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    Old Man's War
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    Old Man's War
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    Old Man's War
    Ebook350 pages5 hours

    Old Man's War

    By John Scalzi

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Perfect for an entry-level sci-fi reader and the ideal addition to a veteran fan’s collection, John Scalzi's Old Man’s War will take audiences on a heart-stopping adventure into the far corners of the universe.

    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, 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

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429914710
    Author

    John Scalzi

    John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His debut, Old Man's War, won him science fiction's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Lock In, and also Redshirts, which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog Whatever has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

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    Reviews for Old Man's War

    4/5

    112 ratings109 reviews

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    • 5/5
      One of my favorite new story lines in sci'fi!! Great action; excellent characters; possible futures out the wazoo!! Really fun to get into; does have some possible controversial stuff if you have thin skin; so just read for the pure entertainment of it
    • 4/5
      If you live in the same city as me, be assured that the paper-and-ink copy of this book I read is going back to the library ASAP and you'll be able to borrow it after me. If not, I do have the PDF...

      Old Man's War is sci-fi. Maybe not the most original sci-fi in the world -- I read it more or less alongside Ender's Game and noted some similarities -- but there are some more original things that raised my eyebrows and then got me interested. For instant, the biggest part: the main character enlists in the army on his seventy-fifth birthday.

      Okay, then quite typically you get transference of consciousness between bodies, and specially modified soldiers, and Combat With Strange Alien Species, etc, etc. What makes Old Man's War fun, though, aside from that, is the humour. Sometimes it falls flat, but quite often I cackled appreciatively.

      The ending is awesome. First I kind of wanted to punch John Scalzi, then I stopped, went oh, and sniffled just a little.

      Definitely one I'd recommend. Easy reading, really, but that's not a bad thing. My main quibble is how dry the narrative is sometimes. That helps in some scenes, keeping it very cut down and straight to the point, but sometimes you want a bit more impact.
    • 5/5
      Mindblowing! I fell in love with this book immediately. It is not your typical story - it doesn't flow, it is a collection of flashes that tell the story. I must read more Scalzi. Not too quickly, though, I don't want to run out!
    • 5/5
      I’ve had my eye on this book for a long time, and when I got my Kindle it was one of the first books I got. I read it and loved it.

      To me, this was the perfect science fiction tale. It featured a likable hero, the 75 year old John Perry. It involved a twist that I never saw coming, but sure should have. And it involved really, really ruthless enemies, and aliens that are just about as strange as one can imagine.

      John Perry is celebrating his 75th birthday by joining the army. He intended to join with his wife, but she unfortunately died before the requisite age. He joins for a ten year term, and knowing that he can never return to Earth.

      Before actually being able to join, he undergoes a rigorous series of physical and psychological exams. One of my favorite parts was when a doctor tells him that he has testicular cancer. The doctor is unconcerned about it and is totally uninterested in treating it.

      “Why wouldn’t you cure it?” I asked. “If you can ‘shore up’ an affected region, it sounds like you could probably fix it completely if you wanted to.”



      “We can, but it’s not necessary,” Dr. Russell said. “You’ll be getting a more comprehensive overhaul in a couple of days. We just need to keep you going until then.”



      “What does this ‘comprehensive overhaul’ mean, anyway?” I asked.



      “It means that when it’s done, you’ll wonder why you ever worried about a spot of cancer on your testicle,” he said. “That’s a promise …”

      By this time, I was in total suspense about this “comprehensive overhaul” and dying to find out what it meant. And I never expected what it turned out to be.

      For the entire first half of the novel, this suspense was more than enough to keep me turning the pages. The only real conflict was between the recruits and the military’s medical personnel, and even then, it was like the above. And the usual conflict between recruit and drill sergeant.

