Slogging Through Old Man's War

[akirlu]

Boy, whoever claimed John Scalzi was the new Robert Heinlein, based on Old Man's War, can't have read much actual Heinlein, and none of the stuff written before 1970. OMW commits the one sin that the early Heinleins never did: it's boring. This is fiction conceived not as story, but as a loosely-connected string of droning lectures on how the world works. I finally figured out what the problem is: the viewpoint character isn't a protagonist at all, he's a tourguide. See, a protagonist has agency. A protagonist has goals, desires, and when those goals and desires are frustrated, problems. And because a protagonist has goals, desires, and problems, he takes action in the world to overcome his problems and reach his goals. Often, circumstances frustrate his initial attempts, and throw more problems and obstacles his way, so the protagonist is forced to take further action, and so on, until some sort of crisis is reached and the protagonist overcomes this sea of problems to reach his goal. Or fails, and accepts defeat. Or revises his goals to align with circumstances. Or figures out a clever way to sidestep the problems. Something. But the basics are a person with a problem who takes action to try to resolve that problem. This is like Fiction 101. I'm guessing Scalzi didn't take that class. Hell, and it pains me to say this, even Jim Butcher does a better job motivating a plot and giving his hero agency. The problems may be silly, contrived, and implausible, but at least Harry Dresden has them, and reasons you can sort of understand for needing to overcome them.

In Old Man's War we are presented with a viewpoint character who has zero agency, or near as dammit. He certainly doesn't put any protagonistiness on display in the entire first section of the book. Years ago, our guy made a decision to join the military. We pause to get a little explanation of why he's going through with his decision. Now the time has come to get inducted so he goes down to the recruiting station. And we pause to get a little explanation of how the somewhat unusual contract for military service works. Our guy then gets on a transport to go off Earth to join the other recruits. During the transport we pause for a couple more lectures on current Earth history and how Earth relates to the Colonial Defense forces. Our guy meets a fat man. Fat people are slovenly, rude, racist jerks who fart a lot. Our guy tries to ditch the fat man, and fails, and finally gets rid of him by quoting Bible verses at him. This may well be the high point of cleverness and agency for our hero in the first 150 pages of the book. Our boy then gets to the space station, and we get a few more lectures. He makes some friends so they can lecture at each other. He goes through induction medical procedures: way, way more lectures, from the doctor this time.

And so on. We are dragged through series of vignettes, mostly talk and little action, and always there's one more lecture to 'splain to the reader how this or that works. Our hero doesn't have any obvious goals or desires or problems. Heck, the decision to join the military was actually at his wife's suggestion. And even when he gets laid it's at the instigation of the women, who jump him, every single time. Our guy is basically a leaf on the waters, floating along wherever the current takes him, occasionally getting pissed, or cracking a lame joke or two, but once he's gotten young again, which is what he joined the military for, there isn't anything he's particularly after in the first half of the book. It's really hard, for me at least, to give a crap about a viewpoint character like that. His achievements come easily, and it's not like there's anything he was sincerely worked up about, anyway. I think we're supposed to like him because he does in fact periodically crack these lame jokes, but that's pretty thin gruel to feed any kind of continuing interest.

I have other complaints, of course. Scalzi's shovel broke in the first chapter and so the BS keeps getting deeper and stinkier as we go, with no one shoveling it out of the way. Among the stinkier bits, the way that terrestrial understanding of nutrition has apparently made no progress in 300 years beyond that of our contemporary popular media, and the way that Scalzi evidently saw Full Metal Jacket but no one from his version of Earth did. But my big problem is that finally, after 150 pages, something may actually happen to the guy (though still interrupted by more explanatory lectures -- apparently 'enclue' is not a word in Scalzi's vocabulary), and I don't actually care if he lives or dies. No, that's not true. I'm vaguely favoring him dying in his first battle so we can be done.

Sigh. Yes, I will keep reading, just to say I've done it. Sadly, I have little prospect of enjoying the process.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Do not even look at Redshirts, I fear your head will explode.

I actually liked The Androids Dream myself.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you mentioned avoiding Redshirts before. I'll take it under advisement. The only reason I'm taking another run at OMW is because last time I gave up in boredom and irritation after the first chapter or two, still waiting for the action to get going, and I feel like if I'm going to slag something off properly I ought to at least read the whole thing first. Well, I've made it a lot further in this time and I feel like I'm still waiting for the action to get going. I've had several points where I get all anticipatory and think, "Ah, surely now the story really begins!" and I've been let down each time. I'm getting the sinking feeling that we're never going to get more than a guided tour of Old Man's Warworld with occasional incidents.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Old Man's War suffers from various things. If I understand the history correctly it came out of a collection of 'stuff' he put on his blog and PNH(?) bought it. (might be wrong there...) - mostly it's shuffling pieces into place so the second book makes sense. Or at least that's how it feels to me.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'd also say, I actually thought The Ghost Brigades was a much better book than Old Man's War, in that it had something resembling a plot. Whereas OMW is really a set of loosely related short stories.

