Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
I'm seriously starting to wonder if there's something wrong with me. I mean, aside from the obvious.
Here's another acclaimed, well-loved science fiction novel from one of the genre's most famous writers, and I'm sorry. I just don't get it. It feels not quite one thing, not quite another; not quite funny enough to be a parody, not quite respectful enough to be an homage, not quite original enough to be its own thing.
"Old Man's War" is all about 75-year-old John Perry who, as is common in Scalzi's universe, signs up with the colonial army and has his brain transplanted into the body of a green-skinned ubermensch, and then goes off to fight a series of aliens of varying physiology, ferocity and pronouncability.
It's breezy and light and fun, obviously not taking itself too seriously. There is, for example, a sequence in which Perry fights against one-inch tall aliens, through the simple expedient of stepping on them. Another race has chefs accompany its armed forces so they can serve up dead humans as delicacies. Mildly amusing, yes, but not quite laugh-out-loud funny.
It's patently ludicrous stuff like this which make me feel like a bit of a bugbear for pointing out that, for a start, the central premise doesn't make any goddamn sense. If I can make super-soldier clones whenever I like, it seems a little unlikely that I'm going to fill them up with the psyches of elderly retirees, unless I wanted to do battle with a particularly vicious race of jigsaw puzzle pieces. It later turns out that the colonial army doesn't even need to use the brains of real people of make their soldiers, just to double down on the fundamental what-the-fuckery running through the book.
The plot is "Starship Troopers" -lite, perhaps deliberately so, but the writing isn't nearly sharp or biting enough to mount any kind of real criticism of the kind of writing or world-view Heinlein represents. Which should be an easy target since Heinlein spends half of "Troopers" expounding on how great it would be if we all lived in a military dictatorship. "Old Man's War" vaguely suggests that might be, you know, oh, a little bad, since, well, we might end up using violence as a first resort which, well, and OH COME ON. I get that Scalzi admires Heinlein, but if you're going to write satire, go full throttle, rev that engine, let it roar, otherwise the criticism just comes out like a confused fart. In the end, I'm still not even sure if he even intended any criticism or not.
Well, OK, I'll admit that gently poking fun would still be alright, if there was some point to it, but none of the possible themes stay in the book's focus long enough for anything to really register. It might have something to say about ageing and our treatment of the elderly and the way--nope sorry, now everyone is a genetically enhanced superman, so maybe its about the mil--wrong again, we're on to the meaning of marr--ha ha, wrong again.
I'll quote from Wikipedia here:
"Old Man's War sits in the military science fiction genre but themes of the ethics of life extension, friendship, marriage, the significance of mortality, what makes one human, and individual identity are present within the novel."
No. Sorry folks, but no. Just mentioning something for a couple of chapters does not mean the themes "are present within the novel." Nor, to my mind, does something like "marriage" count as a theme. What does the book have to SAY about marriage? Just having two people married in the book doesn't say shit about it. IS life extension ethical? No? Having themes is not a tick-box exercise, ffs, you have to voice an opinion through the writing, back it up, offer some insights.
(To meander a little off-topic, I recently read a post where the writer talked about "self-sacrifice" as a literary theme. No. Self-sacrifice is a plot point. Doesn't make it a theme. A literary theme requires you to make some kind of statement about it, not just name-check it along the way to the conclusion. Otherwise it's just stuff that happens, words you're using to fill the pages.)
The tone is a bit all over the place, too. In the last third of the book, all the silliness comes crashing up against a super-serious subplot where Perry finds the colonial government has (spoilers) used his dead wife's DNA to make another soldier. There are some scenes which are nice and touching in a Hallmark Card-y kind of way, but again, this all comes as jarring after the previous X-hundred pages of over-the-top bug splatter combat scenes.
So with all that, I'm just plain stumped. I'm not sure why this was nominated for the Hugo, way back in 2006, unless Hugo voters are subject to some strange fads, fashions or passions I'm not getting. Is US science fiction really so dour that a light-hearted, fun read wowed people so much they felt it was the best novel written all year? Or am I the one who has become too dour, too out of step with modern tastes, a lonely old man railing against the tides of time?
Must be about time for me to sign up for the army, then.
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