Agent to the Stars
"The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster."
Stats for nerds
5recommend
10mentions
8people
2012–2026years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really like that he's not afraid to publish reasonably sized one-off novels. That is becoming so rare these days with so many other author wanting their first novel to be the first of a series of thousand page tomes absolutely chock full of wheel spinning and padding.
You can pick up something like Starter Villain and read it in an afternoon and thoroughly enjoy it. Other novels to check out include Androids Dream, Agent to the Stars, Redshirts, and Kaiju Preservation Society.
- Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others is the best, single-author collection of short stories I've ever read. If you like that, you might also enjoy The Lifecycle of Software Objects, an absolutely heartbreaking novella about simulated children, and his follow-up collection Exhalation.
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is fantastic, and it's follow-up, Speaker for the Dead is even better, and my favorite science fiction novel of all time. They won back to back Hugo and Nebula awards. Card is a polarizing figure for his outspoken political opinions, but if ever the art should be separated from the artist, it's Speaker, which is an incredible exploration of empathy and responsibility, in addition to being a gripping, action-packed, science-literate read. Many more in this series, if you get into it.
John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is fantastic, if you're into military science-fiction, or even if you're not. Smart, funny, engaging and accessible, and reminiscent of Heinlein at his prime, minus the weird incest fetish. Redshirts, a Star Trek parody, rivals Galaxy Quest and only falls short because Galaxy Quest is so goddamn brilliant. Agent to the Stars is less appreciated, but in my opinion his finest novel, rising way above its goofy premise by taking it seriously, exploring the consequences and treating the characters with empathy and respect. Also hilarious.
Seconding Dune, which is a classic for a reason, and Stranger in a Strange Land (though I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a better place to start with Heinlein). Also Neal Stephenson, though I'd suggest Cryptonomicon over Diamond Age.
- He was blogging for years before getting his fiction in print. IIRC, his first novel (Agent to the Stars) was published on his blog. He's a great writer, yeah. :)
- Just a couple of weeks ago I got back into reading books again, and mainly scifi. It feels great to read again!
I loved The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, recommended previously in this thread, and that got me to Old Man's War by John Scalzi. (It might be interesting to note that Ridley Scott has hold the movie rights to this book for many years now. I can't see it really becoming a mainstream movie without cutting out some themes from the book.)
The theme in Old Man's War are sort of the same as The Forever War, but in such a minor way that it didn't bother me even once. Scalzi then turned that book into a series, all very well worth reading (except Sagan's Diary - give that a miss). After his Old Man's War series I read Redshirts (so and so), Agent to the Stars (good read) and now I'm reading Fuzzy Nation, which is shaping up nicely.
In the afterword to Agent to the Stars Scalzi actually recommends other scifi books, and per his recommendation I tried out Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (of Starship Troopers fame) but that quickly grinded to a halt. Might give it another chance later.
Oh, I also read Haldeman's Camouflage. Seems to be liked by the reviews I find online, but I found it to be a waste of time due to a very weak end chapter.
After this I plan to dive into Rama territory and perhaps Dune also.
Please keep the book recommendations coming, this thread is a goldmine. :)
- I'd highly recommend any Scalzi book. The Old Man's War trilogy is great, but if you're after something more light-hearted then The Android's Dream or Agent to the Stars are also great.
- The first one was very much written in an homage to Starship Troopers and it was an early work of his. His very first one was Agent to the Stars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_to_the_Stars#Publication... - available online at https://scalzi.com/agent/ ) which was a book that he didn't want to write in that he wanted to make sure he could write as a career before writing the book he'd been thinking about for a long time... it's ok, maybe better than ok, but not great. He didn't want to find out that he didn't have the stuff to be a professional writer with the book that he really wanted to write.
That book that he really wanted to write was Old Man's War. I would put it as a good one, but not a great one. A young man inspired by Heinlein and Haldeman writing military science fiction as his first real book.
His later books get better as he became a more mature writer writing new ideas rather than the story he had in the back of his mind for the past decade. The Ghost Brigades (I believe) is better than the previous (it deals with the special forces). The Human Division and The End of All Things were written as serialized chapters that kind of stand on their own and I believe that format worked quite well with him.
I will note that... he likes snark. I don't recall much in his later Old Man's War books... I think he got it out in The Interdependency (a fun series but you have to be ok with snark and casual vulgarity - the Audible is read by Wil Wheaton (some may be turned off by that alone) who is able to read and handle the snark and casual vulgarity quite well). I will recommend it if one is ok with a very snarky character - it's a political intrigue series.
