(originally posted 21 Jan 2007 - this version slightly edited)

Title: The Android’s Dream

Author: John Scalzi

Publisher: Tor

Year: 2006

A friend of mine has been talking up John Scalzi to me for a while now. I had gone so far as to become a daily reader of his blog (currently on hiatus, but you can visit him here and here) and move his books towards the middle of my (way too long) to-read list, but hadn’t yet actually bought one of his books. Well, my buddy took matters into his own hands and got me The Android’s Dream for Christmas. And thank-you-very-much I am so glad he did.

With a wonderful mixture of humor, action, and political intrigue, Scalzi took me on a ride I’ll not soon forget. With alien races, interplanetary governmental bodies, and advanced genetic manipulation, the potential for a “Hard Science” story was tremendous. I was greatly relieved to discover, however, that The Android’s Dream is not a heavy handed trip to a potential future. Rather, it’s a story that uses the future, and future technology as a setting. Hard science fiction just isn’t my thing, primarily, I think, because I am more of a humanist than a scientist. I understand the basics, and the always familiar tropes of the genre, but generally speaking it is easy for me to adopt a “willing suspension of disbelief.” Why or how something happens doesn’t interest me nearly as much as who is causing it, who it is affecting, and how people are going to deal with it.

So, thankfully for me, The Android’s Dream happens in, around, and some times, it seems, in spite of the technology. Regardless, by the end of the first chapter, I knew I was hooked not just on The Android’s Dream, but on Scalzi in general. His characters are so well developed that I found I had emotional stake riding on their shoulders (or, in one specific case, so intentionally vague that gender becomes a wonderfully unresolved issue). Hero or villain, I cared about what was happening not only to the major players in his story, but the secondary and minor characters as well. His writing is crisp and purposeful, telling the story the way the story wants to be told and not forcing it along for an easy laugh.

My one and only wish is that I listened to my friend a year ago so that I could have more Scalzi in my library today. As it is, his past books, specifically the Old Man’s War series I have heard so much about, have jumped much closer to the top of The List™.