John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s 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 aliens willing to fight for them are common. The universe, it turns out, is a hostile place. So: we fight. To defend Earth (a target for our new enemies, … our new enemies, should we let them get close enough) and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.
Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force, which shields the home planet from too much knowledge of the situation. What’s known to everybody is that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve your time at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.
John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine-and what he will become is far stranger.
Old Man’s War Series
#1 Old Man’s War
#2 The Ghost Brigades
#3 The Last Colony
#4 Zoe’s Tale
#5 The Human Division
#6 The End of All Things
Short fiction: “After the Coup”
Other Tor Books
The Android’s Dream
Agent to the Stars
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Lock In
The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)
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A character from a Robert Heinlein universe is reborn in OLD MAN’S WAR. Scalzi has a gorgeous way of laying out the improbable senior citizen, former war protester (nice touch!!) character and then inserts him into an inventive universe where more advanced technologies are possessed by a parallel human civilization under the aegis of the Colonial Defense Forces. Scalzi offers believable and fascinating alien opponents for an elite human fighting force. Topnotch military fiction, in my opinion, and I’m far from a rabid fan of military fiction (I like it in limited doses).
Now, I find myself hoping that John has expanded beyond military fiction into other speculative areas, much as Heinlein and other classic SF grandmasters did, so he can more fully join their ranks. With that hope, I will check into his other novels.
Old Man’s War is a funny and entertaining read. It is Sci fi, but the characters are well developed and realistic. I throughly enjoyed it
Great way to get my SciFi fix on. Found a new author I can now binge read. Thank you, Mr. Scalzi!
Old Man War is a fantastic read even if you don’t usually like science fiction. There enough of today’s world and science to connect you to Scalzi’s universe. There are at least 4 books in this series but don’t let that intimidate you. There is lots of action, memorable dialog and smart thoughtful characters.
Old Man’s War is one of those books I can go back to over and over again. It’s halfway between a throwback to Heinlein and a completely new type of much more modern SciFi. Scalzi only gets better with time, and this book is him in very fine form. Exploring the ideas of old age and renewal against the backdrop of mindless, endless war is something that never stops fascinating me. I think you’ll like it no matter what your particular science fiction preferences may be. It has everything from intense action to comedy to romance in the best sense of the word. Go on and get it now. You’ll thank me later.
I had read this book ages ago, but I want to listen to the whole series on audiobook, so I spent a credit on it. It’s still great the second time through! I love the premise of old people being reborn as soldiers and taking on the aliens of the galaxy. It’s smart, funny, and totally sucks you in, just like all of Scalzi’s books.
Review originally written March 2011.
Avatar meets Starship Troopers, and it so works. OMGosh! Scalzi’s world building is wonderful. I never felt lost as he jumped from one world to another. He wove the information and science I needed to understand into the story without confusing or boring me to death. I’ve always loved sci-fi, but sometimes I skim over the deep physics lessons because, well you know, “I don’t have the math for that” (that is one of my favorite quotes from this book). The science felt real and possible, and most importantly comprehensible.
Scalzi is a genius. This is military sci fi at it’s finest in my mind. When you are at war with something completely alien, you need people with experience. People who know how to problem solve and think fast on their feet. You need people who have done this for a lifetime. Unfortunately, those people are old, so you give them a second life. And what physically old person, whose mind still feels as young as it did at twenty, wouldn’t jump at the chance?
First really cool moment–comprehensive physical overhaul. I so want one when I turn 75. I’m not going to spoil it by telling you what that is, but yeah, cool.
Scalzi covers some deep philosophical topics and some heavily speculative science, but it flows effortlessly thanks to his underlying humor. I smiled and laughed a lot–such as when everyone named their brain pals. (Once again, no spoilers, just read it for yourself!) But Scalzi also surprised me and made me tear up.
Yeah, I’m a girl and I DO cry at almost everything, but Scalzi’s juxtaposition of two people’s deaths really hit me (chapters 9 & 10). Neither are main characters, and I didn’t really know either of them, but Perry (the MC) cared about one of them. The one that made me cry was probably only a page long, but the simplicity and the tribute within that page was beautiful.
Yeah, yeah. I know I’m being cryptic again, but I love discovering the story as I go and I don’t want to mess that up for anyone. I really loved this book and think everyone who remotely enjoys sci-fi should give it a go. It looks like there are three more books in this series that I’m going to have to check out.
My rating:
Character development: A+ I really liked Perry and wanted him to succeed. He was human, intelligent, lucky without being cocky.
World Building: A I never felt lost or confused and we visited several completely different worlds and alien races.
Science believability: A I believed every word. 🙂
Story Arc: A Perfect mix of emotional growth, conflict, and the resolution completely satisfied me.
Language: F, because I don’t swear and the F-bomb is dropped every other word at times. It was distracting to me, but if you don’t mind swearing you won’t even notice. Probably. And this is military sci-fi so it is realistic.
4/5
If you have never read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers then Old Man’s War is probably a 3.5/5. Without that familiarity, Old Man’s War is an extremely entertaining and off-beat sci-fi novel with the quirky premise of a seventy-five year old man signing up for a new lease on life with the Colonial Defense Force. If you’re familiar with Starship Troopers, the novel rather than the movie, then it becomes gut-bustingly hilarious.
