Old Man's War

published	December 27th 2005 by Tor Books
first published	2007
binding	Paperback
isbn	0765315246 (isbn13: 9780765315243)
pages	320
description	John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wifes grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity fin...more [close] John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wifes grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce and alien races willing to fight for them are common. Far from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. We fight to defend Earth from our new enemies and to stake our claim to planetary real estate. On Earth, the bulk of the resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Only those of retirement age can join the CDF; they want people who carry the skills from decades of living. CDF members are taken off Earth to serve two years at the front. If they survive, theyre given a generous homestead on hard-won colony planets, never to return to Earth. John Perry is taking that deal with only the vaguest idea what to expect. [close]
date added	04-15-07 edit book

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Brownbetty rated it:

(review of isbn 0765348276)

05/10/08

Not quite what I expected from the cover. In my experience of oil-paintings-of-planets-and-spacecraft covers, you tend to get pretty hard SF to go with them. This was more extra-firm tofu hard. The cover blurbs compared him to Heinlein, which was fair.

The book has a couple of reveals, the first of which I genuinely did not see coming, and the second of which I saw coming for a while, so I'll separate my review into the bits I can talk about without spoiling and the spoilery bits.

John ...more

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Jake rated it:

(review of isbn 0765348276)

06/05/08

bookshelves: science-fiction, series

This one was a loaner from PoeGhostal, who, much like me, recently has made the transition from being an avid fantasy reader to being on a sci-fi kick. I’m not sure what caused me to make the transition; for some reason lately, I’ve just been more in a space and starships mood, rather than a sword-and-sorcery mood. Of course, I still have piles of fantasy that I want to get through, most notably a bunch of REH’s works. But I digress.

Old Man’s War is military science fiction in the trad...more This one was a loaner from PoeGhostal, who, much like me, recently has made the transition from being an avid fantasy reader to being on a sci-fi kick. I’m not sure what caused me to make the transition; for some reason lately, I’ve just been more in a space and starships mood, rather than a sword-and-sorcery mood. Of course, I still have piles of fantasy that I want to get through, most notably a bunch of REH’s works. But I digress.

Old Man’s War is military science fiction in the tradition of Starship Troopers, and those familiar with Heinlein’s work will find a lot of basic similarities in the plot; a man from Earth decides to join up with the Space Armed Forces, and goes off to fight aliens and discover what war is really about. There’s cool technology, clever tactics, and a fair amount of musing about life by the narrator in question.

By that description, I’m making Old Man’s War seem like a cheap knock-off of Starship Troopers, and it’s really not. It is its own story, quite distinct, and with some seriously notable differences. Perhaps the most notable being the main character, John Perry, who is not the callow youth that Juan Rico is, but instead, is a seventy-five year old man who decides to sign up for the Colonial Defense Forces because he’s got nothing left to lose. He does this without having the faintest idea of WHAT is going to happen to him…the contact between the colonies and Earth is virtually non-existent. It’s an interesting set up, and one of several interesting ideas that Scalzi has throughout the book. Actually, that’s unfair. Scalzi has a lot of interesting ideas, particularly in the realm of technology, and in terms of alien cultures.

The writing itself is solid, if not mind-blowing. The book moves along at a pretty good clip, and while Scalzi does occasionally dive into obligatory technobabble to explain some piece of technology, it is the sort of technobabble that even a non-scientist like myself can follow (one of the things that keeps me away from many sci-fi books is the detailed technological explanations). Most of the characters are pretty interesting, though a few them feel a little flat/forced (the drill sergeant bugs me, for a variety of reasons I wont’ get into here). I’m really not a fan of the presence of Jane Sagan, but it’s hard to get into WHY without getting to heavily into the plot. I’ll just say that I thought her presence and arc were largely unnecessary, and feel that something more interesting could have been done with the plot there.

I think I’m making this book sound worse than I think it is, so let me back up a step. This is a good book. Really. It’s fast-paced military science fiction, somewhat reminiscent of Heinlein, and honestly, a little reminiscent of Zahn. The main character is fun, the humor is good, and the action works very well. The aliens are neat, and alien, which is a welcome change from the “humans with stuff on their foreheads” syndrome, or from the “we’ll tell you nothing at all about them” method of dealing with aliens. The good stuff, however, is in some the characters and the ideas. The plot itself is not horrible, but it’s nothing to write home about either. The strength of the writing is definitely more in Perry and his interactions with a strange and hostile cosmos that it is in the intrigue and plot twists. The work is also somewhat less introspective than Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on what you’re looking for. Perry does do a bit of soul-searching, mind you, but the book does not seem to set out to make a point in the same way that Heinlein does.

At the end of the day, this is good, fun, solid, military science fiction. If you want to read about a bunch of people who explore the universe, meet strange new people, and blow them up, this is a pretty good place to start....less

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