Having said that, I entirely understand the reviewer’s point of “Yes, we know you can do Heinlein — but can you do you?” One of the ironies here is that the book I wrote immediately after Old Man’s War — The Android’s Dream — is rather different tonally than Old Man’s War or Ghost Brigades; and at the very least it can’t be said to be Heinleinesque because Dear Ol’ Bob never opened a book with a chapter-long fart joke.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent some time catching up on John Scalzi. Read both Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades, and enjoyed them both. They’re good fun SF, and definitely show the influence of Heinlein that most reviewers have noted, and that John Scalzi acknowledges in the above quote from his blog. Well, a few days ago John emailed me the opening chapter of his next novel, The Android’s Dream, which as promised opens with a chapter long fart joke. It starts with “Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident”, and then it gets really funny. I’m not going to say much more about the chapter because readers should get the chance to enjoy it themselves. I can’t really say much about the novel either, though based on one chapter I’ve seen it does move away from the whole Heinlein scenario. I do believe John’s comment that The Android’s Dream may well be “almost entirely message-free; if a science fiction novel could be described as a “popcorn book” … this would be that book.” It sounds like fun and I’m looking forward to seeing the entire book when it’s ready.