![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
In the future, septuagenarians will join the army on the promise of renewed youth and the chance to finally leave Earth and see the universe. Of course, most of them will die horribly, but the Colonial Union does make good on those promises first.
This book can generally be summed up as, “I made some new friends and then they died.” There’s the fact that Perry is apparently a very clever and capable soldier despite having been an advertising writer, and a whole subplot about the clone of his dead wife. But mostly it’s, “See the universe, meet interesting people, and get eaten by them.”
I found it interesting that the CU seems to strongly respect intellectual property in regards to its recruits: There’s no mention of them ever making a second clone of anyone. You’d think, given the existence of the Ghost Brigades, that if then “Jane Sagan” model turned out really well, they’d make a couple hundred more and put them on every ship. No need to go fully homogeneous (given that circumstances could change and make Jane less ideal), but why not weed out the dross and bulk up on your best?
Similarly, Scalzi tries to write around the horror of the clone-body-swap, but there really are questions of, “Are you the man in the tank or the man in the prestige?” Are they actually moving consciousness, or just copying memories up to that moment? To the clone body person, the net effect would be identical. I actually wondered if they were going to make something of this, as the doctor mentions putting old bodies in stasis following the transfer, but it never came up again. What’s to say they can’t just grow another clone of Perry a few years later, wheel out the original from stasis and transfer him again for the very first time? Given that the CDF soldiers have no contact with Earth or their former lives, what’s to say they haven’t been in the freezer for decades and this wasn’t their third or fourth tour of duty?
Overall: It’s a very good spec fi space opera with an interesting setting and likeable characters. It’s a shame most of them die. But a fun read, regardless.
This book can generally be summed up as, “I made some new friends and then they died.” There’s the fact that Perry is apparently a very clever and capable soldier despite having been an advertising writer, and a whole subplot about the clone of his dead wife. But mostly it’s, “See the universe, meet interesting people, and get eaten by them.”
I found it interesting that the CU seems to strongly respect intellectual property in regards to its recruits: There’s no mention of them ever making a second clone of anyone. You’d think, given the existence of the Ghost Brigades, that if then “Jane Sagan” model turned out really well, they’d make a couple hundred more and put them on every ship. No need to go fully homogeneous (given that circumstances could change and make Jane less ideal), but why not weed out the dross and bulk up on your best?
Similarly, Scalzi tries to write around the horror of the clone-body-swap, but there really are questions of, “Are you the man in the tank or the man in the prestige?” Are they actually moving consciousness, or just copying memories up to that moment? To the clone body person, the net effect would be identical. I actually wondered if they were going to make something of this, as the doctor mentions putting old bodies in stasis following the transfer, but it never came up again. What’s to say they can’t just grow another clone of Perry a few years later, wheel out the original from stasis and transfer him again for the very first time? Given that the CDF soldiers have no contact with Earth or their former lives, what’s to say they haven’t been in the freezer for decades and this wasn’t their third or fourth tour of duty?
Overall: It’s a very good spec fi space opera with an interesting setting and likeable characters. It’s a shame most of them die. But a fun read, regardless.