Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:Ĭon lo que me he reído y el estupendo rato que me ha regalado no concibo darle menos de cinco estrellas. I, subjectively, don´t think that there is much ironic depth hidden here, maybe a bit of superficial Hollywood criticism behind all the fart jokes, but nothing really substantial.īut I couldn´t point my finger at any of his other works, or another sci-fi authors´ books, who used alien physiology in such a hilarious fashion to create easy, stinking entertainment. A kind of slapstick comedy writing exercise with some sci-fi trope mixed in.

That´s especially interesting, because he published Old Man´s War the same year, so he definitively knew how to write bombastic, comedic sci-fi that satirizes the genre itself, but just wanted to do something else too. Ok, it was his first novel, subjectively I am pretty sure that this is a bit of an experiment and not meant really seriously, just a kind of test balloon to see how his writing might be accepted by the audience, just as redshirts, not really meant to be a serious, more of a just joking, novel, more a satire of the themes included, not really interested in telling an own story. It´s as if it was Scalzi´s intent to write some crappy elements in this one, because he usually doesn´t do this, I don´t know, intending to write less pro. For a first work, this is both so weird and hilariously funny at the same time that I am absolutely not sure what to think about it.

John scalzi agent to the stars