What Led to Reading Starter Villain
Earlier this year I’d recently had my first exposure to John Scalzi’s science fiction writing. His name is regularly echoed in various science fiction forum threads, hence when I spotted his name on the spine of a paperback, sitting on the shelf of my city library’s tiny science fiction and fantasy section, I decided to give the book a chance.
My starting point was The Collapsing Empire (2018), which I read in short order followed by The Consuming Fire (2018) and The Last Emperox (2020), which together comprise his Interdependency Sequence trilogy. That series sits toward the space opera end of the science fiction pool — not my usual fare — nonetheless I enjoyed it. More than the new flavour of dystopian universe he imagined, the experience of deft dialogue, consistent pace, seamless plot, and curiously prescient themes left me wanting to discover what his other books were like.
My desire was met with a copy of The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) at my local library and in the process I noted Starter Villain (2023) listed in the library’s catalogue, so I placed a hold.
On a fresh fall day very recently the library notification hit my inbox, so I went to pick up that copy of Starter Villain. I’d had my hold on it since the summer, before the library had a single copy, with only the catalogue announcing that it was forthcoming. So I’d completely forgotten that about the hold; it was a surprise to see the book had only been released that same week. Such an early spot in the queue was a first for me and it was dumb luck; there are 15 in line to follow! Again: This is unusual for me, as in contrast to habit of reading preprints of scientific papers, for fiction I gravitate toward books which have achieved “classic” status as they are, loosely speaking, guaranteed to not waste my time. All this is my long way of saying, I did not read Starter Villain because it was on a bestseller list.
But when I did read it, I finished it in two days. Again, unusual for me. I’d enjoyed it that much, I could hardly put it down. And not just because of the cats. But well, perhaps a little bit because of the cats.
Having entered into reading the book blindfolded, I’d rather not tell too much. Good surprises and unexpected twists are a hallmark of Scalzi’s writing in my small sample (N=5). So I’ll leave those out. And I’m not here to offer a synopsis. (Why are so many online book “reviews” really a synopsis?) Rather I’m here to relate what I thought was enjoyable and intriguing about the book — why I would tell myself it’s something worth reading — as well one aspect which for me detracts from the story.
Abundance of Humour
Starter Villain is permeated with humour which I can appreciate: not a light sprinkling, but rather mixed through the whole like yeast, pervasive and present at both from the smallest scale to the largest. Again, I’ll limit the examples to avoid spoilers.
First, within the dialogue, the characters often speak with wit and dropping references to the real world and occasionally to the author himself. One early example contemplating the main character’s empathy toward cats:
“You seem perfectly willing to take in a stray regardless.”
“It’s not the kitten’s fault it’s a stray. And anyway it came up to me, asking for help.”
“It knew a sucker when it saw one,” Morrison said, smiling.
“Probably,” I said. “Maybe I’m just better with cats than people, and cats seem to know that.”
“That’s the toxoplasmosis talking.”
“I’m sure it is.” I waved at the fridge. “Can I get you a drink?”
Second, many of the situations offer re-interpretations or transpositions of modern phenomena into the world of villains. How would a networking event or shark tank with angel investors venture capitalists change if it was run by villains? Not much, as it turns out. Lots of nepotism, horrible ideas, ritualistic abasement, and posturing.
Third, there is the way in which classic tropes of science fiction get analyzed, critiqued, and reimagined, all with humour.
Tropes Turned Upside-Down
That reimagining is a major source of my unexpected delight in Starter Villain: the way in which classic tropes are turned upside down with regularity and satiric precision. Scalzi offers a means to interrogate why these tropes exist as we know them, often with humorous results. It opens one up to reconsidering supervillain tropes beyond those directly touched upon and to laughing at some which we have grown up with in books, movies, cartoons, and comic books.
Knee-deep into the story, we are offered a reintroduction to the classic “secret lair” of a supervillain: the volcanic island lair. For starters, it isn’t really secret. Of course every government on earth knows the location of the volcanic island lair! There are, after all, only “about 1,350 potentially active volcanoes worldwide” according to the USGS. And the real benefit isn’t secrecy or lava pits; it’s the geothermal power which offers energy self-sufficiency. And lava pits themselves aren’t as useful as we’ve been led to expect. In reality, the volcanic lair holds secrets, as more of a tech incubator for advanced R&D and blue sky research with the décor of a hotel conference room.
