Agent to the Stars
by John Scalzi · first published 2005
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Light, funny, fast-moving science fiction that reads as smart and accessible, often compared to Heinlein at his best; a good quick read for fans of Scalzi or readers wanting something breezy.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all
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…accessible, and reminiscent of Heinlein at his prime, minus the weird incest fetish. Redshirts, a Star Trek parody, rivals Galaxy Quest and only falls short because Galaxy Quest is so goddamn brilliant. Agent to the Stars is less appreciated, but in my opinion his finest novel, rising way above its goofy premise by taking it seriously, exploring the consequences and treating the characters with empathy and respect. Also…
on “Ask HN: I only read tech/business books – recommend me some fiction?” ↗…didn't bother me even once. Scalzi then turned that book into a series, all very well worth reading (except Sagan's Diary - give that a miss). After his Old Man's War series I read Redshirts (so and so), Agent to the Stars (good read) and now I'm reading Fuzzy Nation, which is shaping up nicely. In the afterword to Agent to the Stars Scalzi actually recommends other scifi books, and per his recommendation I tried out Stranger…
on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?” ↗I'd highly recommend any Scalzi book. The Old Man's War trilogy is great, but if you're after something more light-hearted then The Android's Dream or Agent to the Stars are also great.
on “Ask HN: Great book that you read recently?” ↗He was blogging for years before getting his fiction in print. IIRC, his first novel (Agent to the Stars) was published on his blog. He's a great writer, yeah. :)
on “John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)” ↗…absolutely chock full of wheel spinning and padding. You can pick up something like Starter Villain and read it in an afternoon and thoroughly enjoy it. Other novels to check out include Androids Dream, Agent to the Stars, Redshirts, and Kaiju Preservation Society.
on “Ági Szabados Does Not Need to Apologize to Me” ↗> I've read several books by authors that started out by self publishing on Amazon. People like Andy Weir, Hugh Howey, Ernest Cline, John Scalzi, and indeed Robert Dugoni. Scalzi's first novel was Agent to the Stars (1997), which was indeed self-published but via his own website, not Amazon. His breakout novel was Old Man's War (2005) which was published traditionally by Tor.
on “Amazon's Plan to Conquer the World of Publishing” ↗Incidentally, Scalzi also had that problem. He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a…
on “To write better, develop a habit of writing” ↗I'd suggest giving the back story to Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi a glance. http://www.scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and…
on “Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts” ↗The first one was very much written in an homage to Starship Troopers and it was an early work of his. His very first one was Agent to the Stars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_to_the_Stars#Publication... - available online at https://scalzi.com/agent/ ) which was a book that he didn't want to write in that he wanted to make sure he could…
on “2026 Hugo Awards” ↗Did it work financially for him? He has quite a few books out, and they're OK, but they're not best-sellers. I've read more than half of them. His first book, "Agent to the Stars", may have been his best work. In that genre, "First Contract" (Greg Costikyan, 2001) is better.
on “A moment of financial clarification (2013)” ↗