👽🪖 Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Not a Book Report

I enjoy reflecting on the movies, TV, books and other media that I consume. I’m notoriously sentimental. This series documents the books that I read. These aren’t reviews or recommendations. Just a list. For me. Mostly so that I can page through what I read, where I was, and when.

Why did I read it?

I just finished the new James S.A. Corey science fiction novel and enjoyed it, bleak as it was. Instead of returning to my usual dance partners for the reading I do before I fall asleep, Tom Clancy, I decided to find another SciFi book. This came recommended on Good Reads and by the Hugo Award, so I tried it.

What is it?

Category	Value
Title	Old Man’s War
Author	John Scalzi
Year Published	2005
Format	Kindle
Pages	321
ASIN	B000SEIK2S

Publisher Summary

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.

How did I read it?

Category	Value
Date Started	August 19, 2024
Date Finished	August 27, 2024
Places Read	Lisbon

Notes - No Spoilers

• Some of the pitches about this novel are that it is perfect for the “entry level SciFi reader” which is a funny way to describe someone but also probably true. The concepts and tropes are all there. The plot is straightforward enough. You have space battles. All of this does make for a pretty easy read.
• I deliberately choose/chose to update my head canon for this story to exclude the multiversal travel description of skip drives. Like the increasingly hollow stakes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this just cheapens stories and plot lines and characters.