      So what’s missing? A girl. And yes, there is a girl. Several, in fact, but really, the only girl for John is his dead wife, Kathy. She has an impact on the story in a big way. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

      Through most of the book, the other character drift in and out of the story and then die off. The story focuses on John exclusively and almost to its detriment. However, toward the end, it starts focusing on a core group of characters, especially one named Jane Sagan. She is a lieutenant in the ever-intriguing Ghost Brigades, the subject of the second novel in the series. (Which I read as well.)

      One final thing–although this book is quite gritty, the gritty portions made me wince only because I was so taken with the main character. More importantly, the author did not overwhelm the story with grit– it is also full of humor and heart. I will be giving this novel a rare five stars at Amazon and GoodReads.
    • 4/5
      After having read and enjoyed Zoe’s Tale, I thought I would try the first book in the series proper (Zoe’s Tale works well as a standalone, though some things from the series will be spoiled). It had a nice classic scifi-y feel to it, which I liked. [Nov. 2011]
    • 3/5
      An interesting story, but it took a long time to get going. I also found myself wishing for more character development, as supporting members of the cast start to die off.
    • 4/5
      (refers to audiobook)

      "A pulpy, well-characterized and written story"
      While it might be confusing to compare his book to "Starship Troopers" I do think that John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" owes much to Heinlein's story. Not so much in terms of politics or satire, but in charting an enjoyable course straddling hard/military SF and a more pulpy romp approach. Scalzi does a great job of bringing John Perry to life, creating the eponymous "old man" and, while not really giving the character a background which makes his later military exploits fully believable, giving Perry a rich history and populating his star-spanning world with well-detailed friends and comrades. Scalzi comes up with several distinct alien races, really driving home the differences in motivation that some (the Consu in chief) bring to the table which escape human understanding. One fault I might raise with the story is that while the human characters all have some depth to them (even Perry's drill sergeant at basic training has a fairly rich personal history) no alien characters receive this treatment. The closest comes in the form of a disgraced Consu negotiator, and perhaps this lack of insight into alien personality and personal history is more than forgivable as the story takes place from Perry's consistent point of view. For the most part, from skip drives to tachyon detectors, the tech livens the story, not dragging it down to detract from the main event: Perry's tale. Some scenes, as some of Perry's comrades lose their lives in mundane or bizarre ways, were heartbreaking. The ending left me wanting a little more, but I suppose it can be forgiven as sequels, both in the universe and for Perry's story, exist.
    • 4/5
      Very nice, classic Sci-fi. An entertaining read. Some parts seemed a bit corny to me, but all in all, a lovely book and an interesting take on war. I will definitely be reading the next one.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book in a lot of ways. I'll leave you to connect the dots between my thoughts:

      -There were a few important races of aliens, most of which fit into the general spread of things that one might think of (i.e. in that sweet spot between bumpy headed humans a la Star Trek and completely incomprehensible beings a la Solaris). Contrast also with Startide Rising by David Brin (which I am currently reading) where I feel like i need flashcards for the number of alien races and different dolphins. In Old Man's War I never felt like I did not have a grasp on who was who and what they looked like in my head (Jane looks a bit like She-Hulk, I imagine).

      -The plot was neither simple nor overly complicated. Same with the language, neither terse nor overly decorative.

      -Technology was handled well. Technobabble plot devices without trying to explain them with some consequences of the technology that follow logically.

      -Transhumanity without the utopia/space-pirate dichotomy that tends to pop up. I can see where this might feed into Eclipse Phase (a tabletop roleplaying game, that, if you're into transhumanist themes, even if you aren't into roleplaying, offers wonderful reading). It also hints at a world with technology that is as misused as one might imagine from the way humans currently interact with each other.For example, pay attention to the consciousness-transfer scene and what happens to the old body. He said he turned it off and it is now brain dead. There was parallel consciousness for a while. Was the consciousness duplicated rather than transferred?

