# | Year | 1st Read | Title | Author(s) | My Rating | |
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1 | 2008 | 2013 | After the Coup Old Man's War #3.5 | John Scalzi | | |
2 | 2017 | 2019 | The Collapsing Empire The Interdependency #1 Cover Blurb | John Scalzi | | |
| From amazon.com:
*2018 LOCUS AWARD WINNER OF BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL* *2018 HUGO AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST NOVEL*
"John Scalzi is the most entertaining, accessible writer working in SF today." - Joe Hill, author of The Fireman
The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man's War
Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.
Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war - and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.
The Flow is eternal - but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals—a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency—must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
"Fans of Game of Thrones and Dune will enjoy this bawdy, brutal, and brilliant political adventure" - Booklist on The Collapsing Empire
"Political plotting, plenty of snark, puzzle-solving, and a healthy dose of action... Scalzi continues to be almost insufferably good at his brand of fun but think-y sci-fi adventure." - Kirkus Reviews on The Collapsing Empire
"Scalzi is one of the slickest writers that SF has ever produced." - The Wall Street Journal on The Human Division | |
3 | 2018 | | The Consuming Fire The Interdependency #2 | John Scalzi | | |
4 | 2016 | 2021 | The Dispatcher The Dispatcher #1 Cover Blurb | John Scalzi | | |
| From audible.com:
From master storyteller and Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi comes this Audible Original novella, winner of the 2017 Audie Award for Best Original Work. Emmy-nominated actor Zachary Quinto—best known for his roles as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer Sylar in Heroes—brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this genre-bending thriller.
One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.
Enter Tony Valdez, professional Dispatcher. True to their name, these licensed assassins are tasked with humanely disposing of people in death’s crosshairs to offer them a second chance at avoiding the reaper. When a friend and fellow Dispatcher goes missing, Valdez is plunged into a web of intrigue both professional and personal.
It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late... before not even a Dispatcher can save him. | |
5 | 2015 | 2016 | The End of All Things Old Man's War #6 | John Scalzi | | |
6 | 2006 | 2012 | The Ghost Brigades Old Man's War #2 | John Scalzi | | |
7 | 2018 | | Head On Lock In #2 Cover Blurb | John Scalzi | | |
| From audible.com:
"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Canell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty - most of them in someone else's body." (USA Today)
John Scalzi returns with Head On, the stand-alone follow-up to the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it.
Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.
Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are called in to uncover the truth - and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field. | |
8 | 2013 | 2014 | The Human Division Old Man's War #5 | John Scalzi | | |
9 | 2007 | 2012 | The Last Colony Old Man's War #3 | John Scalzi | | |
10 | 2020 | | The Last Emperox The Interdependency #3 | John Scalzi | | |
11 | 2014 | | Lock In Lock In #1 Cover Blurb | John Scalzi | | |
| From audible.com:
Two editions. Two narrators. One thrilling story. You can also choose to download Wil Wheaton's narration.
"I love working with Audible, in no small part because they’re committed to doing what’s right, both for my books, and the people who listen to those books. There's a really excellent reason for Lock In to have two entirely different versions, so when it came time to make the audiobook, Audible did an ingenious thing: they asked both Wil Wheaton and Amber Benson to record entire versions of the book. As the author, I’m impressed with Audible’s commitment to my narrative - and I’m geeking out that both Wil and Amber are reading my book. This is fantastic." (John Scalzi)
A blazingly inventive near-future thriller from the best-selling, Hugo Award-winning John Scalzi.
Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.
A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome", rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.
But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined.
BONUS AUDIO: Audible's audio edition of Lock In contains the bonus novella, Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome, written by John Scalzi and narrated by a full cast. | |
12 | 2020 | 2021 | Murder by Other Means The Dispatcher #2 Cover Blurb | John Scalzi | | |
| From audible.com:
From Hugo and Audie Award-winning author John Scalzi comes an exciting sequel to The New York Times best-selling, number one Audible hit The Dispatcher, performed by the incomparable Zachary Quinto.
Welcome to the new world, in which murder is all but a thing of the past. Because when someone kills you, 999 times out of 1,000, you instantly come back to life. In this world, there are dispatchers—licensed killers who step in when you’re at risk of a natural or unintentional death. They kill you—so you can live.
Tony Valdez is used to working his job as a dispatcher within the rules of the law and the state. But times are tough, and more and more Tony finds himself riding the line between what’s legal and what will pay his bills. After one of these shady gigs and after being a witness to a crime gone horribly wrong, Tony discovers that people around him are dying, for reasons that make no sense...and which just may implicate him.
Tony is running out of time: to solve the mystery of these deaths, to keep others from dying, and to keep himself from being a victim of what looks like murder, by other means. | |
13 | 2005 | 2012 | Old Man's War Old Man's War #1 | John Scalzi | | |
14 | 2005 | 2015 | Questions for a Soldier Old Man's War #1.5 | John Scalzi | | |
15 | 2012 | 2014 | Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas | John Scalzi | | |
16 | 2007 | 2012 | The Sagan Diary Old Man's War #2.5 | John Scalzi | | |
17 | 2008 | 2012 | Zoe's Tale Old Man's War #4 | John Scalzi | | |