Starter Villain

What makes it funny?

The joke starts with a mismatch: a man struggling to get his ordinary life together suddenly occupies the sort of headquarters a movie hero would storm. The cats know more than he does, and the dolphins have workplace grievances. Charlie’s confusion gives the reader a way into a world whose extravagant menace keeps running into mundane management problems.

The comedy at work

Scalzi treats villainy as an industry with customers, services and operating costs. Even a volcano lair has a practical explanation: access to power. That gives the familiar spy-movie props a second life as business satire. The people who appear to control everything can look much less impressive once their enterprise is viewed from the inside. The target is the authority and insulation that enormous wealth buys.

Try this if…

Try this if the appeal of a supervillain story is finding out how the organization works, who does the work, and how ridiculous the person at the top might be. The corporate angle gives the absurd machinery a recognizable target. Scalzi explicitly intended a mostly light comic novel, while keeping the consequences of powerful people’s behavior in view.

Good to know

The politics are part of the premise. Scalzi describes a story critical of billionaires and favorable to unionization and collective bargaining. If that would shape your enjoyment, it is useful to know before buying. To test the voice itself, the publisher’s opening chapter introduces Charlie through first-person narration, financial trouble and dry observations about business.