A while back, Tor kindly sent me an ARC of John Scalzi's The Last Colony. A copy of the final version arrived in today's mail, which leads me to Paul di Filippo's middling review (grade B) of TLC. Here's what di Filippo liked:
Our protagonist is still the same lovable, embraceable, reluctant tough guy he was. Family life agrees with him and Jane. The relationship between the spouses and with their daughter are rich and real. Likewise, Scalzi's depiction of how the world works—group interactions among bickering colonists, government bureaucratic nonsense, etc.—is still sharp and accurate. His handling of action scenes—when they occur—is still vibrant. And his dialogue is always witty and forceful.
Here's what he didn't like:
This book is a mashup of two separate books, and they don't really play off each other very well.
The first book is an intended remake of Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955). This could have been a very good thing. Cast away without hope of return, settlers make a fresh life amid strange circumstances and dangers. But guess what? When the interstellar realpolitik comes onstage, this whole scenario is just thrown away. And I mean totally discarded. The intelligent natives of Roanoke, supposedly a major threat to the colony, simply vanish without explanation. And the colony is reunited with the rest of humanity, so the pressure to succeed on their own is off. It gives a sense of "Why bother?" about the whole enterprise. Why bother caring?
Next, the substance of the parallel narrative of the mashup, the Conclave and its demands, is a totally Keith Laumer/ Christopher Anvil kind of alien threat. While this worked perfectly in Scalzi's The Android's Dream (2006), here it's merely a straw man for Perry and company to dismantle. Moreover, much of the action of the engagements is told necessarily at a second-hand remove, since Perry is stuck on Roanoke. Gone is the immediacy of a combatant on the field of action.
I liked TLC a lot better than di Filippo did (see my generally positive review here), although I agree with di Filippo about the plot line involving the "intelligent natives of Roanoke." As I wrote in my review:
There's one subplot involving spears whose purpose I haven't quite figured out and about which I won't say more for risk of offering spoilers. But once you've read it, maybe you can explain to me whether that story line is anything more than local color.
When I first read TLC, moreover, I had a problem suspending disbelief with respect to one plot device (below the fold for those who want to avoid spoilers):
I wrote John as follows:
I didn't put this up on the blog yet, but I probably will after the book comes out (with appropriate spoiler warnings). I'm prepared to suspend disbelief on cloning and genetic engineering (easy), skipdrive (harder), consciousness transfers (harder still), and so on. But I have a very hard time suspending disbelief with respect to the basic plot device; namely, that the CU could successfully keep the Conclave and all the rest secret.
"Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
Even the Soviets couldn't eliminate samizdat. You posit a universe in which there is space travel and trade. Once somebody on Phoenix knows about the Conclave, they'll eventually tell their domestic partner, who will tell their hairdresser, who will tell his client who's leaving on the next liner to Earth.
To which John kindly responded as follows, subsequently granting me permission to quote him:
I don't think they *are* keeping it secret among the people who travel and trade through the stars, and indeed in the book I use the "Three men can keep a secret..." rule to the CU's advantage to "leak" the whereabouts of the colony. Remember also that in both TGB and TLC there's discussion on how long the CU can keep status of the Conclave officially off the books -- i.e., there's the expectation that sooner or later the CU is going to have to come clean on the Conclave. And finally, remember that the CU does intend to officially tell the colonies of The Conclave... after they've destroyed it by vaporizing its fleet and undermining its leadership.
What the CU is doing is keeping an "official" secret -- i.e., using information management to keep the Conclave's official status ambiguous until the CU is ready to deal with information in a way favorable to it. In managing information the CU has several advantages. First, it maintains a monopoly on the timely transmission of official information -- the colonies are light years from each other so all data are sent through the CU fleet (and we know from the book the CU is not above looking at the data). Second, it also maintains a monopoly on trade and the space-going military, so it has a very strong lever against colonial governments and official news sources.
Third and, I think, importantly, the CDF is *not* comprised of colonists -- the colonists don't see the horrors of war when their boys and girls come back home, nor are there any homecoming soldiers to tell them what's really happening on the front. Fourth, the vast
majority of colonists do not actually travel -- it's established that most colonists don't actually leave their home worlds. None of them join the military, and the size of the merchant fleet is small relative to the colonist populations; the number of colonists working in the CU federal government is also likewise very small relative to the overall population. All of that works to slow down (but not stop) the transmission of rumor and to decrease the verifiability of information as it filters through colonial populations.All of these elements are useful in the CU developing an official story and having it better compete with more truthful rumors. Moreover, the levers of official information management are more *efficient* in the CU universe than in ours, since by dint of
distances and the organization the CU brings to bear, which is simply not possible in our world of porous national and informational borders.
Do I think there samizdat in the CU? I would assume there is, although I don't spend any time on it because it's not core to the plot. But I do think the CU would keep a tight rein on official news by the carrot of appealing to the need for secrecy on one hand and the stick of real economic sanctions on the other. Indeed, to go back to the story about the "leak" of the colony's whereabouts, you'll remember the CU informing the various colonial news organs that officially the Roanoke Colony was still lost and that unofficially
that going to print with the information that it had been found would have impressively negative consequences.In other words, there's the reality of the situation, and then there's the "official" reality. If I remember correctly (I lent my ARC to my mother in law), in respect to the Conclave, the eventual official line is that there's some allied alien races pitting themselves against the CU, but it's not called "The Conclave" and the scope of the alliance is left ambiguous. There's just enough truth in that to make the official line plausible and leave the rumors of the Conclave still believable as mere rumors.
I think I'm persuaded. Certainly, I'm impressed.