[greyorm.livejournal.com]

Huh. I didn't have that reaction to it at all.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I calls 'em as I sees 'em. I know a lot of people liked the book, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

[greyorm.livejournal.com]

I'd have to re-read it at this point to remember why I enjoyed it -- enough to read more of his work -- so I couldn't say off-hand.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, if I had to guess, as I say to John below, I would bet it was the fact that the final third or so of the book makes up for a lot of lost ground.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I haven't read OMW - "the new Heinlein" is not a term of recommendation for me - but I did enjoy Agent to the Stars quite a bit. It's funny, and clever, and has a moral point, even though the plot relies on a disturbing happenstance in order to come out right; and, to address your specific comment here, it's absolutely chock full of agency, in at least three senses of the word, including the one you mean.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I don't much fancy myself as a Literary Critic (and in fact decided against GradSchool because I was sick of that kind of BullShit, back in 1956), but ... ummm... yup, that's probably why I didn't really like OMW -- it was just barely interesting enough to continue reading (and to expect to read the sequel(s)). "Redshirts", on another hand, was more interesting, despite my lack of familiarity with the referents -- I don't do TV -- and the probability that I got kinda lost when he upped to the third meta-level. I think I like Scalzi much more as a person and fan/personal-writer/blogger than as a Professional Fiction Writer. I find it interesting, and somewhat strange, that this applies to my attitude towards a remarkably large number of writers, including Scalzi, Jo Walton, Poul Anderson, Charles Stoss (sometimes), and others.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Interestingly (at least to me), I've read all the books in the series except the first one, Old Man's War. I rather liked The Ghost Brigade and liked slightly less The Lost Colony and slightly less than that Zoe's Tale. Given the trajectory, I would expect to like the first one. But I'm going to give it a bit of time, so all the details aren't quite so fresh in my mind.

[carbonel]

My mileage varied considerably. I think Scalzi's writing tends toward the facile, but I always find it eminently readable, much the same way I did Heinlein. OMW was the first thing of his I read, and it's the reason I kept reading his books.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I think his prose is "readable" in the sense that there's nothing grossly wrong with it, but that doesn't tell me much about what you liked about the story. Are you saying that you didn't mind the passivity of the viewpoint character, or that you actually found some examples of agency?

[carbonel]

What I actually meant by "readable" was that his prose has an "I want to keep reading this" quality to it. There are lots of authors I like whose writing doesn't have that particular quality, but have other things that keep me reading -- but the prose in OMW was the main similarity I found with Heinlein.

Regarding the lack of agency complaint, I grant there's a certain amount of that (though not as much later in the book), but I guess it didn't bother me as much as it did you, because what kept me reading was the worldbuilding. To some extent the book is a travelogue, and I found what we were seeing to be interesting.

But I'm not trying to argue you to a different opinion, just trying to describe what I liked about the book.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was just trying to convey that I didn't find "readable" to be a very informative description of the prose. The question is, why did you want to keep reading it? What was in his prose style that you found engaging?

If it was the travelogue of a built world, I guess I can see that -- as long as one didn't start finding implausibilities before breakfast in the construction, which I did. When something doesn't make sense to me, doesn't seem very likely, then I get pulled out of the narrative and start seeing other flaws as I go along unless the plot is pulling me along so fast that I can't stop and sightsee. Scalzi gave me way too much time to sightsee, and see more holes in the world.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Interesting to get an alternate take on Redshirts. I never went to a Star Trek convention myself, but if I had known of one while I was still in high school, I probably would have.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Disclosure; I'm not interested in mil sf, haven't read Scazi, dislike Heinlein.

I'm posting to gently take issue with your premise about agency etc being the only good kind of fiction. Sure, that's a way to structure a story. But it's not what everyone reads for, or what everyone writes for.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS isn't really about Gulliver's goals and agency, it's about giants and tiny people and a flying island etc. Same with ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Lewis was very emphatic about a plot being a nuisance (and sort of quoted Forster to the same effect).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You're right of course that the writer's rule about the importance of plot, and thus the importance of a protagonist who acts like one, is specifically obligatory in one type of literature, the (heroic) romance (or fantastical adventure tale), and besides rules exist to be broken, so long as they are broken with understanding and deliberation. But. SF/F very typically is written in the genre of the fantastical adventure tale, and so a writer ignores its rules and conventions at his peril. Plot is just a tool, true enough, but it's a compelling one, and if you discard it, you'd bloody well better be doing something else really well, perhaps several things, because without plot to pull the reader along at breakneck speeds, you might end up giving them enough leisure to notice if you're doing other things badly. Both Gulliver and Alice are travelogues to rather more interesting worlds than Mr. Scalzi's, and they are also pointed social and political satires, and for that matter, whatever Lewis felt about plot, it's hard to claim Alice doesn't display any agency. She certainly does, there are a series of things she wants and things she does to try to get them, however often her attempts are foiled by the confusing and changeable rules that apply once down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass.

