Book Review: Constituent Service

Title: Constituent Service

Author: John Scalzi

Date: 2024 (e-book); 30 November 2025 (printed book)

Publisher: Subterranean Press

ISBN: 978-1-64524-284-0

Quote: "I am so sorry I'm late. Our bus hit a chicken."

In this case the book's cover tells us quite a bit about the book. In a future United States, a very nice girl called Ashley has just been hired by a city government office to work in "constituent services." The city is now home to assorted intelligent alien species, including a funguslike alien living on the potted plant shown behind Ashley. Ashley is told that she was hired as a representative of humans, though the last time the department employed a human was eighteen years ago and he stayed for three days, and we get several other riffs on the "aliens talk to and about humans the way reasonably polite and well educated White Americans talked to and about Black Americans in the twentieth century" theme. Then the various constituents' problems start to come together and form a plot that will require Ashley to go down the sewers to confront a "fatberg" (a thing that actually exists in our world) and then save the city by putting on diving gear smeared with alien pheromones. 

Who is the chicken and how did she come into it? You'll have to read the story and find out. It's short, witty, and pithy; though it shows as only 100 pages on my Kindle it feels like a complete, well written novella.

How believable is Ashley? I find her believable. Granted, most bureaucrats whose job might be called "constituent services" think their job is to tell everyone who calls them to call some other number, any number, while shopping online and polishing their nails. Nevertheless I've known some young ones who had good intentions, and even seemed not to need a specific federal law to "clarify" for them the difference between their hips and their elbows. They learn to play unbelievably dumb on the job. There is a stage early in the development of a bureaucrat when person might, if forced to work in the private sector, be quite pleasant to work with. Ashley has more fortitude than most of the Nice Girls who get jobs in government offices. I read her as a role model presented to bureaucrats to remind them how to behave if they want any public support for the idea of keeping their offices open. 

What's not to like? Some people don't like science fiction as comedy.

What's to like? This book did well enough on the Internet that it's being printed. You can order it at your favorite bookstore, starting on Sunday (if your bookstore is open on Sunday). If you like warmhearted, funny, goofy science fiction where even the scammer turns out to be nice, you might want to pre-order now.