Old Man’s War (Scalzi)

Somewhere, Robert Heinlein is smiling.

John Scalzi‘s Old Man’s War (thanks for the suggestion, Devin!) is a terrific hybrid of military science fiction and a coming-of-age novel… except that the lead character, John Perry, has just turned 75 as the novel opens.

In Perry’s world, humans have colonized a good portion of the universe, but there are lots of competing alien species that are ready to fight for the same limited set of colony worlds, so humans have built an off-planet military force to both protect and acquire colony planets. To build this army, the Colonial Defense Forces offer Earth dwellers a compelling deal: if you enlist at age 65 or older, when you turn 75 they whisk you off Earth and make you young again so you can serve your ten-year enlistment. If you survive, you get rejuvenated again and farmed off on your choice of colony worlds.

Perry takes this deal and gets a good deal more than he bargained for: his new body is green, has a built-in computer, and can do a variety of tricks that I won’t describe here so as not to spoil the fun. Perry is very much a grown-up version of Heinlein’s Juan Rico, or perhaps Haldeman’s William Mandella without quite so much cynicism. The battle sequences are taut, the dialogue is crisp and believable, and the overall world Scalzi builds is very believable. It compares favorably with both Starship Troopers and The Forever War, although I don’t think it has quite the ethical depth of the latter. Still, this is a terrific novel, if a bit short, and I look forward to reading more of Scalzi’s work in the future. Highly recommended.