by John Scalzi
The story, written from the first person point of view, starts with our hero, John Perry, reaching his 75th birthday and, after visiting his wife’s grave, enlisting in the Colonial Defence Force. The CDF promise to transport John (in fact all septuagenarians ) off of an Earth that no longer offers him anything but old age and ill health, and give him a new life and a second chance at youth. In return, John must sign up for up for 10 years of military service, fighting to protect Earth’s extra-terrestrial colonies from the myriad alien forces competing for the same lands. This brilliant twist on the coming-of-age-tale has folks from all walks but with a lifetime of wisdom and experience learning to cope as kids again as they get used to this alien way of life.
The first half of the book has the new recruits meeting and bonding, undergoing the rejuvenation process and, inevitably, using their new found youth to excess in all the ways you can imagine – yes, youth is wasted on the young! However, the tone quickly changes when the small group of friends we follow are broken up for basic training. This is where things get interesting as Perry et al learn to to deal with the alien enemy and are forced to forget all their preconceptions of behaviour, customs, religion and culture. On the upside he gets a neural implant (the BrainPal) for communication and entertainment, becomes faster, stronger and fitter than he’s ever been in his life and to top it off, a really cool gun.
This is real ‘Boys Own’ stuff, a classic tale of aliens vs. humans waging an intergalactic war, but told in an easy way without any particular political axe to grind. None of the science is new and is therefore not over-explained. There are nanobots at every turn, as you would expect, and the alien monsters are described in enough detail to keep you interested without over elaborating as the story is, after all, about the people not the aliens. Even so, there is some examination of self and what it means to be human that inevitably rises from the plot, but it asks simple questions without over analysis.
The pacing is brisk and the language flows evenly, being economical without feeling sparse, the characters, in the main, are well developed and in places it’s just laugh-out-loud funny. It’s not without criticism though. Every recruit we meet is American with little or no world view and the cheesy “Gee whiz” dialogue underlines the introspective and at times xenophobic behaviour of the CDF. Characters are introduced only to be killed a few pages later lending the whole an episodic feel with one in particular that is so pointless and heavy-handedly naive it lends nothing to the story and annoys more than informs. Then there are the ‘Ghost Squads’, an important part of John Perry’s continuing story I would imagine, but whose genesis doesn’t hold up to tough scrutiny.
But for all that, John Scalzi has done well. He has taken the Heinlein formula for a juvenile novel and crafted from it 300-odd pages of roundly entertaining story for adults, no mean feat in itself, and while it’s a quick read, and not exactly taxing on the brain, it’s is a lot of fun and surprisingly satisfying.
Old Mans War