Scalzi is one of the few writers who I find funny, in a smart-ass kind of way. His Old Man's War series was some of the most entertaining science fiction I've ever read, with an excellent sense of drama, a good dose of humor, and some surprisingly effective pathos.
The Android's Dream is a more straight-up comic effort, but it's just as much fun. Unlike in Old Man's War, the universe of The Android's Dream is profoundly unthreatening -- not because death doesn't lurk at every corner (it does: people want that sheep bad), but because no problem is so big that a cheerful attitude and some convenient MacGyver skills can't solve it. As a result, while the novel does trade in some superficially big stakes (e.g., the possible enslavement of the human race) and some ostensibly unsavory characters (e.g., an alien hit man who digests his prey alive -- and slowly), nobody ever gets too distressed about it all.
The one downside to the book's sunny disposition is that Scalzi clearly makes stuff up as he goes along to get his (very) likeable protagonists over the increasingly insurmountable obstacles in their path. This becomes most obvious during a section of the novel when the protagonists attempt to escape a space cruiseliner and Scalzi interrupts the derring-do every few paragraphs to explain how yet another miraculously convenient fact saves the protagonists' asses yet again. (You need to escape? Why, we have lifepods! Is there an alien warship waiting to shoot you down? Why, we have thousands of lifepods!)
Scalzi is too good of a writer to be unaware of this unfortunate backfilling, so he makes up for it with a madcap plot and a cast of engaging (and very able) characters. The result, despite occasional lapses, is a highly satisfying space yarn that leaves you feeling as warm and fuzzy as an electric sheep.
Copyright © 2009 Steven Wu 