Review: The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi

The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi, first published in 2007.

If you’ve been following my reading journey through the Old Man’s War series, you’ll know that I loved Old Man’s War, and The Ghost Brigades underwhelmed me, which left me a little uncertain as I continued with the series. As I did my research to work out which story was next, I discovered that there was a 2.5 entry in the series – The Sagan Diary. Curious to see what the online discourse was, I discovered that overall, the options were mixed but largely lukewarm. Still, I was cautiously optimistic as I tackled this next entry.

Now that I’ve listened to the audiobook edition of this novelette, I can say that it’s an interesting addition to the Old Man’s War universe. Just shy of 13k words, the audiobook ran for an hour and a half, making it an easy tale to ingest. The story opens with a preface from Lt. Gretchen Schafer, a Chief Analyst for the Colonial Defence Force, who complains to her superior about the restrictions placed on the data retrieval of Colonial Special Forces members’ BrainPals, which only provides them with junk data to process. She’s submitting Jane Sagan’s diaries as an example of the data they’re handling, and whilst it provides insight into Sagan’s soul, it does little to provide insight into Sagan’s history. It’s an interesting way of starting a story, one that perhaps feels a little unnecessary for what follows, which is eight chapters of introspective, stream-of-consciousness, in the first-person POV of Jane Sagan.

Each chapter has a single-word title, summarising the theme of the chapter that follows: words, killing, speaking, friendship, age, sex, fear, and endings. The prose is beautifully written, with an almost poetic quality, as Sagan muses over her life thus far, preparing to leave her soldiering days behind and embark on the life of a civilian. As a Colonial Special Forces soldier, Sagan didn’t have a life before becoming a soldier (being created expressly for that purpose). As such, her consciousness and personality have only existed for a handful of years. She considers what this all means, to be so “young” and yet to have seen and done so much – things that individuals with ten times the life lived wouldn’t have experienced – and how she fits into this life. How she has been an instrument of death and a friend, what it means to fear, love, and grow old, and how far she has come, from her unusual beginnings to the ending she now finds herself facing – and the new adventure that awaits.

In a meta sense, the origin of this novelette is interesting, in and of itself. Scalzi was involved in an auction, where a super-exclusive edition of The Last Colony was up for grabs. Bill Schafer, publisher of Subterranean Press, won the book with a winning bid of $5000, with proceeds going to the John M. Ford Book Endowment. Scalzi had promised that he would write a short story for the auction winner if bids got to $5k or more. Schafer asked for a story in the Old Man’s War universe, and The Sagan Diary was born.

By his own omission, this story was a challenge for Scalzi, as it diverged from his usual writing comfort zone, being longer than his typical short fiction and shorter than his typical long fiction, with no dialogue, no action, and no world-building – only the internal introspection of a character. I respect Scalzi’s efforts, not only for tackling an uncomfortable writing challenge, but for publishing the end result, no doubt suspecting that it might not go down well with all his readers.

Whilst it may be the odd one out of the Old Man’s War series, The Sagan Diary is still a well-written, interesting, and engaging piece of fiction. It won’t be to everyone’s liking, but if you’ve made it through books one and two, I recommend giving it a read or listen.

Background image by Fred Moon on Unsplash