The Android's Dream
Prologue:
The fate of Earth, lowest of the low in galactic society, hangs on a missing sheep—who turns out to be hidden inside a woman named Robin Baker......
Details:
Title------ The Android's Dream
Author---John Scalzi
Other-----Tor Books
Hardcover, Nov. 2006
396 pages
ISBN 0-765-30941-6
Price: US$24.95
The Story
At some unspecified time in the near future—let's say it's past the midpoint of our present century—Earth has been accepted as a member of the Common Confederation, a galactic polity of 617 sentient species. We have starships and colonies and interstellar trade deals. That's the good news. The bad news is our relative status. We're dissed and disregarded. Our "patrons" are the Nidu, violent and hierarchical lizardly backstabbers who would like nothing better than to find a pretext for opening war with Earth. (The Nidu are ranked 488th, militarily speaking, but they can still kick Earth's butt.)
nitially, the Nidu might have their casus belli in the form of a diplomatic insult. The opening chapter reveals how an Earth diplomat named Dirk Moeller manages to provoke a Nidu into a fatal stroke by insulting him with the Nidu language of odors. (Where the odors emanate from, and how, is a hilarious riff best left for direct readerly interaction.) But even this minor crisis fades into insignificance with other simultaneous developments.
The time of succession has come on the Nidu homeworld, and for their power-transfer ceremony they need a special, genetically engineered Earth sheep known as the "Android's Dream." (Any Nidu clan that gets the sheep first and shows up at the ceremonies will assume leadership.) But all the stocks of said transgenic animal, our government soon discovers, have been mysteriously wiped out. It appears that there are several conspiracies afoot by different cabals (including the Church of the Evolved Lamb) to foment a break between Earth and the Nidu.
One government official intent on maintaining peace is Ben Javna. He recruits his old friend Harris Creek—an ex-soldier, computer whiz and general Competent Guy—to track down a surviving Android Dream to placate the Nidu. Creek sets out, aided by the world's only true artificial intelligence: Brian. But what Creek soon discovers throws a spanner into the works.
The last source of living Android Dream genes is an average woman named Robin Baker (the ovine genes are hiding unexpressed in her junk DNA, due to her strange heritage). And once the Nidu, led by the vicious Narf-win-Getag, get a whiff of Robin's existence, her life will be over. That is, if the hit man named Rod Acuna and his alien pal Takk, hired by a government quisling, don't get her and Creek first.
My Own Thoughts
Part of the success of this laugh-out-loud, cleverly plotted tale stems from Scalzi's other ficto-genetic strain: that of the Donald Westlake/Elmore Leonard/Carl Hiassen-style caper novel. Scalzi fills his book with lowlife thugs, venal politicians and quirky boyfriend-girlfriend banter, eternally appealing since the days of Damon Runyon. (I see Robin as totally Sandra Bullock, and Harris as Russell Crowe. And believe me, I'm handing out some serious praise here for Scalzi's cinematic vividness.) But he doesn't neglect real SF-ideational conceits either. It's rather as if Christopher Moore rewrote Heinlein's Have Spacesuit—Will Travel (1958).
But marvelously rewarding as this book is, I'm still not satisfied with Scalzi. I demand that he contact Hollywood and secure the job of writing the next Men in Black movie. He's the guy to put Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones through some real adventures!
The Android's Dream
The fate of Earth, lowest of the low in galactic society, hangs on a missing sheep—who turns out to be hidden inside a woman named Robin Baker......
Title------ The Android's Dream
Author---John Scalzi
Other-----Tor Books
Hardcover, Nov. 2006
396 pages
ISBN 0-765-30941-6
Price: US$24.95
The Story
At some unspecified time in the near future—let's say it's past the midpoint of our present century—Earth has been accepted as a member of the Common Confederation, a galactic polity of 617 sentient species. We have starships and colonies and interstellar trade deals. That's the good news. The bad news is our relative status. We're dissed and disregarded. Our "patrons" are the Nidu, violent and hierarchical lizardly backstabbers who would like nothing better than to find a pretext for opening war with Earth. (The Nidu are ranked 488th, militarily speaking, but they can still kick Earth's butt.)
nitially, the Nidu might have their casus belli in the form of a diplomatic insult. The opening chapter reveals how an Earth diplomat named Dirk Moeller manages to provoke a Nidu into a fatal stroke by insulting him with the Nidu language of odors. (Where the odors emanate from, and how, is a hilarious riff best left for direct readerly interaction.) But even this minor crisis fades into insignificance with other simultaneous developments.
The time of succession has come on the Nidu homeworld, and for their power-transfer ceremony they need a special, genetically engineered Earth sheep known as the "Android's Dream." (Any Nidu clan that gets the sheep first and shows up at the ceremonies will assume leadership.) But all the stocks of said transgenic animal, our government soon discovers, have been mysteriously wiped out. It appears that there are several conspiracies afoot by different cabals (including the Church of the Evolved Lamb) to foment a break between Earth and the Nidu.
One government official intent on maintaining peace is Ben Javna. He recruits his old friend Harris Creek—an ex-soldier, computer whiz and general Competent Guy—to track down a surviving Android Dream to placate the Nidu. Creek sets out, aided by the world's only true artificial intelligence: Brian. But what Creek soon discovers throws a spanner into the works.
The last source of living Android Dream genes is an average woman named Robin Baker (the ovine genes are hiding unexpressed in her junk DNA, due to her strange heritage). And once the Nidu, led by the vicious Narf-win-Getag, get a whiff of Robin's existence, her life will be over. That is, if the hit man named Rod Acuna and his alien pal Takk, hired by a government quisling, don't get her and Creek first.
My Own Thoughts
Part of the success of this laugh-out-loud, cleverly plotted tale stems from Scalzi's other ficto-genetic strain: that of the Donald Westlake/Elmore Leonard/Carl Hiassen-style caper novel. Scalzi fills his book with lowlife thugs, venal politicians and quirky boyfriend-girlfriend banter, eternally appealing since the days of Damon Runyon. (I see Robin as totally Sandra Bullock, and Harris as Russell Crowe. And believe me, I'm handing out some serious praise here for Scalzi's cinematic vividness.) But he doesn't neglect real SF-ideational conceits either. It's rather as if Christopher Moore rewrote Heinlein's Have Spacesuit—Will Travel (1958).
But marvelously rewarding as this book is, I'm still not satisfied with Scalzi. I demand that he contact Hollywood and secure the job of writing the next Men in Black movie. He's the guy to put Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones through some real adventures!
