Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.
I’ve been reading the Hugo nominees for best novel, and this was the last one. The blurb states “
Though a lot of SF writers are more or less efficiently continuing the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, Scalzi’s astonishingly proficient first novel reads like an original work by the late grand master
Since my taste runs more to Bill, the Galactic Hero, I’m not exactly the target market. On the other hand, having read Starman Jones to the point where I could recite the text when I was 14, I’m not totally ignorant of Heinlein either.
In terms of the standard features, Scalzi doesn’t do a bad job. We get the recruiting office, a pretty good drill sergeant from Hell, the usual battle scenes and the inculcation of a military ethos, along with a recognition that “War is Hell”. Heinlein fans will love all this. And there’s the twist in the title. The colonial defence forces only recruit 75-year olds, for reasons that are explained a few chapters into the book. {The later appearance of the Ghost Brigades (I’ll avoid a spoiler on this), seems to me to undermine the rationale, but maybe this will be explained in the subsequent eponymous book.}
Where the book fails, in my view, is as hard science fiction. As you’d expect from the genre the underlying view is what might be called interstellar realism; the galaxy is a tough place and there are a lot of species out there eager to seize our planets and eat us. But Scalzi gives no answer to the Fermi problem: how come the neighbours haven’t already dropped in for dinner, instead of waiting for us to go out to meet them. And even when the book is set, Earth is mysteriously immune from external attack, despite the absence of any of the defence forces that are needed everywhere else.
Then there’s Earth itself. The book is set at least a couple of hundred years after Earth has developed an interstellar space drive, but apart from that it could be set in 1990 (in fact, apart from a passing reference to an office computer, it could be set in the 1950s). The hero is a retired advertising agent, and his companions have similarly 20th century jobs. He produces a driving license as ID, signs up in a strip mall and takes a plane to the spaceport.
I know you’re supposed to suspend disbelief, but all this goes beyond my capacity, I’m afraid.
John Quiggin 
… but apart from that it could be set in 1990 (in fact, apart from a passing reference to an office computer, it could be set in the 1950s).
OTOH as this line points out, those 1950’s authors who made the 1990’s radically different from the 1950’s were prolly overestimating the affects of technology on the daily living of normal ppl.
Does anyone want to postulate a particular piece of technology that would radically alter how the average person lives?
John,
If Bill the Galactic Hero is more your sort of thing than Straship Troopers you might want to check out Robert Shaw’s Who Goes Here? Assuming, of course, thta you haven’t already!
Factory: I would give the common car as an example. It allows one to move long distances from home to work. Unlike a train, it gives the driver a lot of freedom to choose his or her route. The downsides is that it produces CO2. A little at a time is ok, but a lot leads to the melting of Greenland.
I haven’t read the book, but it sounds like it assumes the existence of cars; “driving license” is a dead giveaway. But that sounds a little implausible to me. There may not be enough petrol in the future to run automobiles.
I admit there’s hydrogen, but the problem is storing the damned think in an energy-efficient form. Having mini-Hindenburgs on the Pacific Motorway every day may make the book more interesting…
I don’t want JQ to give more of the plot away, but I wonder what sort of “government” is assumed in the book. Is it a boring but benign “Federation”? That’s an old trope of Heinlein that I find really implausible. As an example, it would be hard to federate the Earth in the way that Australia federated the six states. About 200 sets of politicians would be squabbling over “What’s in it for me?”, and the strong jingoistic partners (China and the U.S.) would be working behind the scenes to make the central government as weak as possible. And before you ask, the UN is in no way a federation.
Did you finish Learning the World, John? What do you make of it? (Haven’t seen any follow-up to your post on that – apologies if I’ve missed it.)
Gummo, I’ll chase this one up
Down & Out, I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that the nation-state system is pretty much identical to that of today. There is supposed to have been a minor war in the fairly recent past, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Iraq had just turned the corner.
Warbo, I finished it and enjoyed it. More soon, I hope.