Review: Old Man's War

Old Man's War by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first John Scalzi book I read wasn't his first, but instead Lock In, which was suitably complex and well-thought-out but not so well-executed, due to its general lack of interesting characters or even much of a sense of humor. Seeing Scalzi's debut, a sly parody of classic sci-fi from Heinlein to Bradbury to even Orson Scott Card (though of course far cruder in content than anything Card would ever serve up), I think I've got a much better measure of his style and talent with this one.

Though Old Man's War isn't perfect, largely because its second half tends to suffer from a thin and meandering plot, the first half is where it truly shines, loaded as it is with laugh-out-loud moments. This book is at times quite crude and crass, but no less intelligent for it, and hell, it makes me almost want to get KloraDerm skin (almost, because the infertility is too much of a drawback for me, since I'm not an old man yet.) Also, reading about the whole KloraDerm thing makes me realize that here's another way Avatar, though I love that movie to death, turns out to be a bit derivative - Scalzi gave us a concept of colorful humanoid avatar bodies for use in the interstellar theater four years before James Cameron got to release his movie!

And one more thing - the opening lines. Three sentences, not one opening sentence like is traditional, but if you read those three (as my boss at the Stanford Bookstore has suggested I suggest to customers), you will not fail to laugh, and that'll be just the first taste of Scalzi's screwy sense of humor you get.

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