I remember (in the before-time) when I read Ender's Game for the first time. It was everything I had wanted in a book, and it was what got me back into reading as a hobby. Ever since then, I've always recommended it to people. I've given it to my brother as a gift and to my English cohort, Mister Buch. These days, I almost feel bad that I did, not because the book is bad, 'cause it's not, but because Orson Scott Card is...well, I shouldn't say.
What I will say is that I no longer wish to support him or his views, which are so readily available to the world these days.
This was depressing to me, since science fiction is in flux these days. You can't walk down a proper sci-fi/fantasy aisle in a book store without finding:
1) A metric ton of fantasy novels.
2) An entire section dedicated to Star Wars.
3) A small selection dedicated to Robert Heinlein.
4) A slightly larger selection of books from the Honor Harrington series.
It's hard to find good science fiction these days. Really hard. If I wanted to read a modern fantasy book, how many authors are there lined up? Off the top of my head: Salvatore, Weis & Hickman, Rothfuss, Martin, Sanderson, Stover, Donaldson, Brooks, Butcher, Erikson, Weeks. If I do the same thing with science fiction authors I get...ah...Weber? Bear? Most sci-fi authors these days are writing for Star Wars. That's not a bad thing at all, but it sorta makes that aisle a little wanting.
It's a bit telling when I have to choose from a line-up of science fiction works from half a century ago. But I'm glad I don't have to anymore.
I didn't pick up Old Man's War on impulse, I did it out of spite. John Scalzi's name simply popped up everywhere. Amazon would always recommend his books, Borders would always have them sitting out on a table for me to notice, and Stover eventually did an interview on a blog called "Whatever." Whose blog is this, I wonder? Well, it looks like - dammit!
I won't even go into the whole Stargate Universe thing.
So, I bought Old Man's War to quiet the voices. I took it home, got ten pages into it and...well, yeah, I'm finished with it. I couldn't put it down. Just couldn't. Something was just shouting at me the entire way through: I had found my new sci-fi hero.
Hey, we made it to the actual review! Old Man's War is about a seventy-five-year old man named John Perry. He's recently lost his wife and can't quite see how he can get much more out of his life on Earth. So, he signs up to join the mysterious Colonial Defense Forces military on his birthday, not knowing exactly what he's signing up for. What he does know is that he's about to be declared legally dead, and will never be able to return to Earth for as long as he lives.
Tough break. Eventually, he finds himself traveling across the galaxy in a new, younger, battle-ready body to fight a war the likes of which humanity has never experienced. A war where you might be fighting one alien species one week, and a completely different species the next - and that's assuming you even know how to kill them, a possibility that is always up in the air.
John's real battle isn't about the war, really. He's lost his humanity in little ways, and has to discover what it is he's really fighting for. It's a battle worth experiencing.
Mister Scalzi knows how to write damn good sci-fi. He strikes a fine balance between story and science. You won't be reading this book for the brand of hard sci-fi that makes your head asplode; you'll be reading it for the characters first and foremost, then the story, then the science, then the hard science - in that order, and they're all worth following.
What I loved was the romantic view toward the unknowns of the universe. Scalzi can just dazzle you with bits that make you question the scale of the universe and the beauty that surrounds us in the unknown regions of the galaxy. It felt like Scalzi really got what Sagan was trying to say, and attempted to continue it in little ways.
There were only two things that I didn't like. One was the brevity, because it felt like Scalzi only had a certain amount of space to work with, and the ending feels a bit rushed on account of this (regardless of if it's true or not). The other thing was that, you know, I'm no scientist. I've dabbled in astrophysics, but that was a long time ago, and wherever that information is, it's not in my head. Obviously, there's some hard science in this book, and my gripe lies with the way it was presented.
In the real world, scientists can talk about certain concepts without having to explain them, right? Right. But the reader might not know what these scientists are talking about, so the author has to think of a plot device in order to justify these characters explaining the science willy nilly. Enter the dumb guy at the table, who just doesn't know what these scientists are talking about. There is a dumb guy around pretty much every time a science concept is brought up, which then prompts the scientists to lay it all out on the line. This got kind of annoying. Firstly, because it's a cheap plot device. Secondly, because I don't like identifying with the dumb guy!
But these gripes don't make much of a difference either way. This is a fantastic book and one of the best science fiction books I've read in a very, very long time. Authors just can't seem to figure out what the point of sci-fi is these days, but I think Scalzi is very much on the right track.
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