Old Man's War: Volume 1

John Scalzi

Apr 2007 · Old Man's War Book 1 · Sold by Macmillan

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Had to delete this trash as using such filth and even Gods name in vain! This author is sad to use such fowl language as a cheap attention getter! It demonstrating a significant lack of vocabulary and imagination . Smarter folks are able to craft more creative sentences. The use of such language, is that it leads to coarseness of soul and eventually to coarseness in one's actions. Manners are the gateway to morals and manners are also the safeguard of morals. What a waist of money!

Couldn't get past chapter 3 or 4, don't remember, don't care. Flat characters, uninteresting dialog that belongs in a sit-com. Reads like a promotional script for some military branch. Characters are tropes - manly men, women whose only goal is to please said manly men. It took me twice the time to read those chapters from rolling my eyes so much. Maybe it gets better. I scanned ahead and when I saw mention of various body parts being bared and so on on most random pages I chose, I realized it wasn't likely worth my time. Wish I could return e-books. Seems like a great premise though. 15 year old me would have loved it.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It started out a bit slow, but quickly found a good groove. By the end it's hard to stop turning pages. The world he's created is compelling and self consistent. There's nothing worse for me than a world that seems blatantly unlikely, except possibly when I can't stand the main character. And it's easy to like his characters.

About the author

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular SF authors of his generation. His debut Old Man's War won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation,and Redshirts (which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel), and 2020's The Last Emperox. Material from his blog, Whatever, has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. Scalzi also serves as critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.