Old Man's War

I was moved from the opening lines of Old Man’s War. An ordinary man of 75 visits his wife’s grave, then joins the army. What? Oh yeah, now I understand. Mind uploading is integral to this book, first published in 2005, and it will soon be the rage in the real world of our near future. In Old Man’s War we experience mind uploading through the character, John Perry, and other new recruits. Then we fight. Perry becomes a war hero, and he crosses paths with his wife along the way. What? I thought she was dead? Oh… show more.

Very well entailed, to the point where the author could almost be elucidating about nothing but it would still be readable, this story wraps itself around an incredibly novel idea that has been copied all too often in later author's work. Often with deficient results.

The consciousness of age-old men and women is transferred into the body of a much younger and abnormally fit fighting entity that will be used by the earth against alien invaders.

A well-scripted tale that delves both into the evolution of human thought, and the juvenile rigors of military life that are imposed onto a… show more.

While I love the whiz-bang-pew of space battles, I also like to laugh. John Scalzi manages to make me do both. I love the wrinkle in this story—the main character enlists in the colonial military on his 75th birthday, knowing that once he leaves Earth, he will never be allowed to return. Watching an older man—he gets a younger body, but he’s still 75 mentally—who has put up with all the normal crap of life, and experienced a full lifetime, deal with the situation in space is really great, not only because the main character has a great sense… show more.

John Perry has lived a full life as a run-of-the-mill, normal guy. He’s a 75-year-old widower who’s a retired ad writer. This all changes when he enlists in the CDF, is given a new, young body, and ventures through the galaxy to fight hostile alien species. A dream come true, right? Absolutely. As an added bonus, the Old Man’s War sex scenes are neck-and-neck in unabashed, bacchanal hilarity with the ones found in The Broken Earth Trilogy. When we talk about Perry and Essun (above), we’re talking about badasses in the bedroom as well.