The Last Colony, Scalzi. Yes. This is the third volume in Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” series. After I had become accustomed to the primary mode of conflict in the first two books, I was a bit disappointed by the change-up at the beginning of this one. But damned if Scalzi didn’t find a way to suck me right back in again (and yes, he cheats a little, but only in a good way).
Little mechanical things continue to distract. The odd typo here and there is sadly expected these days, but opening a chapter with a sentence in which the word “plant” appears when the word “planet” is intended is egregious.

Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades, Scalzi. Yes. Scalzi has some genuinely big ideas here, and has written stories that are nearly worthy of them. To be fair, it would take many, many volumes to explore even a fraction of the central idea, and Scalzi does eventually at least nod to some of the larger implications, so I don’t hold that against the works. I do hold against them their lack of mechanical and editorial perfection, but editing and mechanics are no worse than I have come to expect from Tor.

Blackout, Willis. Yes. In the acknowledgments (I think it is), Willis mentions that this story grew from one book into two, and I think I saw quotes from her talking about how there was a lot of material that she had to discard. I mention this because I frequently got the notion while reading Blackout that it had been padded, like maybe the story grew to about a book and a half, and Willis’s editor encouraged her to round it up to two. I just don’t remember feeling quite so impatient with previous stories in this setting.
That said, it’s Willis, and therefore worth reading. It may be my least favorite of the Oxford time-travelling History department works thus far, and I certainly hope that All Clear makes me happier, but none of that changes the fact that Willis is an extremely strong writer.

Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality, Weiner. Non-fiction. Review is based on a publisher-provided pre-pub proof. This is a survey of the state of the science of life extension, with particular focus on the work of Aubrey de Gray, an optimistic (relatively) young man who believes that aging (more specifically, the problems that crop up as age advances) can be solved with a relatively simple, seven-pronged approach. It’s a pretty standard “science for the populace” work, in that there’s a lot of reprising of the various threads. As far as I can tell, Weiner does a creditable job of explaining what must be awfully complicated molecular biology, and I feel like I learned a lot that I will probably forget in another week or so. After the jump, various items that struck me one way or another while reading.
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David Starr, Space Ranger; Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids; Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus; Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury; Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter; Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn; Asimov. Yes. Reading the introductions to these was a little like listening to the John Hughes commentary on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: it seemed like Asimov hated (or at least wanted to apologize for) everything that made these books charming. Charming they were, nevertheless, though the latter three are somewhat less so as Asimov strove to render them indistinguishable from his other work.
Charming though they were, the former three could have used some editing attention. My favorite example, I think, was this:

There were four of them. The number increased as more men joined the group.

I also have to wonder whether, in a conversation set in the asteroid belt, when a character from the asteroid belt says “We’d have to take it to one of the rocks,” I can blame the editor for compelling “Anton turned to Lucky, explaining suavely, ‘We always refer to the asteroids as “rocks,” you understand.’” or only for leaving it in.
Very much of its time, the series has a simple optimism unlikely to be captured again:

In this age of Galactic civilization, with humanity spread through all the planets of all the stars in the Milky Way, only scientists could properly cope with mankind’s problems. In fact, only the specially trained scientists of the Council were adequate.

Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All, Fry. Non-fiction. I think I love Stephen Fry as much as he loves America, and with similar layers of feeling: I admire his wit and talent; I admire that he strives to be gracious, and if he has sometimes failed, well, who among us hasn’t? The delightful Mr Fry visited each of the 50 United States over the course of several months, driving a London cab through the continental states, and this book is the companion to the tv series in which his journey was chronicled. The book could have used somewhat more careful fact-checking and editing, but a list of errata does not make a very interesting review. Overall, it’s an intriguing look at the States from the point of view of an outsider who was very nearly one of us.

The Road to Amber: Volume 6: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, ed. Grubbs, Kovacs, Crimmins. Yes. I was a little surprised to find I hadn’t read all of Zelazny’s contributions to George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, and so was pleased to have the opportunity to rectify that situation. I was disappointed to see some reports that Robert Sheckley was not the most honorable of collaborators: re-writing Zelazny’s work after being asked not to, claiming to have written the first of their novels with almost no Zelazny input, and other contrary-to-documented-events assertions. Doubtless every human endeavor is freighted with, well, humanity.
A treat in this volume is an essay by Michael Whelan providing insight into his lovely cover art for the series. When he says “…once I had the essential foreground/background areas defined I went to work, trusting myself to find the shapes in the image as I worked on it”, I hear echoes of one of Zelazny’s most frequent approaches to composition.
Many thanks to the New England Science Fiction Association, and especially editors David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs, and Ann Crimmins, for tackling this project and seeing it through.

Nine Black Doves: Volume 5: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, ed. Grubbs, Kovacs, Crimmins. Yes. Another collection that does what it says on the tin, this one includes the last of the Dilvish shorts and other later work. I found myself increasingly fond of the story “Permafrost”, contained in this collection, due in no small part to passages such as this one: “The wind, already heavy, rises, hurling particles of ice against the building with a sound like a multitude of tiny claws scratching.”
I had not at all remembered reading “The Bands of Titan”, so was surprised to see that it had been collected in Frost & Fire. On the other hand, I found it fairly forgettable on this reading, too.
Friends of the Collective will likely recognize one of the names listed amongst the proof-reading corps in the backs of Volumes 5 and 6.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Pearson. Yes. I’m not sure I would recommend this book to anyone: it bears the earmarks of sf written by a non-sf writer in that some obvious questions are implied but not explicitly raised (and certainly not addressed); I found the scientific rationale to be very hand-wavy, yet at more length than hand-waving can really support (repeating the same hand-waving several times doesn’t make it any more credible); and it more reminded me of books I would recommend than it was one.
Pearson’s writing was reasonably solid (the appearance of the alternative spelling “imposter” for “impostor” distracted, but it is a time-honored variant); in particular, characterization of individuals (if not society) was believable, with one glaring exception (my librarian tells me that the omission was most likely in order to meet grade-level criteria). Nevertheless, I can recommend several other explorations of the same themes over this one, most of them non-fiction.

The Likeness, French. Yes. My librarian brought this home on spec, in the same delivery as What the Dead Know, and I’m quite grateful. The two mysteries share a plot element, but French’s work is much more solid than Lippman’s. Nothing struck me as filler, and even the segments that weren’t driving the plot were well-constructed and engaging. I am somewhat troubled by something that I can’t quite identify. It may be that none of the characters is all that sympathetic, but I could also argue that’s because they’re presented with human complexity, so I surely shouldn’t complain about that.