Krieg der Klone (2005)

***Directly after finishing the story***
So here's the thing: I avoid books written by light-skinned men. Sometimes I do this with intent and sometimes I don't.

Now I know that some people will have Opinions about this.

Come back to me with them after you can say that for the majority of your childhood you imagined yourself 3 shades lighter and with every eye colour except brown because in the genres you read not one main character looked like you did. It was only after being in your mid-twenties that that changed.

Ok? Cool.

The reason I do this is the language these men tend to use makes me feel not only excluded but actively so. In fact the reason I can read Tolkien is because his work doesn't have people like me but because of the time and place he wrote it you know that in his world we actually didn't really exist for him (I'm not really explaining this well but historians will probably get what I mean). So even though reading that is somewhat weird I can still enjoy it because it doesn't feel like it was intentionally done.

For more recent authors it does. 'The Old Guard' who wrote science fiction and fantasy in the sixties when social unrest was a thing but still couldn't imagine a world with people who didn't look like them. And authors who continue to do the same... That feels intentional.

I know nothing about John Scalzi. I assume he's older than me? Perhaps in his 50's? And I assume he's a light-skinned European-American. All things I tend to avoid. But anybody who writes a book that's inspired by Star Trek is someone I want to read. You would think I would've started with that book. And I still don't know why I started with this one. I didn't write it down. The cuteness of the size could be a factor.

I loved it. And there are so many reasons why but for me is the fact that the author wrote a book that acknowledged that other kinds of people exist. I don't need every kind of representation in my stories. I'm perfectly ok when light-skinned authors only write about light-skinned people. But in science fiction I expect more. I expect the acknowledgement that aliens exist and also different kinds of people.

Scalzi did this and it was done in a funny way. Not subtle but that made it better for me. More real.

Also I love romance in stories. And for me that aspect made this story so much better. Maybe because I identified way too much with his answer on what he missed the most.

Another thing I loved was that the story felt like an science fiction episode. It was fun, had great one-liners, there was loss, and action. Even the ending felt bittersweet.

I'm a bit mad that the rest of the series isn't available in the Tor Hardcover mini edition though. Seriously the collecter in me is crying. I annotated this edition because I thought I could do the same with the rest ( )

It's solid space marine fare. It's fast-paced and full of interesting concepts. However, it also glamorizes war and celebrates colonialism, and the characters are pretty one-note. Well written but totally meh for me. ( )

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Fascinating.

I think I put off reading Old Man's War for so long since I confused it in my head with Forever War. Having read the latter, I never considered reading the former. Other than some general themes of humanity fighting various aliens a non-standard military force, they're fairly different.

I really do like the central premise of story, that for the most part, humanity's armies in the universe are made from people who have already lived a full life back on Earth and decided to join the military in exchange for a chance at a few more years of healthy life. There's certainly a lot more to it than that (some I guessed and some I didn't), but it's a pretty cool premise and done well.

That being said, once we get past the first premise and initial training into the actual war--it's still a fairly solid scifi military action book, but it's not quite as ground breaking. If that's all there was to the book, I'd probably have rated it a bit lower.

That said, a rather solid book and well worth the read. And it turns out Scalzi has written a whole pile of other books, both in this series/universe and in others. I'm going to have to give a few more of those a try. ( )

Harrow book club read. In the future men and women enlist in the military in their 70s. The hope is rejuvenated body. The reality is rather different.
I liked this as and idea and wanted to see how the story would develop and what other thought provoking ideas might emerge. But there were none. It became a rather predictable “war/Western” type of humans versus nasty aliens yarn.k ( )

A solid good book with lots of sex, massacres and small squashed little aliens. ( )