The Shattering Peace, and aliens who have consciousness as an augmentation

For people looking to dip their toe in the sci-fi literary genre, John Scalzi is often a good place to start. A lot of sci-fi literature assumes certain knowledge from the reader (such as what “burning at two gees” means). Scalzi’s fiction tends to only assume what you might pick up watching sci-fi TV shows or movies. And his introduction of concepts is usually fairly approachable.

His writing style also helps. Scalzi seems to take Elmore Leonard’s writing rules to heart, avoiding long descriptions, lengthy interior monologues, or other things that bog down the pacing, overall leaving out the parts that “readers tend to skip”. To read Scalzi is to experience story at a snappy pace with minimal effort. He often tells a story in three hundred pages where many contemporary authors seem to need five hundred. With the humor he usually laces in, it makes him a bestselling author.

I can’t say I like everything about his writing. Keeping things approachable means he doesn’t always follow the full implications of the ideas he raise, his endings can feel unearned, and some of his more recent books have gotten a bit too silly for my tastes.

But The Shattering Peace is a return to the Old Man’s War universe, his initial breakout space opera series. The first book in the series channels the spirit of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but with the recruits being elderly and discovering their service involves having their minds transferred into new combat bodies. The implications of this get explored in the first few books of the series.

In the early books, the universe is portrayed as dog eat dog, with humanity having to hold its own against numerous alien species in unending competition for planets to colonize. As the series progresses (and I suspect as Scalzi’s own views evolve), we learn that things are not as they initially seem.

One thing I was happy to see acknowledged in this new book is that people would want the mind copying technology for civilian purposes, such as avoiding old age. Mind transfer happens in the military, apparently for decades, without having any apparent effects on the rest of the Colonial Union society, which has long felt dubious to me. The rationale presented is that most people didn’t know about it until recent changes, although with lots of ex-soldiers running around, and many others in government aware of the technology, that also seems dubious.

Anyway, by the beginning of this story, there’s been an uneasy peace agreement for several years, with a moratorium on new colonies by the stakeholders. However, in an effort to see if the various species can work together, a secret colony is established, called “Unity”, with a population of humans and several other species. When the colony disappears, Gretchen Trujillo finds herself volunteered for a mission to investigate. Before she leaves, she’s warned that the Consu, an advanced alien race, advanced far beyond everyone else, had been observed taking an interest in the solar system the colony was in.

She receives this warning from the Obin, who she has a special relationship with. The Obin are a species that were uplifted by the Consu. However, the Consu purposefully gave them intelligence without consciousness, apparently just as an experiment. Throughout their history, the Obin existed without consciousness. Then a Colonial Union scientist invented a wearable device that can provide a consciousness for them. Each of them can choose when to have their device on or off. Consciousness is a new thing for the Obin, and they are still learning how to cope with it, often turning it off when they need maximum alertness or productivity.

“Consciousness” here seems to imply a capacity for emotional feelings. With their device off, the Obin are portrayed as affectless, seemingly like philosophical vulcans, still able to think, communicate, and navigate their environment, but without emotions. Which means, by many definitions of consciousness, they still have a form of it with the device off, just without sentience in the classical sense. The Consu appear to have given them sapience without sentience. The reasons for this eventually become a plot point.

The Consu themselves are arrogant, with a philosophy that cherishes conflict as a virtue. To them, species can only approach “perfection” through violent conflict. They see the current peace between the various alien races as bad for the souls of those races. They live this philosophy, usually handicapping themselves in fights with other species to ensure a more equal contest, and engaging in ritualistic but violent conflict between their own factions.

All of which factor into the central conflict of this story.

As with the other Scalzi’s books, this one is entertaining. It’s a good adventure story. I enjoyed and recommend it.

That said, without getting into spoilers, I’m not wild about the ending. I found the resolution…unsatisfying. I might have been more onboard, but didn’t feel like the groundwork had been sufficiently laid, at least not enough for me. I wouldn’t avoid reading it for that reason since I still enjoyed the story, and you may well be fine with the ending.

Have you read it? Or any of the other Old Man’s War books? If so, what do you think about them? Or of the notion of “consciousness” Scalzi uses with the Obin?