Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
May. 1st, 2011 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news for humanity is that we have finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that there are few planets out there fit to live on – and plenty of alien races willing to compete for them. Therefore we must fight: to defend Earth itself, and to stake our claim to planetary living space. Far from Earth this conflict has been going on for decades, brutal, bloody and unyielding.
Earth itself is now a backwater, with the bulk of humanity’s resources in the hands of Colonial Defense Forces. But you cannot join the CDF until you reach retirement age because they don’t want young people: only those with the knowledge and skills amassed during decades of living. Once you join CDF, you’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. First come two years at the front and, if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own on one of those hard-won colony planets.
When John Perry agrees to this deal, he has only the vaguest idea of what to expect. Because, light years from home, the actual fight he faces is far harder than he could imagine ... and what he himself will become is far stranger still.
On John Perry’s 75th birthday he visits his wife’s grave to say goodbye and then joins the army. Mankind has mastered space travel and is setting up colonies on other worlds. But there are few hospitable planets out there and many other species competing for them. Perry joins the Colonial Defence Force (CDF), which protects humanity’s colonial interests but only wants people with life experience to sign up. In return for 10 years service volunteers will get the chance to be young again – assuming they survive their tour of duty.
Perry finds himself given a new (albeit green) super improved body, is trained how to use it and then sent out to defend the colonies. Exposed to new technology, new worlds and new species is weird enough, but then during a mission to reclaim a planet he meets another soldier who reminds him of his dead wife ...
John Scalzi’s novel is an action-packed military SF thriller with an emotional core both through its protagonist’s relationship and connection to his dead wife and the bonds that tie Perry to the other recruits.
A lot of thought has gone into the speculative elements of the story – from the ‘stalks’ that connect the Earth to the CDF’s space station, the biotechnology that gives the volunteers their new bodies and the ‘skip’ drives that power the star ships. I can’t comment on the scientific accuracy, but they seem plausible and are easy-to-understand. I also liked the connection that Perry has to the other ‘Old Farts’ who join at the same time as him and whose fates are particularly hard to read.
The central relationship between Perry and the woman he believes to be a clone of his wife Jane was less convincing, mainly because it doesn’t really emerge until the final third of the novel and when it does it feels rushed. It also suffers because Jane exists more as a series of expositional paragraphs than a natural character in her own right. Finally, Scalzi’s decision to tell the story from Perry’s first person historical perspective takes away some of the tension as it’s obvious that no matter how dangerous the situations Perry faces, he’s obviously survived them.
Saying all this though, it is an entertaining and well-paced read and there are plenty of well-handled action scenes and as such, I’d be interested in reading more about the future that Scalzi’s created.
The Verdict:
The first in a military SF series, John Scalzi’s created a fast-paced, action filled read with plenty of interesting SF concepts that read plausibly. I was less convinced by the central emotion storyline, mainly because it doesn’t really get developed until late into the book and the female character is under-developed. However it’s an entertaining read and there’s enough to it that I’d like to read more in the series.
John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news for humanity is that we have finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that there are few planets out there fit to live on – and plenty of alien races willing to compete for them. Therefore we must fight: to defend Earth itself, and to stake our claim to planetary living space. Far from Earth this conflict has been going on for decades, brutal, bloody and unyielding.
Earth itself is now a backwater, with the bulk of humanity’s resources in the hands of Colonial Defense Forces. But you cannot join the CDF until you reach retirement age because they don’t want young people: only those with the knowledge and skills amassed during decades of living. Once you join CDF, you’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. First come two years at the front and, if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own on one of those hard-won colony planets.
When John Perry agrees to this deal, he has only the vaguest idea of what to expect. Because, light years from home, the actual fight he faces is far harder than he could imagine ... and what he himself will become is far stranger still.
On John Perry’s 75th birthday he visits his wife’s grave to say goodbye and then joins the army. Mankind has mastered space travel and is setting up colonies on other worlds. But there are few hospitable planets out there and many other species competing for them. Perry joins the Colonial Defence Force (CDF), which protects humanity’s colonial interests but only wants people with life experience to sign up. In return for 10 years service volunteers will get the chance to be young again – assuming they survive their tour of duty.
Perry finds himself given a new (albeit green) super improved body, is trained how to use it and then sent out to defend the colonies. Exposed to new technology, new worlds and new species is weird enough, but then during a mission to reclaim a planet he meets another soldier who reminds him of his dead wife ...
John Scalzi’s novel is an action-packed military SF thriller with an emotional core both through its protagonist’s relationship and connection to his dead wife and the bonds that tie Perry to the other recruits.
A lot of thought has gone into the speculative elements of the story – from the ‘stalks’ that connect the Earth to the CDF’s space station, the biotechnology that gives the volunteers their new bodies and the ‘skip’ drives that power the star ships. I can’t comment on the scientific accuracy, but they seem plausible and are easy-to-understand. I also liked the connection that Perry has to the other ‘Old Farts’ who join at the same time as him and whose fates are particularly hard to read.
The central relationship between Perry and the woman he believes to be a clone of his wife Jane was less convincing, mainly because it doesn’t really emerge until the final third of the novel and when it does it feels rushed. It also suffers because Jane exists more as a series of expositional paragraphs than a natural character in her own right. Finally, Scalzi’s decision to tell the story from Perry’s first person historical perspective takes away some of the tension as it’s obvious that no matter how dangerous the situations Perry faces, he’s obviously survived them.
Saying all this though, it is an entertaining and well-paced read and there are plenty of well-handled action scenes and as such, I’d be interested in reading more about the future that Scalzi’s created.
The Verdict:
The first in a military SF series, John Scalzi’s created a fast-paced, action filled read with plenty of interesting SF concepts that read plausibly. I was less convinced by the central emotion storyline, mainly because it doesn’t really get developed until late into the book and the female character is under-developed. However it’s an entertaining read and there’s enough to it that I’d like to read more in the series.
