A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth’s government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep (“The Android’s Dream”), used in the alien race’s coronation ceremony.

To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire, who with the help of Brian Javna, a childhood friend turned artificial intelligence, scours the earth looking for the rare creature. And they find it, in the unknowing form of Robin Baker, pet store owner, whose genes contain traces of the sheep DNA. But there are others with plans for the sheep as well: Mercenaries employed by the military. Adherents of a secret religion based on the writings of a 21st century science-fiction author. And alien races, eager to start a revolution on their home world and a war on Earth.

To keep our planet from being enslaved, Harry will have to pull off the greatest diplomatic coup in history, a grand gambit that will take him from the halls of power to the lava-strewn battlefields of alien worlds. There’s only one chance to get it right, to save the life of Robin Baker – and to protect the future of humanity.

“In politics as in high school, who you are is to a large extent defined by who you sit with at lunch, and there was no doubt about it, the Earth was sitting at the loser table. It was not, Bob Pope thought, the true destiny of the Earth in our universe to be counted among the diplomatic equivalent of the acne-ridden and the furtively masturbating.”

I really liked this book. From the AI created based on someone’s friend that can hack into people’s databases, to the legalities of proving that a human – sheep hybrid is not livestock but its own person in order to prevent a diplomatic incident, to stories about how science is modelling the world around us. In order to “win” this legal battle, the hero must find a way to elect the human-sheep hybrid into the highest position of power, as head of the Church of Lamb.

“Deception, as practically manifested, succeeds because of two things. First, the object of deception is convincingly deceptive in its design; i.e., it looks/feels/acts like the real thing. Second, and equally important, the subject of deception must be predisposed to believing that the object of deception is indeed the real thing. These two criteria work in an inverse relationship with each other; a sufficiently deceptive object can convince a skeptical subject, while a subject who sincerely wants to believe will be able to overlook even gross flaws in the object onto which he or she confers belief.”

The Church of the Evolved Lamb was notable in the history of religions both major and arcane in that it was the first and only religion that fully acknowledged that its founding was a total scam.

John Scalzi should write for Hollywood : they are sorely in need of good plots and good jokes around there and “The Android’s Dream” is a great example of action-comedy that I would like to see on screen, preferably directed by Luc Besson. In between shooting it out with the bad guys and making snappy repartees, Scalzi introduces a colourful and satirical picture of the future with interesting technological improvements( fart macine included ) and not so veiled digs at Scientology, militarism, lawyers, online privacy and rival baseball fans. I included the last remark as an unintentional joke on the last season’s (2016) dramatic finale:

The ‘Senators’ have never been good. They’re the second most pathetic team in the history of baseball and would be the first, if it weren’t for the fact that they go out of business every couple of decades and give the ‘Cubs’ time to lengthen their lead.

While I find potty jokes and American-centric future societies slightly unsavoury, I do hope the author will write more humorous alien stuff. I haven’t read “Redshirts” yet, since I am not really/yet a trekkie, but I might give it a chance seeing how incredibly funny some of Scalzi’s oddball alien portraits are.