      -Wonderful action scenes (again, I wasn't confused as to what was going on) that were reminiscent of Armor and The Forever War (I haven't read Starship Troopers, but I hear that the comparison might also work).
    • 3/5

      John Perry enlists with then Colonial Defense Forces. Which is to say, we're doing another military sci-fi, but in this case, the enlistee is 75 years old.

      Whatever magic or technology the CDF has, they only take older people. By then people are old, your friends (and maybe a bunch of family are dead) and the CDF can offer you young life and honor serving to protect human colonists on other worlds. You don't know how this happens, you sign up and agree to effectively (and legally) die on Earth and go to the stars.

      I like this premise, it's interesting. It's interesting to think about whether or not you would make this choice, to think about how experienced people would surely make better soldiers than rash young (teenaged) men and women.

      Perry goes through basic training and starts his service. He discovers that there are only a relatively small number of habitable planets and a whole lot of alien species willing to fight us over them. His cynicism gets cynical and he deals with the brutal day in and out killing of creatures (the Lilliputian-like Covandu crack me up *almost* as much as the Consu; to be fair, I probably would have lost some of my soul with the Covandu as I did do my best Godzilla impressions) of different types and sizes. He does fairly well, being able to think while carrying out his orders and pay attention to things around him many of his fellow troops miss.

      In the end, he does fairly well, and seems to not lose too much of his mind in the process.

      You can feel the influence of Starship Troopers, most definitely, in this book. I'm not feeling Forever War (or any other military sci fi) nearly as much, which is fine. And I really do feel like it stands on its own in military/space opera sci-fi ranks.

      I just really wasn't feeling the non-stop witty banter of the geriatric recruits. I get that they might act juvenile, but the constant banter. Argh. And to be honest, I like Scalzi's (witty/thoughtful/intelligent) writing, but I have to be in the mood for his catchy banter. I was not when I read this book.

      Sadly, I almost liked this as much as Starship Troopers, but not quite. That kinda cracks me up, because I have a hate-on for Heinlein, and I adore Scalzi. If only I could make my opinions of writers reflect how I feel about the book. Oh well.
    • 3/5
      I was expecting a fairly simple read, and while this book won't stretch anybody's noggin too much, it manages to surpass the usual level of it's genre.
    • 4/5
      I managed to almost entirely avoid Heinlein so I can't make that comparison, but Old Man's War is good fun on its own terms. A nice balance of humor and drama, some interesting takes on consciousness and personhood, and lots of fun little ideas - the gun is basically the video game shooter inventory solution (carry ALL the guns and ammo!) and the BrainPal and its various uses are neat. There's a strong streak of surprisingly affecting romance, too. Good stuff.
    • 3/5
      This is the second military science fiction "classic" that I've read after the Forever War.

      I've come to realize that the genre is not for me, mostly because I don't get excited about descriptions of impressive weapons, augmentation systems and blow-for-blow combat, while most of the authors seem to believe that this should be generally enough. This book is a bit less guilty of this shortcoming, but still glosses over or ignores a lot of the interesting questions. Mild spoilers ahead: He takes the easy way out with the morality of following orders and of annihilating a clearly inferior enemy. In the first instance he picks an obnoxious character that decides to disobey an order for the stupidest reason and then gets killed. There was never a real dilemma there, the reader felt no real sympathy for the person or the reasons. In the second instance, the main character "breaks down" when asked to kill a defenseless enemy. I put quotes there because as a reader you still don't feel that and he gets over it quite easily with some silly talk with his colleagues. Other questions are ignored completely, for example why does the CDF not give any technology to earth? why all the secrecy about what the "enlisted" would do? what is the view of the colonists? how or what is running all this? The premise of using the 75 year olds for soldiers is also not very convincing. First of all they could just make them all the way the make the special forces just not include all the enhancements so that they are not as expensive. Second, 50 years of experience of thinking before acting, of weighing your options, of moderating your actions and words could, perhaps, in a sense be useful for an officer, but they would be detrimental for a private. And based on my personal experience, it is not possible to get rid of it in 3 months or even 6 months. In any case, it is not a bad read and I can't say I didn't enjoy it at all, but it still failed to capture my interest and I won't be bothering with the others in the series and probably with this genre in the future.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed OLD MAN'S WAR. It has a solid story, witty dialogue, interesting characters, and enough new twists and themes to invoke the old brain matter. In the beginning I thought it was going to be typical space war story, and although there are body exchanges and understandable rowdiness and soldiering, the introspection, friendship and love story added enough subplots to keep my interest. I loved the skip through various alien races.

