My friend Peter co-wrote this, and I was very glad to see it come out on Audible right away (I do hate to read books in the old-fashioned sense). It’s outside of my normal genres of sci-fi, startup, sci-fi, business, fantasy, and more sci-fi, but I’m glad I picked it up. Despite my bias, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Peter and Joel really do travel the world in search of what makes things funny. The combination of a researcher and a writer make for a great combo for a book.
The premise here is awesome: a computer virus that goes sentient and grows so fast that it spawns entire ecosystems that fracture and fight each other. This was my favorite of the series, by far. My only wish was that it was longer and developed the characters further, including the AIs. There was so much here worth exploring and digging into that I almost wish Neal Stephenson wrote this book.
Juli and I listened to this on a few road trips. It provoked some very good discussion between us, and often enough that we would pause the book, talk about what we just heard, debate and discuss, then continue listening. As I write this review some five years later, I honestly can’t recall a single specific thing from the book, but that it was thought-provoking enough for us to want to pause and discuss, should be enough of a recommendation.
After reading the novella, Army of One, I decided to pick up the first book in the series. It’s a wild ride. But I’ll save you the agony of having to decide if you want to start a 12-book series (12!!) — don’t bother I didn’t even finish the fourth book.
This book is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in modern-day earth, the characters are well-written and the voice acting is fantastic (Wil Wheaton). It was Agent to the Stars that got me to revisit the Old Man’s War series and added to my appreciation of Scalzi’s style. If you want a good laugh in a short book, pick this one up.