The Android's Dream: Review

Over the years, I'd heard favorable things about John Scalzi's writing, so I was happy to find one of his books (The Android's Dream) at the local library. The title interested me because of the homage to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I really didn't like this book. First off, the core plot revolves around a fart joke--not exactly my favorite type of humor. The writing is sloppy: for example the word "just" would be used twice in one sentence, and there were a bunch of typos. The writing style is extremely casual, which in general I don't mind, but this was casual enough that I was conscious of it.

What I disliked most, however, was its treatment of female characters. I am very disappointed that a modern science fiction writer would do such a poor job of including female characters. It's science fiction.... you can do anything you want! Yet it suffers from the age-old treatment of women as important only as love interests.

There are two major female characters: Robin Baker, and Andrea Hayter-Ross. Baker is a human/sheep hybrid; her mother was genetically engineered as a sheep-woman to satisfy men's beastiality urges. Nice. Baker is described as "attractive," of course, and is pursued by Earthlings and aliens alike for a ceremony to determine the next leader of the Nidu alien race.

Hayter-Ross is really the only decent female character, as someone who started the Church of the Evolved Lamb, a thinly-veiled version of Scientology.

Of course, Baker is always called "Robin" (or "the girl"), while the male characters are usually referred to by their last name.

There are so many politicians, hackers, aliens, etc. in this book--why are they almost all men? In another charming example, Earth has banned all females of a particular alien race from visiting Earth during mating season unless they are on birth control, since their mating practices wreak havoc. It's a silly piece of the story, but why must it be the females who are banned?

This book gets an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Even if the misogyny doesn't bother you, I think the story is pretty lame. I did actually finish the book, so it's certainly not the worst thing I've ever read, but I can't say it makes me want to read anything else he's written.

Dinosaurs Are Not Just For Boys

It drives me nuts when people advertise things like dinosaur decorations and label it "for boys". Why on Earth would only boys like dinosaurs? My mom got me a really cute scrapbook with dinosaurs on it and put pictures of everyone in the family in it. It comes with stickers and they all say things like "absolutely 100% boy" and "of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable" and "it's a guy thing". WTF?

Look, I understand that in general, more boys than girls are interested in dinosaurs. But I was a dino-freak when I was a kid and I'm sure lots of other little girls are too. There is just no reason to categorize the world into "boy" and "girl" items. It's like greeting cards--why are Star Wars cards labeled "Boy Birthday"? Why can't they just be birthday cards?

Jack's room is painted lavender. We painted it that color a few years ago and saw no reason to change it when turning the room into a nursery. Having that color for a boy disturbs some people, however. I called a place to ask about glider cushions and when I mentioned the color of the room was lavender and that we were having a boy, the woman said, "Well, and you'll be changing the color of course..."

Just what do people think is going to happen if a baby boy has a room with lavender-painted walls? No doubt he'll be scarred for life.