Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: old soldiers, new bodies

Old Man’s War is John Scalzi’s 2005 debut, and it has one of the great hooks in modern science fiction. On Earth, a seventy-five-year-old can volunteer for the Colonial Defense Forces, and if they survive training they are given a new body. John Perry, a widower with nothing left to lose, signs up. What follows is a war story with a sense of humour and a conscience.

The idea behind it

The bargain is the book. Earth is crowded and poor, the colonies are rich and fought over, and the Colonial Defense Forces need soldiers. They cannot recruit the young, so they recruit the old, and they pay in the only currency that matters to someone at seventy-five: more time, in a body that works. The catch is that volunteers leave Earth forever and their families are told they died on their hundredth birthday. It is a clean, cruel deal, and Scalzi builds the whole novel on it.

The tone is what keeps it from being grim. Perry is funny, observant and decent, and the book’s voice is his. It is a Heinlein-style future written by someone who has read Heinlein and has some reservations, which is why the soldiers here get to be people rather than a lecture. The banter carries the first half, and the second half quietly turns the premise over and shows you the cost of it.

The story, spoiler-light

Perry enlists on his seventy-fifth birthday and is shipped off Earth. The transformation that follows is the book’s first big reveal, and it is worth arriving at cold, so I will not describe it. Then come basic training, the friendships that form in it, and the deployments: a series of encounters with alien species, all of them fighting for the same thing, which is room.

What holds the middle together is the idea that this is a colony war and everyone is a colonist. The aliens are not villains; they are competitors, and some of them are as frightened as the humans. The back half of the book moves from adventure to something larger and sadder, and it earns the shift because Perry has been paying attention the whole time.

What makes it science fiction

Two ideas do the work. The first is the body, and what it means to be given a new one: the novel is interested in the gap between the person who signed the form and the soldier who comes out the other side. The second is the politics of expansion, the fact that in this future space is finite and the only way to grow is to take. Scalzi does not pretend that is noble, and he does not pretend it can be avoided either.

Its lineage is obvious and it does not hide it. This is a book in conversation with Starship Troopers and The Forever War, and it answers both by being warmer than the first and less bleak than the second.

Who should read it, and who should give it a miss

• Read it if you want military science fiction with a sense of humour and a moral centre.
• Read it if the premise appeals. It is one of the best high concepts in the genre and it pays off.
• Read it if you want a series to start. It is book one and the doorway is wide.
• Give it a miss if you want hard science fiction. The science is a delivery system for the story.
• Give it a miss if you dislike first-person narration with jokes in it. That is the whole voice.
• Give it a miss if you want the war to be simple. It is not, and the book knows it.

Where to start, and what to read next

Start here. It is the first book of the Old Man’s War series and the right entry point. If you like it, the direct sequel is The Ghost Brigades, which follows a different unit and fills in one of the questions this book raises and leaves open. After that come The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale, which tell overlapping stories from two sides.

If what you like most is the voice, John Scalzi’s other work runs on the same pleasure. If what you like is the idea, this sits beside The Forever War and Starship Troopers, and reading all three in a row is a very good argument about what military science fiction is for.

The verdict

A confident debut with a premise strong enough to carry a series and a narrator good enough to carry the book. It is funny for as long as it can be and serious when it has to be, and the switch is honest. Read it for the hook, stay for the fact that Scalzi takes the consequences of his own idea seriously.

Frequently asked questions

Is Old Man’s War part of a series?

Yes. It is the first book of the Old Man’s War series and the correct place to begin. The Ghost Brigades is the direct sequel.

Is it like Starship Troopers?

It is in conversation with it. Both are about soldiers in a war for space, but Scalzi’s book is warmer, funnier and less interested in telling you what to think.

How long is it?

Around three hundred and twenty pages, and it moves quickly. It was published in 2005 and was a Hugo Award nominee.

Where can I buy it?

It is available as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.