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.
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