      The prose is well done, straight forward and easy reading. I especially loved the banter and insights of old folks in young military bodies. Well done, and recommend for sci-fi lovers who like some science, but not an overload.
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars. My husband and I like to have discussions about books sometimes, and since I just started reading this the other night, we talked about John Scalzi and his works. Apparently, on the one hand my husband likes his books, but at the same time thinks they "wrap up too nicely" for his tastes. That is, he thinks they are without real trials and tribulations, and that they always seem to end with perfect outcomes, tied up neatly in a pretty little bow.Okay, so he might be on to something. In this book, main protagonist John Perry goes through a lot in his career as an old man in a young, genetically enhanced body fighting a war against hostile aliens in space. Still, let's just say things generally end up pretty good for him by the final chapter. My husband has also read more Scalzi books than me, while the only other book I've read by him before this is Fuzzy Nation, and I guess that had a neat and tidy ending as well.But dammit, I've come to the conclusion that that's what I LIKE about his books! I LIKE it when things end well for the protagonist. I LIKE warm, fuzzy happy endings.Sure, sometimes I enjoy darker reads as well, and like the on-edge, suspenseful feeling I get whenever a story's ending or a character's fate is unclear. But that's not why I pick up a John Scalzi book. When I do, I do it to be entertained and to know that I'll be feeling good at the end.And entertained I was, and feel good I do after reading this. Old Man's War did not disappoint, and my rating for this book is a reflection of my enjoyment. JS may not be the the science-fiction world's best writer or best storyteller, but he sure is funny. This book made me laugh out loud, and that typically never happens when I'm reading, even if I recognize something as humorous. But this book had me laughing big time. Hell, even when someone is dying a gruesome death, it's hilarious.
    • 5/5
      Scalzi's 'Old Man's War' is a military/science-fiction story takes place at least a century or so into the future -- the particular time is indeterminate -- but despite that the story starts out on an Earth that feels very familiar. The book is generally in the same category as Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War' and Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Very quickly as we follow the protagonist from Ohio into space Scalzi adds more and more details to mankind's expansion into space and the conflicts that take place there. He adds just enough detail to set up how things work without spending too much time in the mechanics of his universe. His narrative flows very well, is fast-paced, and doesn't really ever get bogged down. I wouldn't say that there is a lot of character development in the book -- there are some aspects of that but the narrative doesn't really get into that in a lot of depth I would say. This isn't necessarily especially detrimental though given the nature of the story.
    • 2/5
      While the premise of [Old Man's War] is interesting, it has been executed so poorly that it propelled me into writing this review to express my annoyance. Old people getting young bodies to fight in an interstellar war for habitable planets with alien species. This calls for reflection on immortality, overpopulation and the consequences of killing sentient extraterrestrial life. However, these themes are brushed aside and paid no attention as the Colonial Defense Forces keep their "you don't have the maths to understand" technology (otherwise known as magic) away from the general population of Earth for no good reason.I worry for the state of modern science fiction, and to no small extent due to the three-term president of SFWA. Judging solely from his debut novel, Scalzi is, frankly, an incompetent writer. His prose lacks any trace of elegance or subtlety (my judgement might be slightly biased by recent exposure to David Foster Wallace's impeccable writing, causing a lesser author's faults to appear magnified). His characters are annoying and unlikable, which wouldn't be an issue had he intended them to be this way. Instead where John Perry, the protagonist whom the reader follows from a first person point of view, is supposed to be a clever and witty individual (even though all his jokes fall flat, even to the other characters in the book), whose greatest sorrow in life is 'not