Old Man's War
Old Man's War is a military science fiction novel by American writer John Scalzi, published in 2005. His debut novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006.
Old Man's War is the first novel in Scalzi's Old Man's War series. A sequel, The Ghost Brigades, was published in 2006, followed by two other books, The Last Colony and Zoe's Tale. Another book in the series, The Human Division, was published as a serial and then collected in a novel. The next book in the series, The End of All Things, was published in June 2015 as four novellas. The seventh novel The Shattering Peace was released in September 2025.
It was optioned by Paramount Pictures in 2011.
Plot
Introduction
Old Man's War is the story of retiree John Perry and his exploits as a soldier in the Colonial Defense Forces. The first-person narrative follows Perry's military career from CDF recruit to the rank of captain. It is set in a universe heavily populated with life forms, in which various space-going species compete with each other for the scarce planets that are suitable for sustaining life. As a result, Perry must learn to fight a wide variety of aliens. The characters in Old Man's War have enhanced DNA and nanotechnology, giving them advantages in strength, speed, endurance, and situational awareness.Synopsis
John Perry, a 75-year-old retired advertising writer, joins the Colonial Defense Forces who protect human interplanetary colonists. Volunteers sign letters of intent and provide DNA samples at age 65, which John and his now deceased wife Kathy had done ten years prior to the beginning of the story. After visiting his wife's grave to say goodbye, Perry takes a space elevator to the CDF ship Henry Hudson, where he meets Thomas, Jessie, Harry, Alan, Susan and Maggie, fellow retiree volunteers. They dub themselves the "Old Farts".Following a series of sometimes unusual psychological and physical tests, Perry's mind is transplanted into a clone of himself made from collected genetic material. His new body is not only younger, but genetically engineered with enhanced musculature, green skin, and yellow cat-like eyes. He now possesses enormous strength and dexterity, nanobot-enhanced artificial blood, enhanced eyesight and other senses, and most critically, a BrainPal—a neural interface that, among other capabilities, allows Perry to communicate with other members of the CDF via thought.
After a week of frivolity and libertinism in their new bodies, Perry and the other recruits land on Beta Pyxis III for basic training. During this training, the CDF's heritage in the United States armed forces is made clear when the recruits are taught the Rifleman's Creed. Perry's drill instructor, Master Sergeant Ruiz, adopts a tough and disdainful persona towards recruits, but discovers Perry is the creator of an advertising slogan Ruiz adopted as a personal mantra. As a dubious gesture of respect, Perry is given the job of platoon leader during the weeks of training before he is shipped out to the CDF ship Modesto. His first engagement is with the Consu, a fierce, incredibly intelligent and religiously zealous alien species. Perry improvises a tactic which enables the CDF to win this first battle. This is soon followed by a number of battles with, among others, the bear-like Whaidians and the tiny Covandu. By the end of this last engagement Perry begins to suffer psychological distress over killing the Liliputian Covandu and accepts that he has transformed both physically and mentally.
Now a veteran, Perry participates in the Battle for Coral. The planet contains coral reefs valuable to the attacking Rraey, as well as a human colony. The CDF plans to rapidly counterattack with a small force before the Rraey establish their coral strip mining operations, but the Rraey are somehow able to predict the appearance of a space ship's skip drive and use this knowledge to ambush and destroy CDF ships as they arrive in the Coral system. Perry's quick thinking allows him and his fellow soldiers on a transport shuttle to escape the wreckage of the Modesto and make for the planet's surface, but they are shot down. Everyone but Perry is killed in the crash; Perry is grievously wounded. Perry is left for dead by a Rraey search party, and he is rescued by members of the mysterious "Ghost Brigades", the Special Forces units of the CDF. Perry thinks he has died when he sees a younger green version of his dead wife Kathy, who in reality is Jane Sagan, the leader of the Ghost Brigades rescue team.
After being repaired, Perry encounters Sagan, who turns out to have been grown based on Kathy Perry's DNA sample, as legally allowed by her letter of intent to join the CDF. Unlike John, Jane has no memories of Kathy's life, as she is only six years old, but after learning about Kathy, Jane seeks to learn more from John about being a "realborn" person and what kind of life one can have outside the CDF.