So yes, I get that one can read and enjoy fiction for other qualities, but part of the point here is that until the action really gets going (about 2/3 of the way in, I discovered), there aren't enough good other qualities in OMW to make the lack of plot palatable.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

First, I'm sorry I was unclear about "Lewis". It was C. S. Lewis who found agency plot a nuisance, especially when writing his OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET series. Charles Williams didn't do very well with the agency plots of his 'spiritual thrillers' either. (Nor did Josephine Tey with her wonderful British character supposed whodunnits.) And iirc Jo Walton had to do some brilliant hybridizing of genres to get plot/structure for her FARTHING series and TOOTH AND CLAW. Myers' SILVERLOCK has hardly any goal, iirc.

Apparently I'm not the only person who found Robert Forward's DRAGON'S EGG lacked much agency plot as an overall arc -- but it was wonderful sf. MacLeod's LEARNING THE WORLD had several characters each with their own motives/agency, but no single one was the focus of the book for the reader to identify with.

"SF/F very typically is written in the genre of the fantastical adventure tale [....]"

Yes. But imo a fantastical adventure tale has less need of a single hero with a single goal than other genres do. An interesting travelogue is sufficient; all you need is a bare skeleton of continuity. (Imo in much fantastical journey fiction a single hero with a single quest is a convenience, not a driving force to pull the reader along.)

I once defended Alice as having more agency than Dorothy; but hardly anyone cares or remembers what Alice was wanting from one chapter to another, because that's not what AIW was about.

From what others are saying, imo you're probably right about OMW. I'm just disagreeing with the wider generalizations as to what we read for, and what a successful SF book needs.

[coth.livejournal.com]

I read it last year and blogged as below. I have no further comments, and no intention of reading any more of his books.

"Light reading for the plane home from the US. Blurb says it's a perfect Heinlein - I haven't reread Star Ship Troopers recently enough to comment, though I can see some similarities of prose style. I was struck by similarities to Ender's Game. I enjoyed it enough to read to the end, but then I found it stopped dead mid-story, and that there were at more volumes planned. It isn't a criticism to say that I won't be reading them - just a comment that my time for reading this kind of science fiction with more than mild enjoyment has probably passed."

[scalzi.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I will keep reading, just to say I've done it. Sadly, I have little prospect of enjoying the process."

If you're manifestly not enjoying the book, I personally would suggest tossing it. Speaking from no little experience with the text, you're not likely to enjoy the rest of it any better, and I don't personally see much value dragging yourself through the book just to say you've done so. Take the time you'd otherwise invest joylessly slogging through the rest of the book and give it to a book you have some chance of liking.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hiya, John. Actually, it's funny you should pop up now. I just finished reading Old Man's War tonight, and surprise to us both, I enjoyed the final third of the book quite a lot. I may well go on to pick up others in the world at some point -- I've already gotten past the set up, after all. Once the action gets going in OMW (I clocked it at somewhere around p.200) the pace is good rousing stuff, and we finally start seeing payoff on investments made in the first two thirds of the novel. The last third has several clever and interesting plot twists, some lovely relationship development, and while there are definitely still some parts of the world building that don't work for me, I saw a lot of thought in the way the members of the Ghost Brigades develop as people. I particularly liked the way Special Forces soldiers have such a hard time putting name to, and processing, their emotions, because that rings very true to me -- who would have bothered to teach them that? I also thought that it was smart, and gut-level right, to have each of the trial combats between Special Forces and Consu take a completely different form -- you'd have to figure each pair of combatants would watch previous battles and recalibrate their approaches accordingly. That scene worked very well for me.

As a slow reader, I really wish the exposition / set up for the final third of the book had either been compressed quite a lot, or else given more room to breathe and flesh out personalities and relationships, because for me 200 pages is awfully long for just a wind up. But hey, first novel and all. I can't say the last third of the book fully redeems or undoes the complaints I had getting to it, but it does make up for quite a lot, and in the end I'm glad I stuck with the book. Surprise!