being married anymore,' (apparently it doesn't really matter to whom, since this is his response to what he misses most about his previous life, not his wife, whom we are just briefly given a half-description of at the very beginning of the book) somehow can do no wrong and never has any difficulty with anything (except for holding his breath underwater, which he overcomes in no time flat), only ever has moral qualms after stomping the life out of a few hundred one-inch-tall sentient beings, a whole year into his military service. I don't know about you, but this doesn't scream HERO to me. At one point a character proposes diplomacy as a solution to stop the war, but is ridiculed to no end and ultimately killed, his only reason for existing in the book being to show that war is the answer, alternatives shall be obliterated.What is unforgivable when it comes to Scalzi's characters is their lack of credibility. I guess he couldn't find his 75-year-olds cookie cutter and in its place used a teenagers one. Characters are immature, replaceable and easily forgettable, female characters even more so. We never learn anything about them that would make them distinguishable in any meaningful way, yet Scalzi expects us to care as he informs us of their death (following that most sacred rule of tell, don't show... or was it the other way around). One character's death resulted in everybody in the book collectively going "meh." A fitting response to all deaths in [Old Man's War] and to the book itself.
    • 3/5
      This science fiction novel is divided into three parts. The first part is excellent. The second part is terrible. And the third part is a decent page turner but not particularly good.The opening sentence of Part I is original and promising: "I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army." It then invents a backwater earth where 65 year olds agree to join the interstellar Colonial Defense Forces starting on their 75th birthday--at which point they are transported on a "beanstalk" into orbit and ultimately outer space. They are declared legally dead on Earth and never allowed to return. Slowly over the course of the first third of the book you learn more and more about the human colonization of space, why they recruit at that age, and how they make them fit for battle. This first part also includes some interesting discussions on age, some interesting characters, and the relations between them--as they all leave Earth forever together.The opening of Part II is unoriginal and unpromising: the new recruits meet their foul-mouthed drill instructor who pronounces them the sorriest recruits he's ever seen and then in response to their chuckles says, "I know you’re enjoying my performance at the moment. How delightful! I’m just like all those drill instructors you’ve seen in the movies!" And the drill instructor is, in fact, exactly like the ones you've seen in the movies. Part II is merely bad because it plods through basic training and then a series of battles with aliens of various planets (and as an aside, why do these super-advanced technological cultures always seem to rely more on infantry than we do in the 21st century?). But it is particularly disappointing and terrible because it seems to forget its premise from the first part and the 75 year-olds act like 20 year olds who are all thrilled to be in war, entirely forget Earth, and for the most part seem to forget the friends they made in Part I. One glorious death in battle follows another, none of them particularly moving, as the narrator moves from triumph to triumph.Part III gets a little better. It begins just after the narrator is rescued by a woman he thinks is his dead wife, and then he sees her again. This sets up a somewhat interesting romantic subplot at the same time that the battles coalesce around a single, defined thriller rather than one after the other. By itself, this part would not have made for a particularly good or interesting novel, but it was a reasonable page turner.Old Man's War was generally well reviewed and seemed like it was regarded as one of the better science fiction novels in recent years. I don't read much contemporary science fiction, but it makes you worry about the rest of it--especially the military science fiction subgenre.
    • 5/5
      Been a long time since I read a traditional science fiction novel that engaged and didn't seem stale. Scalzi is great: interesting concept, realistic and engaging characters, good pacing and the military/combat jargon doesn't drag. Good read!
    • 4/5
