Hugo Nominee Review: Starter Villain, by John Scalzi

Hugo Nominee Review: Starter Villain, by John Scalzi

by Rich Horton

Here is the sixth and last of my reviews of the 2024 Hugo nominees for Best Novel

I don't think John Scalzi needs any introduction. Suffice it to say he has won three Hugos, including one for Best Novel (Redshirts, in 2013), and been nominated many more times. He's a very popular writer, and deservedly so -- I've enjoyed those of his novels I've read quite a lot.

Starter Villain is in many ways of a type with his other novels. It's told in his usual rather snarky voice. It's fast-moving and fun. I'm happy I read it (listened to it, I should say, as narrated by Wil Wheaton.)

The narrator is Charlie Fitzer. He's a journalist who has lost his job due to the general troubles print journalism is experiencing, and is making do by substitute teaching. He is divorced, and had been living with his father for the past several years. But his father has died, and now he's living in his father's house, while his half-siblings pressure him to sell so they can get their chunk of the inheritance. His career plan is to buy the local pub, in Barrington, IL,* and keep it going, as he has many fond memories of it. He has a cat, and soon will get another. And now his uncle, Jake Baldwin, his mother's brother, has also died. He never really knew Jake, who had a falling out with Charlie's father when Charlie's mother died. But Jake was actually very rich, as the owner of a number of parking garages. Charlie's last contact with Jake was a wedding gift, in which Jake included a brief note that predicted to the month when Charlie's wife would leave  him.

So far -- so what? But then a mysterious woman shows up at Charlie's house. Mathilda Morrison had been Jake Baldwin's chief assistant, and she wants Charlie to stand up for Jake's funeral. Apparently no one else liked Jake, as evidenced by the extremely hostile audience at the funeral. And shortly thereafter, Charlie's house is blown up -- luckily while he (and his cats) are outside, though a Federal agent is inside -- which means that Charlie might be a suspect in a case of arson and murder. Fortunately, his cats lead him to a nearby house, and reveal that they are intelligent and can communicate via a special computer and keyboard. And Mathilda Morrison soon tells him that he has inherited Uncle Jake's entire fortune -- which turns out to comprise a great many businesses besides the parking garages.

Soon Charlie is at Uncle Jake's private island, which turns out to be something like a superhero lair, complete with satellite destroying weapons, intelligent dolphins that want to form a union, and a hidden storeroom containing treasures looted by the Nazis. Charlie learns that he is now a villain, in charge of Jake's array of companies, many of which are involved in secretly inventing disruptive technology. He also learns that there is an entire convocation of villains, engaged in similar enterprises, and that Jake was an enemy of that convocation ... and that he must soon visit them for their yearly convention at Lake Como.

Naturally, when a bunch of supervillains get together, there is a great deal of potential for violence, and backstabbing, and shady dealings. Charlie is thrown into this world, with his only help being Morrison and his cats. And so things go -- there are plenty of twists coming, lots of implausible events that are only partly explained by the final revelations, lots more snark, plus negotiations with the oppressed dolphins, etc. etc.

It's a fun novel to read -- Scalzi can do this sort of thing by reflex, it seems. But it's really pretty insubstantial. None of it makes much sense. The science is implausible (as you expect from supervillain stories.) The depictions of evil corporations and of the dolphins' labor-organizing efforts are profoundly unconvincing. (The Hugo Book Club does a better job than me in criticizing this here.) Charlie himself is kind of a thin character, and his eventual happy ending is very predictable and also not terribly convincing. It's decent light entertainment -- it's worth reading -- but in my book it's not worthy of a Hugo, nor even, really, a nomination.

*The novel depicts Barrington as a sort of typical modest suburb -- and I'm not saying the neighborhoods described don't exist. But I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and my internal image of Barrington (where Gene Wolfe lived, by the way) is of a quite affluent suburb, even more so than my hometown of Naperville. (And a recent visit to the environs of Barrington did not contradict that image!) This isn't a complaint, mind you -- I dare say that the parts of Barrington Scalzi describes are real.