Starter Villain also asks just what makes a supervillain. Typically we’re told that villains evil, bent on global domination or destruction. But are villains really evil? How do they conceptualize their role? Or prioritize their endeavours? Could it be that villains are really just they entrepreneurs looking to create extract value from new markets with disruptive innovation? (“Systems exploiters? Loophole miners? Chaos arbitrageurs?") What about rent-seeking venture capitalists? Or maybe villains could be just another government contractor. After reading the book, I’d be inclined toward villains being those with a high degree of ruthless pursuit of their own goals, whatever the enterprise, in turn creating “negative outcomes for the people
whose systems and processes [they] disrupt”. Again, as with secret lairs, Scalzi offers a satirical analysis of the parallels between venture capital and supervillainry.
Returning to the supervillain trope, Starter Villain also asks a set of intersecting questions: What’s up with the supervillain fondness for cats? and What are the real risks and pitfalls of animal servants genetically modified for intelligence? Does life imitate art, or is it a desire to fit in? How would genetically engineered, intelligent creatures capable of expressing themselves to humans behave? What would they say and do — especially if given access to the internet? What YouTube videos would they watch? And do they receive fair remuneration for their service? Are they permitted to bargain… collectively?
Lastly, the story itself is built around the trope of the unlikely hero or, rather, the unlikely villain in this case; a small turning of the trope. It’s a story that we all know: A completely normal guy, lacking proper preparation, who thrown into extraordinary circumstances and yet comes out victorious and transformed. It’s a core element of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. Charlie Fitzer is that average down-on-his-luck guy, down on his luck, and propelled into a world of secrecy, power, technology, and adventure he’d never imagined. And yet while remaining true to the pattern, Scalzi manages to further twist this template.
The Reality of Struggle
There’s a natural affinity for the downtrodden in me. Having known and experienced some of that myself. Though I would bet that most folks appreciate a good underdog story.
Charlie Fitzer, the main character who tells the story, is a down-on-his-luck guy, slowly picking up his life after his pillars of support came crashing down, and scratching by with substitute teaching jobs. Scalzi obviously draws from his own experience as an un- and under-employed writer, yet Charlies' situation doesn’t feel autobiographical. Nonetheless, the reader is presented with a true-to-reality underdog at the centre of the book. That kernel of trueness encapsulated by Charlie’s background and nature contributes to that sense of immersion which allows one to get lost in an otherwise unreal story:
I’d been scouring the online job sites, applying for writing jobs in Chicago and the suburbs. Substitute teaching wasn’t what you’d call a passion for me. It was a job that gave me a little bit of money while I cared for my dad when he was sick. When my dad had passed on and I didn’t need to be nearby to look after him, I’d tried getting into any job that would let me use my writing skills.
The problem was, journalism was hanging on by its fingernails—even the trade journals—and the other jobs that need writing were largely split into three categories: jobs I was told I was overqualified for, jobs I was told I didn’t have the skill set for, and jobs that paid eleven dollars an hour ghostwriting social media posts for would-be influencers and/or OnlyFans models.
And look, I wasn’t too proud to take the last of these. But at thirty two, it’s possible I might be too old for those gigs, a fact that filled me with an almost existential horror. […]
There is a similar archetype with the main character in The Kaiju Preservation Society; it’s something of a specialty of Scalzi, I suspect. He writes vivid portraits of the experience of being down on your luck and struggling economically: down to the last twenty dollars in your bank account, and just scraping by in life. Those descriptions mark key, yet often overlooked details of the day-to-day effect of poverty and how it systematically shapes a person’s outlook and experience.
