wrong – vast world building and intricate settings are great, but sometimes it’s pleasant to read something that just glides. It is important not to mistake brevity for simplicity, though, as these books offer depth to the reader who wants to look for it. Again, we’re not talking Tolstoy here, but if the reader wants to think, Scalzi will engage. Of course, if the reader is just looking for explosions and battles, Scalzi delivers there as well.
Scalzi’s future can be explained in a few broad strokes. Humanity has expanded to the stars and found intelligent life. The organization responsible for this, the Colonial Defense Force (CDF), has elected to keep Earth in a sheltered and ignorant state. Overcrowded nations provide colonists, while citizens of N. America and Europe see their lives continue more or less unchanged. At the age of 75, people are allowed to enlist in the CDF and head out for parts unknown. What happens after this is a carefully guarded secret; as a result, a bunch of old people with nothing tying them to Earth sign up and leave, never to be heard from again. On to the spoilers.
Much of the fun in Old Man’s War is watching Scalzi pervert the standard mil-SF tropes. No coming of age stories here – all the characters are wrinkly and, er, wise. Well, only wrinkly until they get their new super bodies and become awesome. This is not to say that the characters don’t change and develop: few of them were soldiers of any sort before, so adjusting from retired insurance salesman to superhuman warrior is a narrative all by itself. The hero, John Perry, is hardly the archetypal warrior hero. His big motivation, other than survival, is loving his wife. Not too bloodthirsty there. Nor is he especially stoic, honorable, or valorous. John Perry is a great guy, of course, but he’s not exactly what one might expect in a story of military heroism and killer aliens. Regardless, the narrative arc proceeds more or less as one might expect, but there are hints at the end that greater themes await.
The Ghost Brigades takes the story in a different direction. Were I to speculate, I would guess that Scalzi decided that Perry’s story was pretty much over, but still wanted to explore his universe. Again, fast-paced action abounds, but Scalzi’s philosophy background bubbles up to the surface. I would rank this much lower on the subversion register than the other two books, but the clash remains between gun battles and meditations on identity. There are again hints of imminent chaos, in greater strength and numbers than the first book, but Scalzi again refrains from showing his hand. I wonder how much was planned at this point, or if he looked back and discovered that he’d inadvertently laid the groundwork for a volcano in the third book.
The Last Colony brings back John Perry, this time with family in tow. They have become administrators of a clandestine colony set up by the CDF, in defiance of a broad treaty set up by The Conclave. The Conclave is a loose federation of races that are seeing institutional ways to reduce the constant warfare that uncontrolled expansion has set off. The CDF, in good human fashion, resents any infringement on human sovereignty and is using Perry’s colony as a way to strike a blow against the Conclave.
It is now time to be pedantic. Scalzi doesn’t strike me as a foreign policy wonk, but he must have taken a few international relations classes back in the day. Early in Old Man’s War, one of Perry’s instructors explains the universe as a dog-eat-dog universe, where the strong prey on the weak and humanity must fight and claw for every colony in a finite and shrinking pool of opportunity. Change a few words here and there, and we have a spot-on summary of the international relations worldview called Realism, which has dominated foreign policy thought as long as there has been such thought. Now in The Last Colony, The Conclave appears, trying to build a voluntary institution that creates opportunities for dialog, self-enforced regulation that limits conflict, and chances for cooperation that would eliminate the zero-sum nature of the galactic conflict. Here, in a nutshell, is Liberalism, the eternal rival of Realism.
I will leave political science alone for the rest of this post, except to say that Realism and Liberalism fight an unending battle through the global foreign policy community. Politicians argue about it, academics claw each other’s academic eyes out, think tanks go back and forth about it. Anyone plugged into the debate can recite its terms in their sleep. And here comes John Scalzi, who has built a Realist future history through two books, dropping tantalizing hints hither and yon of larger forces afoot, blowing the whole thing up in his third book and letting the Liberal Conclave run wild. I could barely contain myself.
I admit to being a foreign policy nerd. If I could stand to live in DC, I’d be on the East Coast slaving away at a policy analyst desk for the Council on Foreign Relations or something. I read books like Man, The State, and War when I go to the beach, so one might imagine why I would pee my pants at this kind of sci-fi. The Last Colony speaks to me on a level that most readers may not appreciate; this is why I label the whole thing “subversive” and get such a kick out of it, but Scalzi’s popularity shows that this trilogy speaks to people far beyond the “Sci-Fi and Diplomacy” demographic. I enjoyed the first book, thought the second was pretty cool, and was a raving, drooling fanboy by the end of the third.
Rating: Derby night in Istanbul. The football on display might not be the most artistic around, but there is no better time to be had. Also, things may catch on fire at any moment.
