"Starter Villain"
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Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.
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Hooray!
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Reading the Amazon blurb, I am worried that Scalzi's gone into the "cute but weird" genre.
I always thought "Old Man's War" was fantastic, not only because of the concept, but because of his approach to telling the story AGAIN, from a different POV - Zoe's Tale.
"Fuzzy Nation" might be the beginning of the "cute but weird" stuff, and "Agent to the Stars" continues that.
(I LOVED "Fuzzy" by the way. It's a deeper story than one assumes.)
"Kaiju Preservation?" Nah...didn't like it.
Hopefully this will not fall into that trap.
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I'm in the same boat. "Kaiju" was a little too... there, in terms of cute+weird. Here's hoping this one is better.
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See? There's the difference between you and me.
You wrote: " "Kaiju" was a little too... there"
I know exactly what you meant, I just couldn't have expressed it that way.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
The Brad
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See? There's the difference between you and me.
You wrote: " "Kaiju" was a little too... there"
I know exactly what you meant, I just couldn't have expressed it that way.
@George-K said in "Starter Villain":
See? There's the difference between you and me.
You wrote: " "Kaiju" was a little too... there"
I know exactly what you meant, I just couldn't have expressed it that way.
Meh, it's all context. I can do that maybe, but even if I knew what you do about the human body, me explaining a patient's status to a surgeon would be just terrible for everyone.
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I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
@LuFins-Dad said in "Starter Villain":
I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
He's a bit weak on character depth and development, but to his credit, his characters are always relatable. You tend to read him for his premise and how he plays around with it, not really the character introspection.
Please love yourself.
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I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
@LuFins-Dad said in "Starter Villain":
I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
Guy that I used to work with - exceptionally well-read orthopedic surgeon - said, "Every writer, basically, has one story to tell."
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@LuFins-Dad said in "Starter Villain":
I feel like Scalzi keeps giving us the same characters over and over again.
He's a bit weak on character depth and development, but to his credit, his characters are always relatable. You tend to read him for his premise and how he plays around with it, not really the character introspection.
@Aqua-Letifer said in "Starter Villain":
You tend to read him for his premise
Once you accept the fact that a job opening has appeared and the job is representing an alien to humanity so they don't freak out...it all follows, right?
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@Aqua-Letifer said in "Starter Villain":
You tend to read him for his premise
Once you accept the fact that a job opening has appeared and the job is representing an alien to humanity so they don't freak out...it all follows, right?
@George-K said in "Starter Villain":
@Aqua-Letifer said in "Starter Villain":
You tend to read him for his premise
Once you accept the fact that a job opening has appeared and the job is representing an alien to humanity so they don't freak out...it all follows, right?
Yeah, pretty much. Until you get to the part where the main character's now fully painted in a corner and you get to see how he gets himself out.
Always fun, though.
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About ¼ of the way through.
Typical, typical, Scalzi.
Sarcastic dialog, witty, and totally preposterous.
I think he's gone a bit too far on the "cute" stuff. Cats who type emails?
Talking asshole dolphins?
I liked him better when he was doing Old Man's War, The Dispatcher, and Lock In.
The last two where good, hard Sci-Fi - creative ideas...and no cuteness.
I loved Fuzzy Nation, but I think it was the first step on this descent to hell.
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Talk about popcorn...
This didn't even have butter on it.
It was okay. Just OK.
Another take on the Spielberg approach to storytelling: Take a likable character and throw him into a totally foreign situation, where he has to survive by his wiles and wit.
If you look up "disposable" in the dictionary, this book will be in the definitions.
Fun, lightweight and totally forgettable.
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Try Hollow Kingdom. Told from the point of view of a domesticated crow experiencing a zombie disease affecting all humans, or mofos as his owner called them.
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I'll see your domesticated crow and raise you asshole dolphins.
“Do they talk?” I asked.
The dolphin chittered something. “Who is this fucknugget?” is what came out of a nearby speaker.
“I guess that’s a yes,” I said.
“Fucknugget! Fucknugget!” the other dolphins started chanting in unison.
The woman in the wet suit turned to the dolphins. “It’s your new boss, you thumbless cretins.”
“Fuck him! And fuck your manucentric world view!”
“‘Manucentric’?” I asked.
“It’s not what you think,” the person in the wet suit said, getting up and coming toward me. “Manus is Latin for ‘hand.’ ‘Manucentric’ is their new go-to word when they want to accuse us of bigotry.”
“Fuck your fingers!” the central dolphin said.
“Finger fuck! Finger fuck!” the other dolphins chimed in.
Speaking of hands, the woman in the wet suit held out one of hers. “Astrud Livgren. Cetacean relations.”
I shook her hand. “And how are relations?”
Astrud looked back. “About usual.”
“She’s an asshole!” the central dolphin said.
“So they’re always like this?”
“We’re right fucking here! You can ask us, you bipedal scrotemonkey!”
I raised my eyebrows at Livgren.
“‘Scrotemonkey’ is new,” she said. “They mix and match insults to see what works. You get used to it.” She“motioned to the dolphins. “Please, be my guest.”
I approached the dolphins. Their chittering died down.
“Hi,” I said. “You’re the first dolphins I’ve ever met.”
“Well whoop-de-fucking-do,” the central dolphin said.
For the very briefest moment I wondered about the translation software that had the capability to take the chittering of a dolphin and translate it to “whoop-de-fucking-do,” but I pressed on. “I’m Charlie Fitzer.”
“Hi, Charlie,” the dolphin said. “I’m Who Gives a Shit, and these are my associates Don’t Care, Fuck You, Fuck Off, Burn It Down, and Eat the Rich.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I understand there’s some sort of labor dispute.”
Who Gives a Shit snorted. “As if you care.”
“I was in a union myself,” I said. “Chicago Tribune Guild.”
“But you’re not anymore, are you? Now you’re management! A suppurating bourgeois fistula of oppression!”
“Bourgeois fistula! Bourgeois fistula!” the rest of the dolphins chimed in unison.
“Not going to lie, I appreciate your way with words,” I said.
“Don’t condescend to us, you ambulatory collection of skin tags,” Who Gives a Shit said. “If you’re just going to continue your uncle’s repressive labor policies “labor policies, you can fuck off right into the sun.”
“Sun fucking! Sun fucking!”
“I looked back to Morrison. “Uncle Jake was a union buster?” I asked.
“He was of the opinion that animals didn’t have legal standing to form unions,” Morrison said.
“How do the cats feel about that?”
“Most of them are in management.”
“Cats are fucking class traitors,” Who Gives a Shit said. “Furry little quislings is what they are.”
“How…” I turned to Livgren. “How do dolphins have class consciousness in the first place?”"Scrotemonkey"
Remember that one.
