A Book Log
I think you're too harsh. The expository dialogue struck me more as a tribute to the kind of book that features "As-you-know-Bob" explanations of star drives than a serious version of the same. After all, the entire concept of the book is obviously a riff on Starship Troopers and The Forever War, so why not?
And if you think he's as smug and preachy as Heinlein, you haven't been reading the right Heinlein...
Chad Orzel (orzelc@steelypips.org) (http://www.steelypips.org/principles/) -- Mon Jan 10 08:22:10 2005
I probably am being too harsh, but the dialogue was really terrible. In the classic books, AYKB dialogue was forgiveable because the characters were talking about genuinely new concepts that would interest the reader even if they were presented clumsily; but Scalzi is giving us well-used and familiar tropes. If you're going to do that, you need to be doubly careful about not boring the fuck out of the reader.
As for the smugness, OMW was a zillion times smugger than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I mean, yeah, the characters in Moon were preachier, but the novel's universe was fair and they got fucked in the end. In Scalzi's book, the author-god is in collusion with his protagonist to ensure that everything works out in accordance with the prtagonist's preferences: Everyone who irritates the protagonist dies quickly, and the worthy people who are his friends mostly survive (most galling example: In a battle that kills 90,000 people, the ONLY THREE SURVIVORS are the narrator and his two friends; and they survive coincidentally, from different ships!).
I'm sure there's bad Heinlein out there, but "less preachy than bad Heinlein" is a pretty low bar to clear, so.
Mike Kozlowski (web@klio.org) (http://www.klio.org/marks/) -- Mon Jan 10 09:00:07 2005