“Space, man. And spacemen. And spacewomen. Astronauts, I guess. Are they still astronauts if they’re going out to space to kill stuff? Seems like the difference between being a “sailor” and a “Navy SEAL.” But I’ve almost exhausted my military knowledge outside of the Pacific theater of WWII, so I’ll stop. Yes, I’ve entered the life phase critical to every aging man: a fascination with some specific portion of WWII. Like a first pimple and losing your hair, it’s a developmental phase. They should have some kind of bar mitzvah for a guy when he checks out more than one book at a time about WWII “frog men.”
This is a good one. If you like shit like The Martian or Interstellar, maybe some Starship Troopers, you’ll like this shit, too. Sorry to say “shit” so much. I don’t mean it’s shitty, I mean it’s “stuff.” But I like the word “shit” more than “stuff.”
I had a history teacher who was obsessed with the word “stuff.” Maybe because history is mostly about the quest for stuff. And people were always “doing stuff.”
Funny story about this history teacher: At my high school, they used to do a feature in the school paper called something like “junkyard treasures.” These were profiles of the crappiest cars in the lot and the students who drove them. My brother and I shared a car that was profiled in Junkyard Treasures, and I can say I considered it an honor.
This teacher’s car was ALSO profiled in Junkyard Treasures, the best part being a hole in the floor near one of the back seats. If you sat in the back, you could sort of just watch the road go by. This can’t possibly be safe, but I rode home from high school once in a Volkswagen Beetle that had something wrong with the gas tank, and gasoline soaked into the carpet somewhere. The fumes were thick, even with the windows down.
You were kind of part of a club if you had a shitty car.
Anyway, one day my brother drove us to school, and he left the headlights on all day. We got a few blocks from school before the car died at a stoplight. This teacher, the one with the hole in the floor, drove up in his car, and he asked if we needed help. We already had someone coming, and I said something like, “Can I even ride in your car? I don’t want to fall through the floor?” And he said, “At least mine runs!” and laughed when he drove off.
It might’ve been insulting to say what I said to that teacher, so if you’re out there, Mr. Shaw, I just want to apologize, and if it makes you feel better, I’m rocking a 20 year-old car these days. Most of the windows don’t work. The door handles break frequently. The other day the A/C button just FLEW off.
What I like about Max Barry’s last couple books is that he has an engineer’s understanding of machines and AI, and he has a poetic way of putting you in the shoes of characters. I was trying to think of a transition from personal story back to the book, but fuck it, who cares? It’s a book review, not a rollercoaster. We can just completely change directions, your neck is still intact. “