That talent for illustrating the effect and nature of poverty was my first encounter with Scalzi as a writer and one of the reasons why I’d had him on my list of authors to try. In 2005 he posted “Being Poor” on his Whatever blog, in response to the incomprehension of onlookers witnessing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and how its effects were magnified by the widespread poverty in Louisiana, one of the poorest US states. Being Poor, although not intended as poetry, has a poetic quality and remains the most true and descriptive of the experience of “first world” poverty I have ever read.
Disembodied Characters
Scalzi’s writing style leans heavily into dialogue. Starter Villain almost reads a like a screenplay half-informed by a “show, don’t tell” philosophy. Consequently, there’s a strange stylistic duality in how Scalzi represents human characters here. His words offer a vivid overview of the impression of characters and their personality and yet simultaneously elides over any aspect of an individual’s physical appearance. Mathilde Morrison’s introduction was one such example that leaves one without a sense of what the character looks like:
As I came up to my house I noticed a car on the street in front of it: a black Mercedes S-Class. Its wheelbase was stretched out slightly in the way that let you know that whoever owned it didn’t drive it; they had people for that. I knew this sort of car from my journalism days in the business section. It was a CEO taxi. A smug wagon. […]
But as it turns out, the car was in front of my house for a reason. On my porch, sitting in the swing […] was a woman.
She was about my age, and even from the distance of the small walkway to my porch I could tell she was dressed in the sort of business couture that suggested she did not spend her time tooling around in, say, a nearly broken-down 2003 Nissan Maxima. She was using her foot to lightly kick the swing into motion. She sat on that swing like she owned it, and the house, and possibly most of the street.
Scalzi illustrates the character’s status and attitude through her relationship to accoutrements and the local environment. But I haven’t a clue what Mathilde Morrison looks like; it’s like she’s a ghostly presence. For me that ghostly presence is a point of de-immersion in the story; the way in which characters are, in most instances, extracted from any kind of physical description. I can’t recall any of the characters having a physical description, perhaps apart from the cats (“a small orange-and-white kitten”) although he isn’t doing them much of a service either. As a reader, it leaves the characters disembodied and generic. It’s almost a gnostic approach: The physical or material nature is evil and flawed and to be avoided, whereas the soul of a character exists fully apart from any material descriptor and is the good and essential aspect.
As I’ve only read 5 books written by Scalzi, all since 2017, I can’t offer a full analysis, nor can I say if it’s consistent. And there could be a myriad of reasons for the omission. To start, he is skilled as a writer of dialogue and you ought play to your own strengths. It also might be al strategy to avoid criticism as a male author for the sake of offering descriptions, which peaked in early 2018. Then again, sensitivity readers seem to be fashionably contentious. Or it could just be intentionally leaving things wide open for a future casting director. (It would be a fun movie!)
There are faint nods, largely in the names of characters, hinting at what a ethnic population a character might come from, e.g. Astrud Livgren; Eve Yang; Joakim Petersson; Anton Dobrev; Kim Ji-Jong. It seems very obviously multicultural (even if it’s just a set of names which seems destined to offer false impressions)… and yet bland. But, that heavily curated multicultural representation leads to a certain kind of soullessness that Scalzi himself has pointed to:
A picture of Ernst Stavro Blofeld appeared on the screen, complete with white Persian cat. “When you think of what a villain is, you probably think of this,” Eve Yang said. She was head of Allegheny’s HR department on Saint Genevieve, and she was, apparently, in charge of my orientation session. […]
Another picture popped up, a stock photo of young, attractive and multicultural people in suits. “But in fact, they look like this,” Yang said.
I nodded. “Soulless corporate automatons,” I said.
Yang pursed her lips.
“I don’t think that’s what she was going for,” Morrison said. […]
“My mistake,” I said. “Investment bankers.”
Purrsuaded?
Starter Villian makes for a delightful read overall. And despite the above overview of positive aspects of the story, and I have barely scratched on the most important aspect: genetically engineered feline companions. But you can learn about them in reading the story, rather than from me. To quote the author, “One can never have too many cats in literature”†, and Starter Villain is a welcome addition to that cozy corner of the library.
†N.B. The all caps voice is curiously reminiscent of a certain Donut, yet the author disclaims any influence. (Mongo is appalled!)