Been catching up on some reading.
John Scalzi recently released a reboot of the H Beam Piper classic, Little Fuzzy. I love that old book, must have read it three or four times. So when Scalzi, whose other books I love, got the nod to tackle the reboot, well that'd be like if JJ Abrams or someone got to reboot Star Trek. His version is called Fuzzy Nation. My girls got me the book for Father's Day (along with China Mieville's newest, Embassytown) and I read it in two days. You should read it- but first you should read Little Fuzzy. It's charming and fun but also has a great twist at the end, which Scalzi wisely incorporates but doesn't use as a twist.
I tried and tried to figure out the identity of the Red Hulk, and fastidiously avoided spoilers on the net, but in the end I was defeated by trickery. Well, if they hadn't employed a bit of the tricksy stuff it would've been too easy, and the tricks were perfectly legit tricks within the Marvel Universe, so I guess. But I wonder how many 8 year-olds got it.
Full disclosure: I've never smoked crack or even been idly tempted to try it. But I heard Christopher Shulgan on a DNTO podcast talk about his misadventures with crack while his newborn son was ... new. So I had to read his book, Superdad. Wow. Crazy. Here's a guy who's a year older than me, grew up in a small Canadian town then moved to a city. New dad. Pretty much exactly the same demographic. It would be easy to say the only difference between us is he has a problem with drugs and I don't. But what I found so interesting about the book is it's also a fairly deep examination of his concepts of manhood and fatherhood- ie, in his eyes, the two are mutually exclusive. While I was reading I thought "well his dad must have been a nightmare and that's how we have such different ideas here" and then it turns out he named his son after his dad since his dad is the greatest man he knows. Okay so,we also have that in common- my dad also is the greatest man I know. Well, I thought, obviously he didn't read nearly enough superhero comics or watch enough Star Wars when he was a kid, because if he did, then he would have had good role models to teach him how a man should be. Turns out he blames Harrison Ford for all his problems! Wow, did I see Han Solo and Indy differently than he did. Well, he worked it out and wrote the book, but I won't spoil it for you- this whole post has been spoiler free! Because real men don't ruin things for others.