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Mike

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Mike is Currently Reading

Mike is currently reading

Travel by Bullet (The Dispatcher, #3)

by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, mystery, science-fiction

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9 hours, 55 min ago

Mike is currently reading

Murder by Other Means (The Dispatcher #2)

by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, mystery, science-fiction

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Aug 02, 2026 07:10PM

Mike is currently reading

The Dispatcher (The Dispatcher, #1)

by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: science-fiction, audio-book, reviewed, novella, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in November 2016

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Mike said: " This was a really fun, quick listen (since it is an audio book), pretty much what I have come to expect from Scalzi but with the added bonus of Spock (Zacharay Quinto) reading it to me.

This book very much reminded me of Legion by Brandon Sanderson. B This was a really fun, quick listen (since it is an audio book), pretty much what I have come to expect from Scalzi but with the added bonus of Spock (Zacharay Quinto) reading it to me.

This book very much reminded me of Legion by Brandon Sanderson. Both novellas drop the reader into a world that is very much like ours, but with one difference. In Legion it is a man who can conjure (but not dismiss) hallucinations that are extremely knowledgeable in a given subject area. In this one people, save for a small percentage, cannot be murdered. They simply reappear in their homes, naked, after they are killed. The reader is not there at the beginning of these happenings, but several years after they have started, after the world has somewhat gotten used to them. The narrators of both are outsiders due to their circumstances and provide a unique perspective on the problem at hand. They are by no means perfect, but are interesting characters in their own way.

What I have always liked best about science fiction (though this could arguably be fantasy however the impact is the same) was how good authors can take one or two changes to society and extrapolate its affects on society down to the banal such as insurance, operating room politics, and mob hits. This book is no exception and I delighted in the creative ways Scalzi tweaked our modern society to adjust for the change in his world. It was really neat and I we can get more stories in their universe going forward. It is marked by Scalzi's trademarked sarcastic wit, but was a bit lighter on the humor than most of his other works, not that it detracted from the story at all.

The mystery itself was both neat and tragic. I will say it isn't too intricate of a mystery, since I was able to guess it well ahead of the reveal, but it was well constructed and populated with lots of interesting characters. I especially liked the "mob family trying to got legit" characters and the cop that drags the protagonist into the mystery. If you have a few hours to kill this is a great option for temporal assassination. ...more "

Nov 28, 2016 10:32AM · see review

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Mike’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

1 note & 13 highlights

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked ...more

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Mike’s Quotes

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

tags: truth

17450 likes

“We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foriegn people. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself.”
― al-Kindi Muammad ibn Ysuf

15 likes

“While there's life, there's hope.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: hope, life

354 likes

“The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark. It represents the nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the most zealous believer: behind all of your pretty songs and stained glass, this is what you really are. Shambling meat. Our true fear of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them. Our fear is that we are already zombies.”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

tags: horror, zombie

100 likes

“...good deeds can be shortly stated but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

19 likes

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