Let's finish this puppy off and get to my review of The Last Colony, by John Scalzi. This will be a follow-on to my reviews of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades. There are two minor "chapbooks" set in the same universe and I have one of them (The Sagan Diaries), but I'm not planning on talking about it unless people specifically are interested. Short version of that review is that I liked it fine, but I'm don't think there's enough meat to warrant a separate topic.

I'm going to handle this review the same way I handled TGB - I won't spoil anything in The Last Colony, but I'm going to feel free to spoil OMW or TGB. It's just impossible to discuss the third book in a trilogy without talking about what occurred in the first two books. So if spoilers about The Ghost Brigades would make you sad then stop reading now.

The third book picks up with John Perry and quite a bit of time has elapsed. At the end of TGB Jane Sagan had unexpectedly ended up with responsibility for a child - Zöe Boutin. TLC opens years later, after both Sagan and Perry have retired and are raising Zöe on a human colony world. There seems to be no real conflict but it's not long before the entire family are drawn into effords to found a much more dangerous colony. As I said I won't spoil it, but the struggle between the "Conclave" and the Colonial Union is explored in depth.

I liked TLC better than The Ghost Brigades, but I think Old Man's War is still my favorite of the trilogy. I think TGB just gets the short end of the stick - middle books of a trilogy often do. By the start of TLC I had a lot of open questions about the universe, and a lot of specific questions about how the Colonial Union even operates. TLC does a great job of satisfactorily resolving those, so as the finisher as a trilogy it turns in a solid performance. But there were so many dangling threads that I think the book suffers as a standalone story. There are some really odd notes in the story - conflicts or subplots that seemed rushed. So much of the book is answering the big questions that some of the small questions it wants to ask get short shrift.

One of the things that I think is strange over the whole trilogy is that Sagan's and Perry's relationship changes so dramatically in between books. At the end of Old Man's War they have a tentative relationship, and Perry is hardly mentioned in The Ghost Brigades. Then, by the start of The Lost Colony they are married and have an adopted kid. It's a big jump and the transition from really weird and twisted maybe-dating (based on the creepy fact that Sagan is basically a clone of Perry's wife) to "we've resolved all those issues and are now happily married" is abrupt. I can see an argument that fans of the universe wouldn't want the love story that these two characters have, but I don't think in the end I agree. I would have liked to see more about Sagan deciding to leave everything she knew to be "normal" and Perry adapting to a woman who both is and is not his wife of many years. There are some references to Sagan's adapting to living with "the Realborn", but this is what I mean about the low-level story getting shorted so we can focus on the larger conflicts. I think having someplace across the trilogy where their personal problems amounted to a hill of beans in this crazy universe would have been nice to read.

I reread these last two paragraphs and my review is reading as more negative than I intend. I like the book, and if you've read TGB you're going to want to read TLC, no doubt. Everything else is nitpicking really. I enjoyed TLC, and I'm happy to put it on my shelves - I just didn't like it as much as I liked OMW, or even The Android's Dream. But it does put the capstone on the trilogy, and it goes into the political workings of the Colonial Union for the first time. Ever since I first read Old Man's War I've wanted to know more about how the Colonial Union is set up and how it relates to the rest of the galaxy, so seeing the answers to some of these issues was very satisfying. All in all, if you liked OMW and TGB then you'll be satisfied with reading The Last Colony.

technorati tags:JohnScalzi, TheLastColony, OldMan'sWar, BookReview, ScienceFiction

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NBC announced that it has ordered six segments of a new series called Heroes: Origins, which will air in the main show's Monday-night timeslot when it goes on hiatus, Variety reported.

SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM

So the idea is that they can't produce enough mainstream episodes to fill a whole season, but the ratings show that the public hates repeats. (who'da thunk it?) The only reason for repeats is if you missed the first showing and in today's age of A) streaming video and B) Sci-Fi network running repeats of Heroes all the time then if you miss it you'll grab it some other way.

So NBC ordered basically side stories to air next year during the main show's hiatus. This is an interesting idea, but my question is where is the blockage such that a "season" has to have repeats or hiatus weeks? If the blockage is scheduling the main stars, then this makes sense. If the blockage is sets, or writers, or producers/directors, whatever than this doesn't help. In almost every regard other than principal actors Heroes:Origins seems to me to be more resource intensive than six more episodes of the real series would be.

At any rate, it's an interesting experiment. I'll watch the shows to see what the end result is.

technorati tags:Heroes, television

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Flight of Battlestar ContinuesBattlestar Galactica's search for Earth continues to be an open-ended adventure, executive producer David Eick said.Contrary to comments by Edward James Olmos (Adm. Adama) at the Saturn Awards on May10, no end has been announced for the award-winning show. Battlestar Galactica is preparing to film its fourth season, one that will include 22 episodes, rather than the previously announced 13.

SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM

I've seen two different friends on their blogs post the "Battlestar's next season is the last" news, so I figured it was worth pointing out that Eick has specifically said Olmos is wrong. Now this could be damage/spin control, I don't really know. Eick also doesn't address that Katee Sackhoff (who plays Starbuck) confirmed it in the original article. I also don't know anything about this iesb site, so they may or not be reputable. I suppose while we're pointing out stuff I should point out that Eick's remake of the Bionic Woman was picked up, which also features . . . Katee Sackhoff - although it's not clear to me how big her role there will be.

Upshot of it all? Too much a mess for me to sort through. Which is sort of fitting, since the show is rapidly becoming too much a mess to sort through. Honestly my reaction to the orginal story was relief. If they are really going to wrap up the next season may be watchable. If season four doesn't get rapidly better than season three I doubt I'll continue watching very long.

technorati tags:BattlestarGalatica, Television

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ABC has agreed to let the producers of Lost set an expiration date for the series: three years in the future, the network announced May 7.Starting in the 2007-'08 season, Lost will air in uninterrupted arcs of 16 episodes each, culminating in the show's finale sometime during the 2009-'10 season.

SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM

So Lost will have "six seasons", but seasons 4-6 will only have 2 traditional seasons worth of episodes.

This seems like a win-win really. This gives the Lost people the ability to spin their plot out at their desired pace, without worries about getting cut off at the knees. The short season is a little disappointing, but I'd rather have it than the season 3 "mini-series" thing repeat.

I'll note that this pretty much completes the destruction of the traditional "season". HBO has long used 13 episode seasons (and the UK uses 6 epsodes!). Sci-Fi has been experimenting with the weird 2-part Battlestar seasons - which are closer to two HBO seasons than anything else. But Lost is a major network show, and now it's practically ignoring seasons, one of the sweeps periods (November), and the whole structure of US broadcast TV that has been in place for however many diddly-ump years now. A season is now "a large dramatic unit of shows". I like it a lot. I dislike the stupid little hiatus that has cropped up over the last few years, in large part because everyone has the same hiatus. If your "season" is only 24 episodes, fine. Just show them and be done with it. Don't skip 4 weeks in the middle and then be forced to recap everything.

technorati tags:television, Lost

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I had an Amazon gift certificate (thanks Mom!) so I splurged and bought a batch of John Scalzi books - The Android's Dream, The Ghost Brigades, The Sagan Diary, and The Last Colony (apparently he's fond of definite articles). I've read the first three (plus rereading Old Man's War)but I think I'm going to hold off reviewing the OMW books until Ifinish the trilogy. (Super quick comment: I'm glad I didn't read TGB until TLC came out because the first book had a nice solid ending but the second book makes me reach for the third.)

I can talk about The Android's Dream since it is stand-alone. (Well, there's a sequel coming out next year, but the book stands alone at the moment.) It has a much different tone than Old Man's War, the universe is certainly much more light-hearted than the Colonial Union. Plus as anyone who reads the Whatever knows, the first chapter is an extended fart-joke. It's hard to take that anywhere too serious.

I'll stay away from spoilers but in general it involves, as Scalzi puts it, "a human diplomat who solved intergalactic crises through the use of action scenes and snappy dialogue." That's pretty much what you get and it's clear that we haven't seen the last of Harry Creek as we turn the final page of the book. The story stands alone but you can see clearly how it sets up a series of Harry Creek being a loose troubleshooter/ombudsman around the galaxy.

Scalzi is fast becoming one of my favorite "lite" authors - and I don't mean that in any sort of negative sense. I read The Android's Dream in pretty much one extended sitting and it was a refreshing sort of quick book. The pace is brisk and it doesn't get bogged down in exposition. The universe is quickly sketched in and from there it's just a fun-ride until the end. It's a popcorn book, and it doesn't make any pretensions of being anything else. But it's a good popcorn book.

The one thing I'd say that is a little odd is the whole Philip K. Dick connection. (The title is a reference to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and the cover has a sheep theme, and sheep are an actual plot point.) It's a little contrived, and it's a strange connection to make, because the story really has nothing in common with Dick's work that I see. But never judge a book by it's title. Or something. Anyway, this is a nit. Just don't dig around for the link to Dick's work and you'll be fine.

If you're looking for a simple, fun read with just enough science fiction to be silly then I'd recommend taking a look at The Android's Dream.

technorati tags:JohnScalzi, TheAndroidsDream, BookReview, ScienceFiction

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