      Not quite sure how to categorise this one. It's a weird crossover between mil-sf and farce. With a fairly standard recruit tohero storyline, and just a little bit of political commentry on the futility of war. The twist is that in this future universe, with rejunivation technologies around, recruits are only taken aged 75 - the start of their long old age. The spacer human factions run the colonisation efforts in an alien rich galaxy, and their Defense Forces have the technologya dn bear hte brunt of the effort to keep the human species in existance. Signing up as a recruit leaves you legally dead on Earth itself, unable to return, but if you survive your term of service on the front lines, you'll get a decent colony place in a fresh new body.The universally hostile aliens are a bit unimaginative, although to be fair, the soldiers won't be needed in places with peaceful aliens - but the text make sit sound as if there aren't many! Our hero grunt manage sot make himself known and eventually gains the glory that we all knew he was destined for, along the way he makes friends (no enemies though -most of the details of training and life outsdie fo the front lines are glossed over). Some though t has gone into the technology, there's a lot fo hand waving, it just works. The characters are well enough drawn, with some humerous banter between them. I was less convinced by the special forces who didn't come across so belivably.Enjyable, well written, but hardly, epic literature, the balance between gloryfying mankinds inate superiority of fighting over the aliens and the harshness of actual war is just about drawn well enough. But I always feel a little uneasy at any kind of glorification of war, and this isn't an anti-war screed.
    • 5/5
      John Perry does two things on his 75th birthday. He visits his wife's grave for the final time and then he joins the army. This is, of course, no ordinary army. It's the Colonial Defense Force. John joins up because there's nothing to really keep him on Earth any longer and he's tired of feeling old. No one really knows what happens to you when you enlist with the CDF as once you join you can never return to your home planet but the expectation is that they make you young again because who in their right minds want a bunch of geriatrics on the front line? The book is split into three parts as we follow John through initial induction, basic training/initial skirmishes and then what follows.While this book does owe a great deal to some of Robert A. Heinlein's work (particularly Starship Troopers and readily acknowledged by Mr. Scalzi) it is certainly good enough to stand on its own merits. The story is never too heavy handed, either with technology or political/religious themes although they often get touch upon. There is plenty of humour (of the wry and sardonic variety) and some quite touching scenes as well. A good read even if you're not into military SF as a genre. Will definitely be looking for the sequels.
    • 4/5
      This was a real thrill to read. Interesting world, aliens and ideas and truly sympathetic main character. Definitely interested in the sequel. What I didn't like was the finale, I thought the action was lacking and the descriptions of main character lost its inner sharpness which was around at the first half of the book.
    • 5/5
      I've heard a lot of good things about this book over the past few years. I had the opportunity to meet John Scalzi at Phoenix Comicon in 2011, and I bought Old Man's War for him to sign. It's taken me over a year to get around to reading it.This book is so good, it made me forget about a pulsing migraine. I don't think I can say that about any other book, ever.The protagonist, John Perry, is absolutely engaging, but the full cast comes across as human and diverse. The little details just work. Aliens are alien, and defy all stereotypes. Scalzi manages to make John Perry into a remarkable man without making him some over-the-top type of action hero. The actions, the emotions, all feel real, and the novel's effortless flow made it an extremely fast read--even in the midst of a migraine.It's been a while since I read a book good enough to make me need the sequel right away. I think I'll be placing an Amazon order tonight. The other 100+ books in my to-read pile can wait a while longer.
    • 4/5
      Scalzi's acknowledgement of Heinlein's Starship Troopers is appropriate. This was a quick and entertaining read without Heinlein's repugnant heavy-handed browbeating.
    • 3/5
