Old Man's War by John Scalzi

I was taken a bit off guard by No Man's War, I'd seen Mr. Scalzi's name whilst tramping about at the Science Fiction Awards Watch Website. I noticed that Mr. Scalzi wrote this book mostly online then sold it as his very first work.  Zoe's Tale is the fourth book in this saga, and I see that it has been nominated for the Hugo this year, so I have at least three more of this epic to look forward to.  I say I was taken off guard because Old Man's War is a very fine work!  I read the whole book in just three days.  Mr. Scalzi has a very good sense of character, in many ways it is 'what he leaves out' that distinguishes him.  He keeps the book at a good clip and doesn't waste our time with superfluous embellishments that lesser writers of the Genre tend to fall for.Old Man's War begins with essentially an old man, John Perry, who is 70 or so and a widower, he lives on an Earth that has the ability to colonize the star systems of outer space.  The catc
h here is that to enter into that outside you have to be old and you have to leave the Earth, for good.  You can't come back.  There is an interesting separation from the CDF (Colonial Defense Forces) and Earth, the CDF is in charge of the entire outer space colonization and doesn't share anything with Earth.  This is an interesting twist as one can imagine that Earth wouldn't be happy with such an unknown operating without its jurisdiction!  Once an old person joins the CDF they are given new bodies and this is what John Perry does... but with the sad note that his beloved wife 'Kathy' has died, as they had planned to join up together.  The just of this 'second life' is that you get a whole new life with the 'nothing to lose' attitude.  Scalzi doesn't go into the dimensions of this choice... he just has John Perry on his way to the CDF, where he will get a new body (green) and will have to fight for ten years a host of alien invaders for Planet
s to colonize.  The just of this is that it's not a safe environment out in space, with a number of other life forms all interested in a relatively small collection of planets.  So to earn his new body and life John Perry has to join this war.Scalzi gets the ball rolling very well here as we see John Perry grow through a number of troubles into a really crack and respected member of the CDF.  As the book continues there are some troubles at times where John has some battle shock and there are notes throughout the book of the people he has lost who came up with him, this 'family' he trained with and has kept in touch with.  The survival rate as a soldier isn't very good, about 30%... which is about right, so many of his friends have died.  The book really picks up as John and his troop must fight the Whaidians at the Battle for Coral... a planet where the human colony was decimated by the Whaidians and the CDF's Armada is destroyed by a 'superiour' al
ien race's gift to the Whaidians, John Perry survives this assault being rescued by a 'Ghost Brigade' these are soldiers like John but from the dead DNA of people who signed up for CDF on Earth but died before they could enroll... like John's wife Kathy.... and of course that is what happens, as John's wife is suddenly before him but she isn't really his wife but an artificially engineered persona named Jane Sagan.As the book continues John gets to know Jane Sagan and it's pretty interesting in that John (and two of his old friends) are the only soldiers to have survived the assault to get Coral back.  So it is pretty much a disaster for the CDF as they try to understand how the Whaidians learned of where they would be entering Coral Space.  And this forms the last part of the book as John becomes a really important part of the Colonial effort as victory and heroism become him.  Mr. Scalzi really has a good thing going, as he very deftly handles the book.John
Scalzi won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer for Old Man's War, and it was well deserved.

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