The Dispatcher

This was a Kindleborrow from my friend Roni. Thanks, ol' buddy ol' pal!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don’t know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.

Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher—a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death’s crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death, and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge show more what they see as a wrong.

It’s a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it’s too late…before not even a Dispatcher can save him.

My Review: There is nothing quite so satisfying as an idea that exactly fits into its chosen format. Subterranean Press, genre-publishing monadnock for almost a quarter century, will make novellas available in hardcover, will collect the stories of genre-famous writers that ordinary houses wouldn't deign to notice (eg, [[Elizabeth Bear]] , whose collected short work is coming soon), will do all this with style and elegance and attention to quality unrivaled in modern publishing. This novella is no exception. Its limited edition, illustrated by Vincent Chong, whose work you should *definitely* go look at, is sold out; its trade edition is sold out; the ebook is available, and it's got the lovely illustrations scaled for your ereader's screen.

It ain't the Real Thing, but it's darn good.

Scalzi's story here is uniquely his, the way only he could re-fashion the story of unexplained resurrection. The dead coming back...but only if they died by misadventure (a politer way of saying "got murdered)...has no obvious explanation. Scalzi doesn't supply one. Arguments about why the murdered or otherwise killed before their body's natural death are endless. And the return itself becomes bureaucratized at the behest of insurance companies and governments. Of course. This is humanity we're talking about.

But in that larger, sadder framework, Author Scalzi's made stories of what the ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances will do. Must do. Crave the miracle? It's yours...but!

Why's there always a "but"? Dunno...but the "but" here is there are loopholes and limitations like there always are in bureaucracies. Why these should apply on a quantum level will keep religions in business and still reduce the murder rate by a large fraction. If someone is determined to murder someone else, there's always a way. It's a horrible way, but it works, and if you hate someone enough to murder them, its awfulness won't bother you.

A further "but" involves the revolting kind of human being who will pay to see men slaughter each other. Anyone who's read or seen [Altered Carbon] will recognize the Meth's entertainment of causing, watching, lusting after sleeve-death. This resurrection, of the actual personal body of the slain (albeit a certain number of hours younger than it was at the time of death), precludes Morgan's convenient stack-death or Neo-Catholic prohibition on being spun back up. It means the resurrected knows who killed them. It means the resurrected can identify a murderer. Unsurprisingly this drops the manslaughter rate. Can't charge someone with a crime, though, since the victim isn't dead. Assault maybe...but!

Then there are people whose bodies are slowly betraying them, who need surgeries and/or treatments that might cause death. Imagine how that's going to affect the surgeons. Insurance companies meddle enough in the quest to avoid paying out on their policies. Now there are Dispatchers (why the capital D, for goodness's sake?) whose sole job it is to finish killing a dying patient so they'll wake up in a pre-trauma state of health, no worse for the surgery that killed them. This is where we meet Tony. He Dispatches an old man who didn't survive heart surgery. He faces down an angry surgeon and a hospital staff pissed at him but without recourse because the money says this is what has to happen.

And *then* it gets weird.

Tony's friend and fellow Dispatcher Jimmy is missing. There's nary a lead in this disappearance; well, there's a hint that Jimmy might've been involved in some morally dark grey/legally light grey Dispatchings. Things that Tony was also involved in once upon a time. In fact, Jimmy got his start in the grey areas with Tony. Who better to help the Chicago Police Department investigate?

Tony's recruited, much against his will, to assist the police with their inquiries. Jimmy's wife spews hate and venom all over Tony for those problems from the past, and even threatens to run him down if she can since he'll just wake up naked in his own bed. The cop looks calmly on, resumes questioning, and the thread that Jimmy's wife accidentally picks out of the cloth of her marriage is the one that ultimately leads to the solution of a terrible, vile crime, the restoration of the scales of justice, and the end of the first episode.

Say what now? You see, the eight chapters in here constitute an excellent two-hour pilot script for a TV series I'd watch the hell out of. I like Tony, his policelady partner-in-crime, and the Chicago they inhabit. It's the kind of light entertainment that leads to much deeper thought and discussion if one's so inclined. How does the quantum field know someone's murdered? How would gawd justify allowing some to die, like by stupid accidents and illness, but allow the murdered to return, to get a second chance? What kind of crap laws will make it onto the books to ensure the rich stay rich and the banksters get their vig?

Pick it up, FX! Buy it now, TBS! This could, in modestly competent hands, be a water-cooler series. The nudity precludes Fox, The CW, CBS, NBC, or ABC from taking it on, but it's basic-cable ready. It's not quite highbrow enough for Prime or Netflix, and I want nothing good to happen to Disney+ because if y'all think Amazon's evil go do some research on the Reedy Creek MUD in Orlando. Dig a little into Anas Abdin's plagiarism claims over Star Trek: Discovery. These scumbags...