Basically, Starship Troopers in it’s original form is a coming of age drama about how the military life turns a somewhat spoiled and aimless young man into a hardened veteran. It’s the classic story of the military sorting him out. It also talks about the benefits of a limited democracy where voting citizens have to serve in either the military or some other social service. Oh and there’s the mech suits fighting against the Bugs that are the genocidal inspiration for Zerg, Tyranids, and creatures from Alien.
The first half of the book is easily the best with complicated world-building, interesting characters, and unusual development. The premise of the world is humanity has managed to reach the stars but what they’ve discovered is a reality where the majority of alien races are relentlessly hostile. In order to fight these opponents, humanity has developed specialized technology that allows consciousness to be transferred to young transhumanist (and green skinned) bodies that will fight these aliens on a thousand worlds.
John Perry is a great protagonist as we follow him as he deals with the death of his wife, the fact he has nothing left to look forward to, and he’s somewhat estranged from his son. The future of Earth isn’t much changed from today (there’s a reason for that) so it’s easy to empathize with its inhabitants. Watching the universe unfold through his eyes is both a poignant as well as fascinating experience.
Scalzi does an excellent job of justifying each of the elements which makes this bizarre situation. The transhumanist humans are all sterile and chosen from the elderly because the vast majority of them are going to die in battle. The elderly are people who have families and loved ones who they want to protect, which motivates them to want to fight harder while also being expendable since they were going to die anyway. Following the protagonist as he experiences a return to youth and the sudden violence of his new life is all very interesting.
The parody of Starship Troopers is this is a “returning of age” drama which also critically analyzes a lot of the elements of the original book. While the Colonial Defense Force portrays itself in the rousing jingoistic terms of the Federation as well as almost all aliens as mindlessly evil, the truth is far more complicated and horrifying. Paul Verhoven touched upon some of these themes in his controversial adaptation of the novel but Scalzi does it with a more deft hand. Even the narrator’s “voice” is similar despite one being a teenager and the other being a septuagenarian.
Unfortunately, the second half of the book isn’t nearly as original as the first so it starts to resemble other, less original, military science fiction. The love story between our protagonist and a clone of his wife is also creepy rather than endearing. Even so, there’s some genuinely crazy and hilarious moments spread throughout. One of them involves the protagonists stomping through a colony of tiny aliens like Godzilla.
In conclusion, I have to say Old Man’s War is an entertaining novel. It’s not a great novel, though, because it requires a bit more familiarity with Starship Troopers than perhaps necessary and the second half is weaker than the first. Still, I recommend readers give it a try–especially if they are familiar with the original work. It isn’t a perfect novel but it’s certainly an entertaining one and sometimes that’s all you need.
It’s been I while since I read a sci-fi that was at the same time militaristic but with pacifist undertones, light and hard-core at the same time, humorous yet dramatic. I don’t quite know what to say about «Old Man’s War», except… I really liked it.
To those who don’t mind militaristic science fiction, don’t worry: this isn’t really one of those, as you’ll get maybe half a chapter of jarheads training and in no moment John Scalzi dives into long, convoluted tactical briefings. They’ll invade a certain planet, and will discuss tactics at 0600 hours. Next paragraph: they’re jumping over a hill, blasting aliens, commenting how that strategy they’d talked about had worked out pretty well. That’s it.
It’s also not quite hardcore sci-fi, except for one or two really well-placed character exchange about theoretical physics, but the scientist character explains it in lay terms because the people hearing them barely remember calculus — although the science is 95% accurate, from atmospheric reentrance to Tachyon particles. Only the hardest-core of science buffs will notice the few inaccuracies here or there.
All in all, this is a light-hearted novel with some deep yet brief emotional moments, that are in no way heavy-handed. Scalzi’s creating a universe I want to keep coming back over and over again. And I think you will too.
I’m a Veteran and this was on the the all time best SiFi Military Books ever!
Probably the best SF book I’ve ever read. Loved it so much I’ve reread it three times!
First in a great series. Compare to Forever War, Starship Troopers. Fun to read, lots to think about after.
It was fun, action packed and inventive.
It’s nice to finally find a book about an older adult. For those of us not just i n to adulthood, books that speak to us are hard to come by. The prose is well written and flows, the conversations are also well constructed. While not the most original of concepts, it is a fun read and I highly recommend it.
I know I’m way late to the party on this one. I didn’t even start this series with this book. I happened to find book 5 in this series (The Human Division) on sale, read it and found it so engaging I had to go back and start from the beginning.
And boy was I glad I did. Talk about a unique concept! With wonderfully fleshed-out characters and a story that won’t quit, Old Man’s War is just about everything you could want in a sci-fi book. I get what all the hype is about. It’s probably no surprise to fans of this book that after reading it I immediately bought hard cover copies of all the rest of the books in the series and blew through them.
Highly, highly recommended.
Top shelf. Consistent voice. Intelligent.
This book is so thought provoking!
Being and old man dreaming of going back and doing it all over, well it seems you can, even if it’s a page turning action-packed military life. If you are already a fan of this great author you will not be disappointed, if you are new buckle and prepare to become a fan!
This is the opening volume of a trilogy written by this author – his first of two unrelated trilogies and one of a dozen or so sci fi novels he has written. It is delightful, innovative and just a good read. Buy it.
I have read a lot of Mr. Scalzi’s work, but his original novel still is my favorite. If you like Science Fiction at all, and I mean in even the most vague or remote way, you absolutely should try “Old Man’s War.” It’s great. Trust me. Or don’t, but just try the first few chapters and I am convinced you will be hooked.