レビュー

• わかりやすくて面白い

  この作者の他の作品同様、平易な英語で書かれておりわかりやすい。また話の設定にも日本へのリスペクトが溢れており、日本人としてはなんだかむず痒いものの面白い。ストーリーの構造としてはハリウッドのSF映画にありがちなパニックシチュエーションと善悪二元論を組み合わせたものでさほど新規性は無いものの、キャラクターの愉快さが物語の魅力となっている。

• 日本の怪獣映画へのオマージュと言える娯楽的SF

  Uber Eatsのような食事デリバリーアプリの会社に勤務していたJamieは、Covid-19の感染拡大が話題になり始めていた2020年初頭、CEOに営業戦略を盗まれた挙げ句にデリバリー係に降格されてしまう。自宅待機令が出たニューヨークで食事のデリバリーをしている時に昔の知り合いに遭遇し、そこで別の仕事を紹介される。彼が働く「動物の権利擁護の団体」の現地訪問のチームで欠員が出たので、それを埋める必要があるというのだ。専門家集団だが、Jamieの仕事は「重いものを持ち上げる」というものなので、専門知識は不要だという。 極秘の団体が扱うその「動物」とは「怪獣」だった。しかも、人々が住んでいるこの地球ではなく、異次元の地球に住んでいる巨大な怪獣たちだ。その地球には人間は存在しておらず、人間が住む地球よりもあるかに気温が高い。問題は、人間が住む地球と異次元の地球との間をつなぐ門戸が開いていることだ。それが悪用されるだけでなく、それによって人間が住む地球に破壊的な影響が与えられることだ。Jamieは、現地訪問チームの自分たちが騙されて利用されていることに気づいてくる……。 日本の怪獣映画は、世界中にカルト的なファンを作ってきた。ベテランSF作家のJohn Scalziの新作は、それを象徴するようなSFだ。 Scalziは本当は別のSFを書く契約を出版社と交わしていたが、Covid-19のパンデミックが始まって自身が感染し、執筆のスランプに陥ってしまったらしい。締め切り直前にこの本の案を思いつき、出版社にそれを連絡して短期間に書き上げたという。 表紙から連想できる「ジュラシックパーク」やNeal Stephensonのサイバーパンク的なSF小説「Snow Crash」などポップカルチャーのパロディやジョークが散りばめられていて、シリアスなSFではなく、軽くドタバタ的な冒険を楽しむ純粋な娯楽小説だ。John Scalziの作品をいくつか読んだ人なら、「Scalziらしい！」と思うことだろう。 KPS(The Kaiju Preservation Society)基地の名前はTanaka, Hondaなど怪獣映画のプロデューサーや監督へのオマージュである。新型コロナでスランプに陥った作者を救ったのが日本の怪獣映画だとしたら、やはりそれはすごい貢献だと思ったのだった。

• Mein erstes Kindle von John Scalzi. Es wurde mir empfohlen, nachdem ich Tim Holt gelesen hatte. Während ich bei letzterem öfter mal ein Wort nachschlagen muss, lief das hier fast ohne. Die Handlung liegt, wie im Klappentext beschrieben, zwischen Jurassic Parc und Parks and Recreation, der Titel sagt auch alles und Probleme gibts durch böse, macht- und geldgeile Menschen, also einfach gestrickt. Schön ist die leichte Art zu schreiben, immer pointiert in den Dialogen, sympathische Menschen, das richtige Maß Nerds. Die sind hier nicht Marke Unbeholfen, sondern sie erklären dem Leser die Fantasiewelt in die wir uns begeben und sind echte Helden. Wir bekommen gigantische Monster, mittelgroße Monster, kleinere Monster - was das Herz für gute Unterhaltung begehrt - und jede Menge Coolness und Catastrophe im Lauf der Handlung. Die wird keine Sekunde langweilig, läuft wie geschmiert, hat viele einzelne und Running Gags und keine unnötigen Szenen oder langatmige Beschreibungen. Aber genug davon, um sich ganz ins Szenario reinzufinden. Besonderen Tiefgang, Hochliteratur, Moral -naja, Ökologie, Tier- und Umweltschutz natürlich- gibts nicht, aber sehr gute Unterhaltung, ein Pageturner, wie er im …- äh, genau. Ungewöhnlich für mich zuzuhören war das sehr amerikanisch gelesene Audible-Hörbuch dazu. Offensichtlich lese und höre ich bis jetzt eher britische oder irische Autoren. Aber auch das konnte ich ganz gut verstehen. Ich liebe die Funktion, bei Büchern, die mich packen einfach weiterzuhören, wenn ich kochen oder ka**en oder Kraftfahrzeuge führen muss, und weder Hand noch Blick frei habe - und dann später an der gleichen Stelle weiterzulesen. Wer das noch nicht kennt, sollte es mal ausprobieren. Tip: Oft, nicht immer, hier aber schon, gibts das Audible-Hörbuch sehr ermäßigt, wenn man das Kindle E-Book gekauft hat. Viel Spaß

• All action flicks thrown into one. A page-turner for sure.

