John Scalzi
Completed 3/24/2017, reviewed 3/26/2017
3 stars
“Miniatures” is a fun little book. As described in its title, it’s all very
short fiction, about ten pages max. Most
of the stories are goofy fun. I don’t
really have a more mature way of putting it.
Almost every story is fun in some way, and they all have the goofy humor
that I’ve come to appreciate from John Scalzi.
I’ve only read one other book by Scalzi, “Redshirts”, which
won the Hugo some years back. It too was
goofy fun, although I didn’t call it that in my review of it. Where I really got to know Scalzi was at
Westercon last year where he was the Guest of Honor. I went to most of the panels he was on and he
was a hoot. He has a great sense of
humor.
That sense of humor is on display in “Miniatures”. It opens with a story that made me chuckle
out loud, “Alien Animal Encounters”. It’s
about people describing their most interesting encounter with an alien animal
species. Another good one was “Pluto
Tells All”. That has Pluto describing
what it was like being demoted to dwarf planet.
A third fun story was “The AI are Absolutely Positively Without a Doubt
Not Here to End Humanity, Honest”. That
was about machines becoming intelligent and doing an interview to explain that,
well, as the title describes, they are not here to end humanity.
Almost all the stories are tongue in cheek, sharply humorous. He mentions a few times in the intros for the
stories, that these are the sort of pieces he would use on book tours to warm
up the audience. And they do, they give
you a chuckle and lighten your mood. I
give this book three stars out of five because it’s basically fluff, a quick,
easy read, meant to make you laugh rather than pause and reflect. A few of the stories didn’t work for me, but
that is often the case in a collection like this. Usually, not every story is going to grab
me. But it’s a great book to read after
a heavier tome. I highly recommend it.
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