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Perfect for an entry-level sci-fi reader and the ideal addition to a veteran fan's collection, John Scalzi's Old Man's War will take audiences on a heart-stopping adventure into the far corners of the universe.
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. Old Man's War Series #1 Old Man's War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe's Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: "After the Coup" Other Tor Books The Android's Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
JulesJones: Two books which examine in different ways what happens to the recruits in an interstellar war who by the very nature of their service can never go back to their home culture.
JulesJones: The obvious Heinlein influence on Scalzi's "Old Man's War" is "Starship Troopers", but this also covers some of the same ground as Heinlein's YA "Space Cadet".
tottman: 47 Echo lacks the depth (and the universe-spanning scope) of Old Man's War, but the story and the fighting are both quite enjoyable. I won't say it's nearly as good as Old Man's War, but it is a quick, fun enjoyable read. And there's a lot of potential from this author I hope to see come out in future books.… (more)
Well written. Detailed and descriptive settings and characters/aliens. Told in three Parts. Part 1 - interesting; Part 2 - interesting, then repetitive re the messaging; Part 3 - interesting again. Part of a series. Won't be reading more in this universe. ( )
I find this book enjoyable and clever. It starts with a good idea about the future of space colonization, and then devolves in a somewhat pleasant way into basically short stories about the missions of the CDF in space as they fight for control of various planets with other species. The ideas were good, the story moved at a good pace, and the writing was less bad than most similar science fiction (and was indeed quite solid given the plot/the need for a mix of show and tell given the genre). Definitely the book ended feeling more like a loose collection of ideas than one coherent story, as the final battles related to plot that was building only since 100 pages prior, and not for the whole book, but I think this meandering style fit with the book's tone nicely. Overall, recommended to those who are looking for something thought provoking but not overly serious in the science fiction genre. ( )
Fast-paced, gripping and filled with human moments and a witty, intelligent protagonist. I don't feel it's too beneficial to give too much information about the story of the book in a review as it's better taken without knowledge of what's coming up - even in a war book, there's plenty of intrigue and revelations to be had about the plot.
Highly recommend to any fan of sci-fi, and I will be picking up the sequel. ( )
To Regan Avery, first reader extraordinaire, And always to Kristine and Athena.
First words
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday.
Quotations
There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.
The reason we use force...is that force is the easiest thing to use. It's fast, it's straightforward, and compared to the complexities of diplomacy, it's simple. You either hold a piece of land or you don't. As opposed to diplomacy, which is intellectually a much more difficult enterprise.
. . . "There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more."
He stared at us grimly. "Is any of this getting through? Do any of you understand what I'm trying to tell you? You don't have these shiny new bodies and pretty new weapons because we want to give you an unfair advantage. You have these bodies and weapons because they are the absolute minimum that will allow you to fight and survive out there. We don't want to give you these bodies, you dipshits. It's just that if we didn't, the human race would already be extinct."
Last words
I haven't seen her again, but I know I will. Soon. Soon enough.
Perfect for an entry-level sci-fi reader and the ideal addition to a veteran fan's collection, John Scalzi's Old Man's War will take audiences on a heart-stopping adventure into the far corners of the universe.
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. Old Man's War Series #1 Old Man's War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe's Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: "After the Coup" Other Tor Books The Android's Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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OCTOBER READ - SPOILERS - Old Man's War
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