Old Man’s War
John Scalzi
311 pages
published in 2005
John Scalzi’s debts to Heinlein in Old Man’s War are indeed obvious as he says in his afterword. Even without what looks to be a shootout to the opening scenes of Starship Troopers halfway through the novel it’s pretty obvious where Scalzi got his inspiration from. In structure, plot and protagonist Old Man’s War could fit in neatly with any of Heinlein’s coming of age stories like Space Cadet or The Tunnel in the Sky in which a young man is forced to grow up quickly to confront a hostile universe. The only difference is that John Perry is not a young man, but a seventyfive years old widower when he signs up for his stint with the Colonial Defence Forces.
Apart from that, John fulfills the same role as Rico in Starship Troopers, that of the new recruit who we’ll follow through basis training and combat, somebody who needs to be educated in the true nature of the world he lives in and who can function as a stand in for the reader. Where the two differ is that John obviously is not a callow teenager, but somebody who lived a long and fulfilling life, who saw a chance to regain his youth and took it, without knowing or caring too much about what he’s getting himself into.
Which turns out to be getting his consciousness transferred into a completely new body, adapted for combat, faster, better, stronger, tougher than a regular human body. It’s obviously also much younger than his old one and is fully functional biologically too, without any unpleasant side effects — cue the orgy as hundreds of seventyfive year olds who’ve gotten their youth back get it on. That’s all part of the leisurely introduction of the first part of the book, with things getting kicked up a notch when John and his mates finally get to proper training. Which thanks to their new bodies and especially their integrated onboard computer or “brainpal” as the CDF has named it, is massively accelerated.
Through his training and first battles with various alien species, John Perry learns how the universe really works. Habitable planets are rare in the universe and most species want the same sort of planet, which means that often they have to be fought for. The CDF is there not just to protect humanity’s existing colonies, but also to take over planets from weaker races when possible, while avoiding as much as possible the attention of stronger peoples. It’s a dog eats alien dog eat universe and CDF soldiers can’t allow themselves any illusions about the situation they’re in: their ten year hitch will likely see most of them killed. So far it’s still very much like Starship Troopers but Scalzi lacks Heinlein’s conviction that this is for the best: there are some hints that the situation in Scalzi’s universe isn’t as black and white as all that.
In the third and final part of the book John Perry gets involved into the big battle for Coral, a human colony attacked by the Rraey, one of the alien races most antagonistic to humans, if only because they like the taste of human meat… Scalzi here sets up the conditions for eventual sequels, which indeed were not long in coming, with three so far having been published. Old Man’s War however is a complete story on its own and doesn’t need them to be enjoyed.
But that will probably not stop you from reading them anyway, as Scalzi is such a fun and engaging storyteller that if you have any interest in mil-sf, you’ll want to read these stories. Old Man’s War is a familiar story well told, an updated Starship Troopers without the pseudofascist ideology of Heinlein’s original. Ideologically the idea of humanity versus an universe filled with hostile alien races who can’t be argued with but have to be shot at is still suspect of course, considering the implications of that sort of idea in actually existing history, but you never get the feeling as you do with Heinlein that Scalzi actually believes this stuff other than for the story.
Well written, entertaining, fastpaced and with some depth to it, Old Man’s War is one of the best mil-sf novels I’ve ever read.
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