The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

[Dan]

The Dispatcher is a 2016 novella by John Scalzi. It was originally published as an audiobook from Audible, read by Zachary Quinto. Most everyone knows Quinto from his portrayal of Spock in the recent J. J. Abrams films in the Star Trek franchise. However, I liked him since he played such an interesting villain in the Heroes TV series.

Until recently I had not heard of this particular Scalzi novella. And although I liked Scalzi's Old Man's War, I didn't care for his Redshirts at all. His finding it necessary to attribute every line of dialog in that book convinced me Scalzi couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. However, I'm ready to give him a third try with what for me will be the tiebreaker, this novella.

If you're curious to give this a try along with the group, you need to know two things:
1) This is the first entry in a series of stories. The Dispatcher was followed in 2020 by Murder by Other Means and in 2022 by Travel by Bullet. Like the original, the sequels follow Dispatcher Tony Valdez and were initially released exclusively on Audible, both still narrated by Zachary Quinto.
2) Wikipedia provides the following synopsis: "In the wake of an unexplained phenomenon worldwide — when people are deliberately killed, they almost always disappear from their site of death and reappear, reset to several hours earlier, in a safe place — the profession of "Dispatcher" evolves. Dispatchers euthanize mortally-injured people before their natural deaths, enabling them to reset. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher recruited by the police to assist in investigating the disappearance of another Dispatcher."

Join us May 1 for the fun, won't you?

[Dan]

I just checked, and if you want a print copy of this, it is expensive! There is no paperback version. Hardback is $21 and up in the used book market, and over $100 new. That's for a 130-page book! Yeah. I'll be going eBook here for $5.99. Audio is pretty reasonable too. The audio version was out more than six months before even an e-text version became available.

[Dan]

About a quarter of the way into this now and I am surprised how strong the material is, and how easy it is to read. There is a lot of dialogue for a science fiction story.

Set in a near future, hospital emergency rooms now have what is called a "dispatcher." if the surgery is going bad and a person is about to die, in comes the dispatcher to send the patient somewhere else so that the patient gets out of the situation and lives somehow. It's pretty strange stuff.

Emergency room doctors don't seem to like these dispatchers. But I don't get it. Would they rather be pronouncing patients dead?

In comes the twist. A dispatcher has been murdered. Who did it?

[Dan]

I have just finished my reading of The Dispatcher. It is the only reading this month to exceed three stars from me. Here is my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Recommended for those with flexible notions of what science fiction may consist.