Sagan manipulates her chain of command to promote John to an advisory role to gather information from the Consu during a ritualistic meeting to obtain information. Perry discovers that the Rraey had received tachyon-based skip-drive detection technology from the Consu, which was used to set up the ambush at Coral. Perry also manipulates his chain of command to have the last two of his friends from the "Old Farts" transferred out of combat duty to military research. Sagan and Perry then participate in a Special Forces operation in an attempt to capture or destroy the borrowed Consu technology in advance of a major attack to recapture Coral from the Rraey. Perry is instrumental in the successful outcome of the battle by capturing the technical manual for the Consu detection system, and saving Sagan's life after she is severely wounded. However, he never sees her again after delivering her to a shuttle which returns her to the secretive Ghost Brigades.
At the conclusion of the book, Perry is promoted to captain following his deeds at Coral and, despite the separation, holds hope of reuniting with Sagan when their terms of service conclude.
Fictional technology
Skip Drive
Old Man's War introduces a new form of FTL interstellar travel called a Skip Drive. The Skip Drive takes an object like a spaceship, punches a hole in space, and places the object at its destination in a new, essentially identical universe. There are limits on the skip drive due to the characters not knowing all there is to know about how it works. The limitations are as follows:- The object skipping must not be near a major gravity well.
- The object skipping cannot skip out too far.
More advanced races, notably the Consu, have a more complex understanding of skip drives and can even detect ships skipping into a system.
BrainPal
The BrainPal is a neural implant that allows members of the Colonial Defense Forces to send and receive data, including speech, battle plans and much more. CDF soldiers use their BrainPals to communicate with each other, translate alien languages, watch classic cartoons, and read old books.A BrainPal allows a CDF soldier to operate colonial technology by thought alone. A CDF rifle can only be used by someone with a BrainPal.
To the members of the Ghost Brigades the BrainPal does much more: it provides a synthetic consciousness that allows the newborn soldiers to function until their own identities develop. This gives people who meet Special Forces the impression that they know everything. When presented with a situation that is unfamiliar to the newborn soldier, the BrainPal loads the relevant and important information directly into the mind at an amazing rate.
MP-35
The MP-35, also known as "empee", is the main infantry weapon used by the Colonial Defense Force.The weapon features self-assembling and self-repairing capabilities, the ability to interface with BrainPal, and ammunition composed of nano-robotic bullets able to transform immediately into any type of projectile desired, including bullets, incendiaries, explosives, and beams. These features make it superior to conventional weapon types, as it solves the problem of excessive weight associated with carrying multiple weapons, weapon jamming, and enemy use. The weapon proved to be very versatile and adaptable in the battlefield, as shown in Perry's first battle against the Consu where he took full advantage of the weapon's adaptability and used BrainPal to program a sequence of fire that exploited the enemies' weakness to win the battle.
Beanstalk
The Beanstalk is a space elevator, built by the CDF, connecting Earth and the CDF space station. The space elevator, officially built to transport colonists and CDF recruits to space, displayed the CDF's power and technological prowess. To Earth's inhabitants, the space elevator defied physics and was extremely impractical. Henry hypothesized that the entire concept of the Beanstalk was taken from another alien species. In real life, John Scalzi notes that the feasibility and practical application of a space elevator is speculative.Alien species
Consu
The Consu are a fierce, technologically advanced, and strongly religious alien race. They believe in helping deserving races reach "Ungkat", a state of perfection for a whole race.The Consu are the most advanced alien race presented in the Old Man's War. Their home system is surrounded by an inpenetrable energy shield, powered by a Dyson sphere, which harnesses all the energy output of its local sun's companion dwarf star. The Consu possess technology so advanced that even the CDF is unable to reverse-engineer or even fully understand it, such as tachyon detectors. Despite being the most technologically advanced out of all the alien races presented in the novel, in any conflict the Consu will scale their weapons' technology to that of their opponent in order to keep the battle fair. Unlike other alien species, the Consu do not fight for territory, but for religious motives, believing that any aliens killed by Consu warriors are thereby guaranteed another place in the cycle of creation. The Consu rarely meet with outsiders and any individual that does is inevitably a criminal or other undesirable. Following the meeting, the meeting dome is imploded and shot into a black hole so that it cannot defile any other Consu.