      I've seen this title around for quite a long time. Old Man's War. I have to admit here that from the title (you should never ever judge a book by either its cover OR title, though it's mighty tempting) I thought it was going to be about a war that was caused by the usual - rich old men who want to get richer or keep rich or hide something. The usual. I was pleasantly surprised about the way the soldiers came into being. Sure, the reasons for all the wars and military actions are still about greed, etc. But the fighters, refreshingly, are old men at the end of their life expectancy. This is refreshing. In a way.The reason I even picked up this book, was because on a whim, I bought Zoe's Tale, though I didn't read it until after I - on another, later whim - bought Fuzzy Nation. I read Fuzzy Nation and loved it. Even though Scalzi warns that Fuzzy Nation is unlike any other novel written by him, I still went right from there to Zoe's Tale. Now Zoe's Tale is also reportedly unlike his other books....still I liked it enough that I thought I would buy the very first of this series and try it. I did like it. Not as much as I liked Zoe's Tale or Fuzzy Nation, but I like it enough that I'll be looking out for the next novel - The Ghost Brigades.Old Man's War seemed to me, to read more like an account of a man's journey from old man to soldier than a story. It was interesting, though I'm still not sure if I quite enjoyed the style of narration. It was first person, which I enjoy - but seemed a bit dry. That's okay, though once in a while. It was, after all, an interesting account. The premise was good - when people turn a certain age, they are given a chance to sign up to join the army at the age of 75 years. It's a mystery to everyone on Earth what happens then, because people who join the space army - or Colonial Defence Forces never return to Earth. Joining with the CDF means you give up your entire life. All assets go to relatives, you're declared dead and you never ever return to Earth or expect to see your past family/friends. But in return you are assured a new life, and after two, possibly ten years, you are given the option of retiring from the CDF and living a new lifetime on a settled planet. The first part of the book is about how John Perry turns 75, joins up with the CDF, gets his new life and goes through training. Things are very different now - the least of the changes is his new green skin. After training, he and thousands of other recruits - after some changes - begin a tour of Colonial Defence - with the emphasis on Forces. He's not entirely proud of the way the CDF runs business. However, he's joined and now is part of a squad, so makes the best of it. Afterall, at this point, you're fighting with your troop, your co-soldiers and that's what you focus on. Interesting.The other section of the novel is where he meets Jane Sagan and has an encounter with the Special Forces - aka The Ghost Brigades. The ending of the book leaves an opening for a future as a person - possibly with a mate, possibly farming.There's way more to the novel that the above. There are computer like brains, smartblood, the green skin which has a purpose, and lots of fighting sequences. Some battle strategy and sadly (for me) a little bit of infodumping in the guise of conversations about things such as skip drives, politics, etc. Thankfully, these infodumping conversations were short enough that I wasn't quite tempted to quit reading and each time I almost got the point of the burning stomach feeling, these conversations would end. Those were the only real drawbacks to the novel for me. The rest of the novel, though written a bit dry or emotionless (hey - I enjoy just a touch of feeling, not too much, but not a complete lack, either) was still interesting enough with the SciFi elements that I had fun reading it. So, while I don't quite give it my highest score of six stars, I do rate it at a four stars. It's apparent that Scalzi knows how to write a good plot, and he's good with dialogue. His characters are interesting - and each one holds his own. So even though I didn't LOVE this book, I'm still looking for the next novel which might feature Jane Sagan, and maybe has John Perry in it. Maybe not. Either way, I would like to read The Ghost Brigades and I found overall, his novels interesting and varied enough that if I see his name on a book, I'm going to most likely buy that book.
    • 4/5
      A fun, interesting SF military/space opera in the same vein as Starship Troopers or The Forever War (though not as believable as either). At times there was a hair too much exposition, but the characters were deep enough to remain interesting, though the book lacks the cutting cynicism of Haldeman's Forever War.

