Old Man’s War
Author – John Scalzi
Paperback
Pages: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: December 9 2004
ISBN-10: 0765348276
ISBN-13: 978-0765348272
“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the Army.”
Hooks, perhaps more than anything, are key to a debut novel’s success and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War has a great one. A really great one. Old people joining an intergalactic war? Count me intrigued. In the tradition of such Science Fiction classics as Heinlien’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Old Man’s War follows the journey of one young old recruit as he enlists in the army and, at the ripe old age of 75, begins life anew.
If you’ve read and enjoyed those aforementioned novels, you’re sure to enjoy Scalzi’s attempt. In fact, I’d be willing to say that it stands up to those two classics in terms of quality. The thing that sets Old Man’s War apart, in my opinion, is simply the fact that it’s the most recently written. Where most of the technology in Starship Troopers and some of the technology in The Forever War feels dated, Scalzi’s vision of the future feels bleeding edge and a natural evolution of the world we live in now, 50 years after Starship Troopers was first written.
Continue reading