A Matter For Men (The War Against the Chtorr, Book 1)

Aengus reviewed A Matter For Men (The War Against the Chtorr, Book 1) by David Gerrold

A Matter For Uncertain Teenagers?

2 stars

Intriguing invasion story that could be mistaken for commentary on our current covid crisis - particularly the depiction of deniers - interspersed with libertarian politics (possibly reminiscent of Heinlein) which somehow simultaneously applauds "freedom" and military dictatorships. There are lots of overt lectures on these topics, which is a but clumsy. Might they be useful just to keep and analyse for weaknesses? Hmm, maybe. Confused/confusing stance on gender politics, and several frankly unbelievable relationships. About half way through, starting to skip. Perhaps the author was trying to avoid the "hard sf" label, but really it's the best part of the story. I feel the "mysteries" are likely to turn out to be a bit obvious. ...later The mysteries, in fact, are not resolved. At the end, this is really only half a book. Or less. The protagonist oscillates between careless heroism and crying sessions with a psychiatrist - and others. …

Intriguing invasion story that could be mistaken for commentary on our current covid crisis - particularly the depiction of deniers - interspersed with libertarian politics (possibly reminiscent of Heinlein) which somehow simultaneously applauds "freedom" and military dictatorships. There are lots of overt lectures on these topics, which is a but clumsy. Might they be useful just to keep and analyse for weaknesses? Hmm, maybe. Confused/confusing stance on gender politics, and several frankly unbelievable relationships. About half way through, starting to skip. Perhaps the author was trying to avoid the "hard sf" label, but really it's the best part of the story. I feel the "mysteries" are likely to turn out to be a bit obvious. ...later The mysteries, in fact, are not resolved. At the end, this is really only half a book. Or less. The protagonist oscillates between careless heroism and crying sessions with a psychiatrist - and others. At the end of the book a couple of threads are mercilessly hacked off and others left dangling to carry over into volume 2. One character suddenly masters a different flavour of sf trope (previously not mentioned in the story and, well, quite unbelievable) and wanders off, perhaps to return as a Deus Ex Machina later. Can I be bothered to follow what remains? I think it might be a waste of my time.

Kibrika reviewed A Matter For Men (The War Against the Chtorr, Book 1) by David Gerrold

Review of 'A Matter For Men (The War Against the Chtorr, Book 1)' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

The problem with old books is that the cool ideas they have have become common knowledge and the writing is pretty horrible. No to mention the weird treatment of gays. And there's the demagoguery. Well, I kind of like the demagoguery, a bit. But it feels weird in the age of "show, don't tell" being the ubiquitous advice for writers listening to a book the coolest bits of which are a conference (where people tell you about what's going on around the world) and some lectures; even the characters past is told to us when he goes to a psychiatrist. Oh, and the main character is stupid and annoyingly aggressive. Still, with all that I can see how this could be a really cool book.