      I believe this was Scalzi's debut novel, and if so, it shows a lot of promise.

      I read it on an international flight and thought it was perfect for the job -- and despite a few reservations about its believability, decided to download the sequel for the return trip.
    • 4/5
      This book has just the right mix of sci-fi elements: it's lighthearted, but still has its poignant moments; the science is light years ahead of the modern day but not implausible and fairly well-explained; the characters are likeable and reasonably well-developed; and it places some more-or-less ordinary people in some extraordinary situations, which gives the reader a good opportunity to think about what it would be like to be in those situations.It is set at some indeterminate time in the future. Life on Earth hasn't really changed much, but humans are busy colonizing space, and have to fight hard to keep their colonies. Once people reach the age of 75, they can sign up to join the colonial army. At that age, they have nothing to lose, and the army offers them the promise of rejuvenation. This is a fun premise, and means that the main characters aren't your run-of-the-mill Starship Troopers style of teenagers (the book is clearly a homage to Starship Troopers). All in all, this is a fun, light read - I can't wait to read more John Scalzi.I listened to the audiobook, and it was excellent. The book works well as an audiobook, and the narrator is very good.
    • 4/5
      I'm not normally a fan of military SF, so I might be missing some of the books the other reviewers believe this riffs on, but I enjoyed Old Man's War quite a lot. This book rips along--I read the last 3/4ths of it on a long plane ride, a great way to spend the time--and a lot of it is just fun. No mysteries of the universe being solved here: it's fun and weird and a little sinister, exactly the way I like it.It's a well-known problem that spec fic protagonists tend to be characters far outside the bell curve: the most talented, the most skilled, the Ones With Destiny, etc. This is an extreme example of the form. There's no reason the main character should be so good at the things he's good at, but he is. Something to be aware of, if you're the kind of person who's bothered by that. (The rest of the book is good enough that I didn't mind a whole lot, though.)Still, the book is imaginative, pulling the best aspects of pulp scifi into a better plot structure, and it has some surprising moments of humor. Probably not the best book I'll read in 2012, but among the most entertaining.
    • 4/5
      I've heard a lot of people criticizing Old Man's War as a ripoff of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. I've read The Forever War, and while this book does have some similarities, it's pretty light reading. The premise of OMW is that, at the age of 75, you can join the military. The protagonist, John Perry, joins up with the Colonial Defense Forces shortly after the death of his wife. If he survives his enlistment, he'll be allowed to live on a colony off-planet. In this particular future, earth is actually a backwater planet, and not even the center of galactic politics. Humans have "skip-drive" technology which allows them to travel the stars and colonize what few habitable worlds there are out there. However, that brings them into conflict with other alien races.OMW is a relatively interesting premise (particularly how they take a 75 yr. old and make them battle-ready). That being said, it's not wholly unique, but it works. Then again, what story these days is "wholly unique"? It addresses a few issues that go along with the territory of colonization, war, and humanity's place on the galactic stage, but it doesn't dwell heavily on these topics. Depending on what you're looking for, this can be a good or a bad thing. OMW is not really heavy-duty science fiction. It doesn't bog down in endless philosophical or technical discussion. Some people are a bit off-put by Scalzi's use of humor, but I found it lighthearted and well-placed, so as to not make the book seem too serious. If I have one serious gripe, it's that only the main character and one other (whom I'm not going to name) are really fleshed out. The rest seem a bit underdeveloped and forgettable. Simply put, the book is written to be entertaining, and that's what it is.Overall, I'd give Old Man's War a 4 out of 5. It's enjoyable to read, but that's really all there is. It's not a deep or thought-provoking read, nor is it great literature. Rather it's meant to be a likeable and easygoing read, which is what it is. If you enjoyed Haldeman's The Forever War, then you'll probably like this.
    • 4/5
      Man achieves space travel and finds that the universe is not a happy place.This was a freebie ebook giveaway a while back from Tor.com, and I think my reaction proves that giving away the first book will lead to more sales. This was awesome. The premise of this story is amazing, and I had a hard time putting it down. I tried to figure out what I would do if was had the choice given to 75-year-olds in Scalzi's earth. In the end, I would like to think I would not enlist, but at the same time, I make that decision from the comfort of a body that is still young and in relatively good shape and health. The story is fast-paced, and is punctuated by people John knew dying, many in pretty horrific ways.But I really want to know more about the back-story, and how the CDF was founded, and this corporate (evil?) entity that backs it.Off to purchase the rest of the series ASAP.