Thoughts - Part 1: Chapters 1-6

[Ryan]

Hi FBR Book Clubbers. Please use this topic to post your thoughts on Part 1 of Old Man's War. What are your initial thoughts about John Perry? What do you think about the universe Scalzi has created? What are your predictions for the rest of the book?

[Ryan]

So the first 6 chapters of this book are exposition, exposition, exposition... but in a good way. It is all delivered through dialogue or John's internalizations, which at the same time informs us about John as a person, his strengths, his weaknesses, his vices, his motivations, etc.

A smart thing that Scalzi does here is the description of science through physics teacher Harry Wilson. With Wilson he develops a character with an innate understanding of the laws of physics as we know them, and then gets him to say (paraphrased) "We have been working for decades to try and figure out how this technology works and we still dont know what's going on - it works and we have no idea why." Scalzi is pretty much telling us upfront that the science is to far advanced for us to understand, it works, so we should just go with it.

I thought the body swap scene was very good. I knew it was coming, being somewhat familiar with the Old Man's War universe, but I still thought it was great. I loved how all the different aspects of the upgrade were trademarked like the SmartBlood and the BrainPal.

Lastly, I like the dark and understated humour that Scalzi brings to the table and I think the last two chapters really showcase this. There is a lot of wit, mostly expressed through dialogue, and while you aren't roaring with laughter, you are loosing some muffled chuckles. Or at least I was.

The recruits are commanded to have 'fun' and they most certainly do. It looks like Part 2 is going to be all about hard work and training, and by the end of Part 2 I am expecting John Perry and his associates to be lean mean killing machines sent off to die in a frontier battle in the name of the Colonial Union / humanity.

[Jasper]

I just finished the first part of Old Man's War and instead of continuing I thought it would be wise to dump my first impression directly instead of having read the book whole and having some misguided thoughts.

The first thing that comes to mind and is somewhat still lingering in their is the age part. On the day seventy-fifth birthday of John. Now this is not an age normally used in books. It though sci-fi with some young guns. I was triggered to continue reading and finding out what the deal about the age was. And soon you understand more about the age thing but as soon as you learn about that the fun of this book is just starting to work out.

What was for me the coolest part of the first chapters. Swapping! It was so *words fall short here* worked out. Its like "Hello, welcome to your new body you want to the tour" ? Complete kitted out with some cleverly genetically engineered stuff. The Catseye and Hardarm techs pretty neat.

On the whole, this first part of the book introduced a great concepts of the universe and that indeed as Ryan mentioned, just go with believing that it works and do not ask any questions. Though some of the dialogues have a seriousness to it, there are a few witty and smart comments thrown in there did actually make me chuckle a bit.

What do I think that the second part will have in store for me? Well with the build up of the new recruits and a sort of briefing at the end I hope to see some sci-fi action with lasers and the like, but also with the mention of aliens, I am curious to find more out about those as well.

Old Man's War is off to a good start