Old Man’s War

John Scalzi
2005

I’ve seen quite a lot of good reviews for this book and I’m glad I finally got around to picking up a copy. Military based Sci-Fi tends to either be very good or absolutely awful, and this was definitely very good. The premise is that humans can migrate to other systems, but not those from a privileged western background. For those people the only way off earth is by waiting until the age of 75 and enlisting as a soldier. They sign up at 65 and then if they are still alive by 75 they leave earth forever.

The universe is a big place, but the useful planets are limited and alien species are fighting both humans and each other for them. The Colonial Defence Forces are not only a ticket to a new life, but a new body too. No one on earth is sure, because information that comes back is tightly controlled, but the recruits believe that the CDF has a way of making people young again. After all, surely they wouldn’t want 75 year old bodies fighting for them? When John Perry joins up he finds that in fact they have entirely new bodies to transfer over to.

There are some interesting issues raised here, and not least of those is the question of what makes a person themselves. When you can transfer into a new body, and use software to communicate mind-to-mind with your squad, things start to get a little hazy. Scalzi writes very well and he has a fine grasp of the ridiculous his humour is dark and matter of fact.

This would be a very good novel if it just stuck to the basic storyline, but there are hints of more to ponder. When Perry encounters the Ghost Brigades he discovers that the new bodies grown for recruits who died before the age of 75 aren’t going to waste, and he finds that the body that would have been his wife’s is a woman called Jane Sagan and she is only a few years old.

I think that anyone who enjoyed The Forever War or On My Way to Paradise will like this book, and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.