Old Man's war

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction / Scalzi, John, Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Scalzi, John
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Scalzi, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Scalzi, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Scalzi, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Geriatric Starship Troopers. Not particularly good, but it is fun. submitted by eknapp on July 24, 2013, 5:57pm In Earth's future, the galaxy is crowded and there's a lot of competition among its many sentient races for habitable planets. Humanity's solution is to recruit septuagenarians who are tired of being old and feeble, sticking them in engineered, upgraded pseudo-human bodies, and sending them off to fight for Earth's colonies.

We follow a single recruit from the day he enlists, through the long scary trek into space, the shock (and rediscovered libido) of being in a powerful new body, the rigors and camaraderie of boot camp, and the horrors of battle and pain of losing friends. It's Starship Troopers (the movie not the book) with an elderly green twist.

The science in Old Man's War is squishy-soft. His soldiers have all kinds of wacky superpowers which simply get chalked up to "genetic engineering" or "nanos". These aliens look like crabs, those are like birds, and that one is an inch tall. There was no particular reasoning behind the morphologies, they just wanted to be different and weird. So they were. I did enjoy that one planet was populated by green slime, right out of Dungeons & Dragons.

Overall it reads like a very good amateur novel. Battles and tactics were pretty simple and the protagonist enjoyed Rambo-style luck as bad aliens stood around waiting to be shot. But that didn't keep it from zipping right along and leaving me with a few chuckles along the way.

Fast-paced but weak plot submitted by anacoluthon on August 26, 2019, 2:05pm Old Man's War is an ifast-paced scifi story with interesting characters, aliens, and worlds. However, it feels like it's just episodes of the main character's life with little overarching plot to connect or resolve them in a satisfying way.

Scalzi's breakout submitted by ajh on August 6, 2023, 12:45pm Some people think Scalzi is a Heinlein clone. But no - his characters are always deeper, more nuanced. This was his first (I think) big break, but oh his more recent SciFi is delightful and more fun. (Red Shirts, Kaiju)