Well, never mind, I'm gonna leave it here with a rousing exhortation to go get you a copy of this delightful short read. Then let's all holler until someone in LaLaLand hears and obeys the injunction to film, film, film! show less

IN A WORLD

where murdered people come back to life, a Dispatcher is there to make sure that dying people, or people at risk of dying, such as patients undergoing surgeries, are instead, well, murdered, by the Dispatcher, in order to make sure they don't, er, die. It's... a daft premise, something someone clearly came up with in the shower - though fair play for capturing it, developing it and commiting to it - a kind of intellectual construct to play around with paradoxical concepts to tell entertaining stories that play around within the rules, both ethical, physical and conceptual. It's light stuff, very clever and witty and entertaining within its own limits, and Zachary Quinto is an absolute dream of a reader, seriously, he elevates show more a fun, well executed premise to Masterpiece Theatre level. show less

This is a really fun sci-fi story. (I'm guessing that it's novelette length, so that's what I'll be calling it. It was about 2 1/4 hours of recorded audio, so definitely not a full-length book.)

The concept behind the story is really interesting: people who die of accidents or natural causes actually die, but people who are murdered come back to life seconds later. The main character is a Dispatcher, an individual licensed to contractually murder people so that they won't die. (It seems contradictory, but think about it. You have someone going into a life-threatening situation, like major surgery? Send in a Dispatcher so that if the operation goes bad the patient gets another chance.)

Scalzi also goes into the psychological and religious show more connotations of this, too. Not in too much detail; there's only so much religious debate you can include in an action story only 2 hours long. However, you can tell that he put a lot of thought into how people would react to this concept. I really hope there is a longer story set in this world, because I want to go into more depth about how people would react, what people would say or think, and how the government would handle this. I mean... all of a sudden killing people isn't permanent? How do you prosecute murder? How do you even define murder?

And the narration is perfect. Zachary Quinto's voice is really suited to the main character, and he does a good job distinguishing between the different major characters in the novelette without doing silly voices for them all. Having listened to this one, I want to find more works he's narrated that I'm interested in, because listening to him narrate was a joy. show less

What would happen if murder could no longer be committed? What would that do to society? Sometime in the near future anyone who has been murdered reappears in their home, stark naked and very much alive. This is the setting for John Scalzi's novella The Dispatcher.

Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher, a licensed professional who humanely kills people when things go wrong so they can have a second chance to get things right. It's just another night at work when Valdez takes a job at a hospital for another Dispatcher who had a personal issue to take care of. That is until the other Dispatcher goes missing and suddenly Valdez finds himself in the middle of a missing persons investigation.

This is such a cool concept! Written in Scalzi's accessible show more style, the story follows Valdez as he helps a detective solve the missing person's case. The story twists and turns, exploring a few facets of just how people are able to exploit this phenomenon both for the betterment of society and from the criminal side. While there are not enough pages for the themes to be explored too deeply, nor are the characters very fleshed out, it made for an intriguing read. show less

Ridiculous fantasy crime fiction which must have been inspired by the failed 2014 TV series "Forever" whose main character re-spawned every time he died. The added spin in "The Dispatcher" is that everyone re-spawns, but only if they're murdered?! i.e. if you die a natural death you are gone forever. This actually creates a legal job for hitmen called dispatchers who are called upon to commit a coup de grace in all sorts of situations where someone is otherwise going to die naturally. Yes, it is as absurd as it sounds.

I listened to the Audible Audio edition which was a free offering at one time and now occasionally appears as a 0.99 cent Daily Deal. The reading by actor Zachary Quinto was excellent but it didn't make the scenario any show more more plausible. show less

What is the morality of murder when 999 out of 1000 murder victims return to life almost immediately in the condition they were in 20-30 hr prior to death? This investigation into the disappearance of a dispatcher - a person with literal license to kill, by a police officer and the associate who was called in to handle his most recent dispatch, explores the practical consequences of this reliably repeating miracle.

"The Dispatcher" is a novella-length piece of speculative fiction, written from the point of view of an almost-but-not-quite anti-hero, that explores the impact of on VERY big change in the natural order of things: murdered people come back from the dead.

If you can swallow that completely-unexplained hey-strange-shit-happens premise, then the rest of the book is fairly logical working through of the consequences, wrapped around an investigation into the apparent abduction of a Dispatcher.

The writing is sparse and functional but very effective. The voice of the main character has a hard-boiled detachment that would be consistent with being able to do his chosen line of work. The puzzle and how it is solved are entertaining. The idea is show more original and is manipulated with skill.

There wasn't much by way of emotional engagement and none of the characters makes it beyond what's needed for them to carry out their function in the plot.

John Scalzi kept everything moving along at a good pace. Zachary Quinto's narration was well-judged: lively without being melodramatic. It was an enjoyable, undemanding four hours. show less