• This is just a pure delight to read. Very unique and intriguing premise, wonderful, rich characters and a story that unfolds so artfully that it's hard to put down. Not to say the topic is light- there's plenty of action and peril- but there's something wholesome and uplifting in the friendships and goals of our scientific team! Definitely an enjoyable read!

• I'd only ever read 'Redshirts' by Scalzi before, so was a little unsure what I was walking into with this book, but the brilliantly written character exchanges at the start of the book lured me in - and I'm immensely glad they did. The Kaiju Preservation Society is - appropriately - enormous amounts of fun. When Jamie is convinced he's about to hit the big time as part of a start-up business, he finds himself laid off and engaged in a humiliating spiral of food delivery wage-slave work and impending homelessness as the COVID lockdown closes in and his options shrink. A welcome job offer saves his bacon and he finds himself part of a little-known organisation with one of the most dangerous jobs on - or off - the planet; helping save the massive monsters known as kaiju from extinction. But the threats to the team are many, and come from lethal wildlife, funding challenges, and human nature - and soon the team have bigger problems on their plate than just avoiding being stomped on. I won't say anything at all about the plot apart from that. For me, the biggest joy of the book came from the constant and delightful revelations about the world, the beasts, the practicalities of life and the challenges faced by the team, and fore-knowledge of any of the elements would've dampened the terrific combination of delight, hilarity and adrenaline; emotions which very often all come together in Scalzi's sensationally written scenes. The characters are terrific. Jamie isn't an action hero - he's a very normal person who "lifts things" as a job and has all the normal and very endearing qualities you expect from normal people, including geekiness, great comedy timing, a healthy sense of self-preservation, and a natural dislike of cruelty and injustice. He's fair. He cares about other people. He's happy to admit he's not as bright as his team-mates. They, in turn, are great. We get a mix of characters who, for all their quirks, temper issues, likes and dislikes, are all people you'd love to spend time with. They're immensely clever, quick-witted, often crude, and there are lots of 'meta' references to films, books and TV shows, which will feel familiar to fans of the author's terrific 'Redshirts'. There's a brilliant and lovably representative mixture of characters including multiple nationalities, different sexualities, and a member of the team who may or may not be trans, based on their chosen pronoun. It's hard to be certain since all of these facts are refreshingly presented as just aspects of who people are, in a style that says "this is society folks. These are people. You're either grown up enough to accept them as they are and get on board with it and love the ride, or you're not." The characters are also thoroughly decent people who care about each other - they are after all basically an animal charity, albeit one that helps animals the size of skyscrapers... The kaiju are fascinating, tremendously described creations. The author's put a lot of time and effort in thinking out the contradictions and challenges of their existence in the natural world, and also what the problems and side-effects of their existence would be. They're made relatable and fascinating in ways that made me admire the apparent ease and fluency with which Scalzi did it (I'm sure there was actually a lot of sweating the details involved!) and there's something immensely heroic about how the human characters choose to go out of their way to protect these oblivious creatures despite vast personal inconvenience are danger. The tight-knit feeling of the team is a great advantage when danger begins to enter the frame - as it does several times during the novel - and Scalzi's great at leaning just far enough into the shock and distress of really high stakes to give them meaning and impact, while still managing to paint situations and faintly comical and absurd, even in the scenes that aren't meant to be funny. It's a highly impressive tightrope to walk such deft switches between pure comedy, madcap bizarre science, grief and shock, and then back to determined but comedically inept heroics. The writing skill on show here is sensational stuff. But even more brilliantly worked into the novel is the intense feeling of decency - of how even in the worst situations, good people don't have to be superheroes to make a difference and help each other - they just have to be kind and have a little faith in each other. It isn't slapped in your face as obviously as that - this isn't kids' TV or The Waltons - but it's there in the background as a subtle tone that supports the absurdity and hilarity, giving it a legitimacy that makes The Kaiju Preservation Society feel like a much more important book than the author's own self-deprecating analysis of it (in an afterword) as just 'fun'. Once again, Scalzi shows us that fun can be somehow delightful, side-splitting, brilliantly creative, adrenaline pumping and high-stakes, but also leave you feeling that there's still hope. There are people out there who care about the same things you do. They're flawed, messy, geeky and silly. They're just like you, and they're heroes. This is a book I adored, and it's already in my all time top-5, a few hours after finishing it. And Scalzi's gone straight into my very small list of 'must read everything he writes' authors. I will do one very tiny hint of the fun to come in the book: don't read the vaccinations scene if everybody else in the house is trying to sleep. I did. There was a lot of laughter, and it only got louder as the scene went on. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Get it.

• Pode parecer estranho usar a palavra do título desta avaliação para monstros de 150 metros de altura, mas o autor a merece pelo estilo direto e permeado de empatia. O leitor tem facilidade não apenas em suspender a descrença, como se identificar com os personagens e com as situações descritas. Scalzi merece todo nosso apreço.

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