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Jun. 21st, 2018 09:34 amThe Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
This book made me angry for how bad it was. I've found you can rely on Scalzi's books to be passably fun every time- not mindblowing, not spectacular, but enjoyable. You can rely on Scalzi to dial in a tone and consistently stay in that register. The Collapsible Empire, though, is advertised as an 'interstellar epic' that can't manage anything like an appropriate tone or storytelling mode, and is boring besides.
Its plot seems to have been constructed on the principle that The Phantom Menace's flaw was that it didn't delve deeply enough into the mechanics of the taxation dispute between Naboo and the Trade Federation. There is almost no actual action, there is little character detail that goes beyond the depth Kevin J. Anderson developed in his execrable The Dark Between the Stars, and Scalzi's info-dumps are toxic. And they're not just toxic at the beginning of the book. Even at the end of the book, he's still throwing massive info-dumps at you, only now they're to explain characters' secret plots to you.
But what most boggled me was the lack of relationships. There is not a single character in the book in a romantic relationship. Nobody's married, nobody's dating. There are a couple of father-daughter,father-son, mother-daughter relationships. There's one significant deep platonic friendship, and one of the friends dies a third of the way into the book. That's not necessarily a strike against a story in general, but I feel like it's a strike against a book trying to be an 'interstellar epic'. Interstellar epic isn't inherently an interesting genre if it's just about large impersonal political bodies entering into conflict against each other. Interstellar epic is interesting because of the small, personal stories you can tell against the backdrop of the large impersonal political struggle.
How the hell did this get nominated for a Hugo, against things like Provenance and The Stone Sky?
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I guess I can see why people liked it, but I just found it okay. The murderbot not being all that murderous is the book's core joke, but I think I was expecting a little more murder/murderousness. The story being novella sized was probably the right choice, but it meant that all of the characters besides the murderbot were necessarily not so well characterized. All in all, the story felt slight.
This book made me angry for how bad it was. I've found you can rely on Scalzi's books to be passably fun every time- not mindblowing, not spectacular, but enjoyable. You can rely on Scalzi to dial in a tone and consistently stay in that register. The Collapsible Empire, though, is advertised as an 'interstellar epic' that can't manage anything like an appropriate tone or storytelling mode, and is boring besides.
Its plot seems to have been constructed on the principle that The Phantom Menace's flaw was that it didn't delve deeply enough into the mechanics of the taxation dispute between Naboo and the Trade Federation. There is almost no actual action, there is little character detail that goes beyond the depth Kevin J. Anderson developed in his execrable The Dark Between the Stars, and Scalzi's info-dumps are toxic. And they're not just toxic at the beginning of the book. Even at the end of the book, he's still throwing massive info-dumps at you, only now they're to explain characters' secret plots to you.
But what most boggled me was the lack of relationships. There is not a single character in the book in a romantic relationship. Nobody's married, nobody's dating. There are a couple of father-daughter,father-son, mother-daughter relationships. There's one significant deep platonic friendship, and one of the friends dies a third of the way into the book. That's not necessarily a strike against a story in general, but I feel like it's a strike against a book trying to be an 'interstellar epic'. Interstellar epic isn't inherently an interesting genre if it's just about large impersonal political bodies entering into conflict against each other. Interstellar epic is interesting because of the small, personal stories you can tell against the backdrop of the large impersonal political struggle.
How the hell did this get nominated for a Hugo, against things like Provenance and The Stone Sky?
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I guess I can see why people liked it, but I just found it okay. The murderbot not being all that murderous is the book's core joke, but I think I was expecting a little more murder/murderousness. The story being novella sized was probably the right choice, but it meant that all of the characters besides the murderbot were necessarily not so well characterized. All in all, the story felt slight.