{"id":866,"date":"2009-07-19T15:46:26","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T13:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=866"},"modified":"2009-07-21T16:11:44","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T14:11:44","slug":"scalzi-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=866","title":{"rendered":"Scalzi rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marko<\/a> pointed me<\/a> to Scalzi<\/a>. Being of the opinion that Marko knows what he’s talking about most of the time :-) I ordered a copy of Old Man’s War<\/em> from Amazon. Just finished it, and it rocks.<\/p>\n

A bit rough around the edges, couple of things he (in my opinion, of course) missed, but not bad for a young ‘un (Mr Scalzi is two years younger’n me :-)<\/p>\n

I can’t help but to compare OMW<\/em> to Neal Stephenson<\/a>‘s first book, The Big U<\/em>. I really really like Stephenson, Diamond Age<\/em>, Snow Crash<\/em> and Cryptonomicon<\/em> are highly recommended [1] — but The Big U<\/em>, while having excellent ideas, is way shaky.<\/p>\n

But let’s face it — I expect that from a first novel. And that’s why Scalzi rocks. If he improves like Stephenson improved, or for that matter like Pratchett improved [2], it’s going to be phenomenal. If he just maintains, it will still be good.<\/p>\n

The other three books in the trilogy immediately found themselves on my Amazon wish list.<\/p>\n

Now I’m into Parker’s Devices and Desires<\/em><\/a>, the first of a trilogy. Someone recommended it, but I can’t remember who. Looks like it might be good.<\/p>\n

[1] You have to be really into Stephenson to read the Baroque cycle :-)<\/p>\n

[2] Go read The Colour of Magic<\/em> again — it’s shakey :-)

Marko pointed me to Scalzi. Being of the opinion that Marko knows what he’s talking about most of the time :-) I ordered a copy of Old Man’s War from Amazon. Just finished it, and it rocks. A bit rough around the edges, couple of things he (in my opinion, of course) missed, but not bad for a young ‘un (Mr Scalzi is two years younger’n me :-) I can’t help but to compare OMW to Neal Stephenson‘s first book, The Big U. I really really like Stephenson, Diamond Age, Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are highly recommended [1] — but...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}