Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005)

Off and on throughout my life, I have read a goodly amount in the science fiction genre and one of my favorites was Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. After reading Stranger, I went on to read several others by Heinlein, including his military science fiction semi-classic, Starship Troopers. Thus, when I began Old Man's War and read the cover quote from Publisher's Weekly saying that Scalzi's novel follows the tradition of Heinlein and "reads like an original work by the late grand master," I anticipated a similarity between the two authors. I did not expect the statement to be literally true, but it is. This reads exactly like a Heinlein novel. It's not just that the plot here is very similar to that in Starship Troopers--human soldiers training and then fighting interplanetary wars with aliens. The voice, the tone, the dialogue--all are the same. Old Man's War could have been published as a "lost" Heinlein manuscript and nobody would have doubted it.

Scalzi does provide some twists of his own. Instead of the young soldiers who populate Starship Troopers, we have elderly soldiers who have had their consciousness transferred to young bodies (hence the title). Instead of space-age body armor and gear, we have space-age bodies enhanced almost to superhero status. Instead of one alien arch-enemy, we have several different alien adversaries. Otherwise, the two books are pretty much the same.

This book was fun to read, although I don't really agree with its avid pro-military stance. For a differing viewpoint, I would recommend The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, another military science fiction novel which takes a look at war in a light nearer to my beliefs.