dfwmtx wrote:I've only read "Red Shirts" and the short story of his in the "Black Tide Rising" short story collection. What's the most odious Scalzi works, the ones that would get me on this "Oh, that's why he sucks!" page?
Like I said, only read two bits of his, but I'm impressed by his work on a technical level. Few people every write a decent 2nd person POV, and doing an entire story in dialog with no other narration or exposition is pretty good too.
Honestly, "Old Man's War" was quite good to excellent. Yeah, there is some 'messaging' in the story but its not overbearing (it gets there in later books and is slammed into your face at the end).
If I had read Fuzzy Nation without ever having read H. Beam Piper's stories, I would probably have said it was gritty and sadly realistic in some aspects with somewhat heavy-handed messaging but still good. He doesn't rub your face in his dislike of firearms, they're just barely there compared to Piper's works. But corporations, colonialism, environmentalism, etc, yep.
What has turned me off of Scalzi overall is his presence on twitter and his blog/forum. His positions on things political, the Hugos, the Sad Puppies, his treatment of people who disagree with him (he has reportedly, confirmed to a substantial degree, modified posts to his boards that he disagreed with to make the posters look bad/stupid/etc).
I tried the Fuzzy book because I liked Old Man's War. I read it, and i sent it on. I'll doubtless re-read Piper's again in the future, in part because I love the Second Federation and would not mind living in it at all.