Book Review: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

This is the first novel I've read by John Scalzi.  When it was nominated for the Hugo award for best novel in 2006, I checked it out, and read the first few pages.   For some reason, I wasn't interested.  Perhaps I felt this had too much in common with Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  Perhaps the book started with too much of the first person prose and very little dialogue that I typically have difficulty with.  I can't really remember.  But, as has happened all too frequently since I purchased a Kindle, I managed to get a good price on this book so I decided to check it out.

On the surface, the theme of this story is very similar to Starship Troopers, but there are many differences, both in the story and in the protagonist.  In Starship Troopers, Juan "Johnny" Rico graduates from high school and follows a classmate into the military.  He then goes through a brutal boot camp, and then heads off to fight the "bugs" which have been attacking Earth.  I'll leave other differences for the reader to discover.

In Old Man's War, John Perry is a 75-year-old man with a lifetime of experience, who then joins the military to extend his life.  He must serve for a mandatory 2 years, and a potential maximum (and,  highly likely to be imposed) of 10 years of service protecting human colonists from all the other lifeforms in the universe (and there are several of them - some of which list human beings as a delicacy on their menu).  There is also an interesting twist on who can qualify as a colonist, which I won't reveal.

This story qualifies as "military" science fiction.  I don't reach much of that, and frankly I don't care for most of it.  I did finally get around to reading The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, a few years ago, and I found it painful to get through.  It had some interesting concepts, which is why I continued reading it, but it really wasn't for me.  I also tried reading a few other series, but for the most part they weren't for me.  One exception was The Lazarus War:  Artefact, by Jamie Sawyer.  I enjoyed this, but did find it a bit hard to get through.  Some of it was the pacing of the book.  You can find my review here.

So, why did I take a chance on this book, other than the price?  Well, I'm 11 years older, so my perspectives are changing as I get older.  I should have taken a chance on this book earlier.  While the first few pages are kind of slow, with John Perry giving some of his background, but it turns out he's kind of a funny guy.  The story is told from Perry's point of view, and immediately the character reminded me of the character Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, in James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar.  Perry seems very focused on the things he speaks about.  The initial discussions he has with fellow recruits about the Colonial Union(CU) and the Colonial Defense Force(CDF) is interesting (early on, it is the discussion of the elevator ride into orbit).

The blurb on the cover reminds me of the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Essentially, the number of planets which are habitable are few and far between.  In the film, Keanue Reeves' character states that humanity is destroying our own planet, and due to the limited number of livable worlds in the universe, this can't be allowed.  In Old Man's War, it means that aliens are willing to fight over habitable worlds - regardless of whether the world is already inhabited,  Humanity must play the same game and expand their territory at all costs or risk extinction.

The technology in this story is fascinating.  Soldiers get a weapon that is somewhat reminiscent of the Lawgiver II from the Sylvester Stallone film Judge Dread - but much cooler.  And the rejuvenation process is equally cool (and was somewhat unexpected for me).  The CDF battle cruisers move around the universe using "skip" drives, and we learn a few details around how these drives work.  The way skip drives work was a surprise to me, and I'll leave it to the reader to learn about it for themselves when they read the book.

There are some very interesting alien races in this story as well.  In particular, the Consu stand out from the others.  They behave strangely and speak cryptically.  For me, this was very reminiscent of the Vorlon race in the TV series Babylon 5 (the Vorlon's rarely said anything which could be immediately understood; sometimes, but not always, whatever was said became clear later on - sometimes several episodes away, or in a few cases almost a season later).

The story is told in three parts.

Part 1 is about John's recruitment, which is an interesting process.  Those on Earth know very little about the CDF, aside from the fact that they keep the best technology for themselves and don't share it with Earth.  People are not allowed to enlist until they reach the age of 75.  Everyone expects that once they join, they will be made young again - after all, geriatric troops won't be able to put up much of a fight.  Of course, nobody on Earth knows much about what this really means, but John finds out soon enough.

Part 2 focuses on John's training at boot camp, and the details of several short missions.

Part 3 details a very important mission which is a followup to a previous mission which is completed at the end of part 2.  The focus is around some very dangerous information about one of the alien races which is in conflict with humanity, and resolving this crisis.

Overall, this was a fantastic read, and a wonderful first effort from an author, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction.  I should be kicking myself for not reading this book when I first saw it back in 2006!  I'm sure I'll be checking out other books in the series at some point.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  If you have read this book, I'm interested in what you thought of it.  If my review impacted your decision to read this book, I'd be interested in hearing about that as well.