Hi there, and welcome back to the Hugo's There podcast. This time it's just a regular episode. This one is about a Hugo nominee. That Hugo nominee is Old Man's War by John Scalzi. And my guest's name is Tony, last name redacted. So we're going to be talking about this 2006 Hugo nominee novel from 2005. So hi, Tony. Thanks for joining me.
Hi, Seth. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm a big fan of it. Yeah, and you had reached out at some point on Facebook, I think, and we talked about doing this. I think once you realized I was doing nominees, you're like, ooh, old man's war. Yes. Old Man's War is a personal favorite of mine. So any chance to geek out and talk about the book, I'll take. Perfect. Nice. Well, tell me a little bit about yourself. I am active duty army. I've been serving for about 18 years now.
I have a background in a special area of the military and really enjoy sci-fi. I like where... old man's war and in my background in military and training work, I currently work at a training center. So that makes this one a little more fun for me. Nice. Nice. And we were talking beforehand. I felt like we should have done video with this where you're like in the shadow with the voice modulators. Spilling secrets on US military operations, which we're not doing. No, no, no, no.
Science fiction. Yes. So is military science fiction a particular favorite of yours? It is. I didn't expect it to become that way, but it is. I guess I'd been a fan of sci-fi for a long time and didn't really realize it. And then I watched the movie Interstellar and read the book The Martian and reached out to a friend like, hey, what other books are there like this? And he recommended Ender's Game to me, which is kind of military sci-fi.
A month later, I was deploying, and I brought two books with me, which was Highline's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and John Scalzi's Old Man's Born. I read the two books on the way overseas, and after that, I was hooked. I really got hooked to military sci-fi too. Yeah. I'd be curious to know, like from, from somebody who's, who's active duty military, like are there things in military science fiction where you're like,
I don't think this person served or, or, you know, are there, are there obvious tells where you're like, yeah, that doesn't seem about seem, seem right to me. There's very obvious tells where if the person served or not, if you read like John Ringo's books, his. uh legacy the aldenada series he uses an immense amount of military jargon down to calling staff shops by their name the s3 and the s2 and you can tell like he served immensely on the frontline series
By Marco Close, you can tell he served, which is fun. One part of Old Man's War that I really enjoy is that it's fun and it doesn't like poke at the military, but he didn't serve. You can kind of tell, but not really. From the ones that don't serve, you usually get a little bit different view of the military, but he doesn't poke at it the way you get from people that don't serve.
Well, this book is interesting, too, just because – and we can talk about kind of what it's about before we get into all the spoilers and that kind of stuff. But there's two sides to it. There's the old man side and the war side. Yes. And as a man in his 50s, I – I identify with the old man side. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. The older body that's starting to break down and the knees that don't quite work right. I feel that part more than when I first read it 10 years ago.
Yeah. Just like in the last week or so, I've been rehabbing a shoulder from a surgery, but all of a sudden my knee hurts and I'm like, I don't remember injuring myself. And I'm like, oh, right. I'm 52. Sometimes it just hurts now for fun. Yep. Yep. So yeah, let's go ahead and talk a little bit about what this novel is. If you were going to present an elevator pitch to somebody, why would they want to read this one? And what is it? So the fun theme of the book is you have...
The main character, John Perry, decides at the age of 75, he's going to join the military. He's going to join the Colonial Defense Force, which is not the typical time you join the military, but he's... towards the end of his time on his life and joining the colonial fence force means you leave earth you have to say goodbye to it you can't go back to it you get to join the military you don't know how it works that you're going to be able to right
to fight you like you assume that they're not going to use just old people so you you're willing to take the chance and you join you say say goodbye to earth and at the bright young age of 75 you start off for a career in the military yeah Yeah. It's interesting the way this one opens where it says something like, you know, I did two things on my son for the birthday. I visited my wife's grave and I joined the military. Yeah.
And yeah, that's, it's, it's kind of the background sort of sadness of this is that he and his wife had both tried, both decided to enlist and she had died before she was able to. Yeah. You have that, like, that's one part I really like in the beginning of that, that thick. loving bond with his wife and how, like you said.
He's only really able to do this at this point. It's easier for him because he doesn't have that to leave behind. Yeah. Yeah. I love the line too that he puts in here. That's just one of these, it's just kind of a sweet line or it's, it's easier to miss her at a cemetery where she's never been anything but dead.
than to miss her all the places where she was alive. Yes, yeah. He's no longer in the house. It's haunted by her presence and everything like that. Yeah, yeah. This, in a lot of ways, is kind of the yin to Ender's Games. yang right because it's in in that book it's young man's war right where it's like kids have the flexibility in their minds to be able to to handle these concepts where adults you know are too hidebound and set in their ways and that kind of stuff where in this one it's
Hey, how about what if we took a lifetime experiences and made a fighting man out of that? Yes. I hadn't thought about that. It's a good comparison because Ender is what six when he's taken. So he's just, his childhood is nothing but indoctrination. Yeah. Yeah.
And I didn't remember. So this was a reread for me. I had read it a number of years ago. I think after I read Starship Troopers and the Forever War or somewhere in there to the point that there's scenes in this one where I was like, oh, right. It's in this one, not in the Forever War or not in the Starship Troopers.
And so, yeah, it's a reread for me. I was going to do it on audio, but my library didn't have it ready for me. So I picked it up in – I picked up the e-book. Actually, I think I already had the e-book and just tore through it. It's a really quick read. It is. It's fun.
Some sci-fi you kind of have to punch your way through, especially if you're getting to the Hugo nominees. But this one, I think, similar. I just finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, so I was like, I'll give it a shot. And I think by the next night, it was gone. Oh, really? Okay. So that's one that can do some of the language in it, right? Because the way the main character talks.
um kind of without the use of definite articles and that kind of stuff yeah his accent kind of comes to that that can make it challenging but yeah i thought i thought it was this one i was worried that that would be another slog read like that but like when i picked up old man's war just like you said it goes really easy but yeah still getting
Like that's one thing I like about Scalzi is you get like a mix of serious and fun. Like he touches real serious themes, but you have always that sarcastic, funny humor throughout. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, so I've, I've been. very much off Scaldsby recently, just because I haven't liked his recent output. And it's like he's gone...
too far in the direction of the humor part and left behind some of the serious stuff. And you can see in this book some of the seeds of that hyper snark stuff that you get in. starter villain or the Kaiju Preservation Society. But it's not turned up to 11 here. It's just the right balance between really interesting, serious topics and fun dialogue.
Yeah, I have actually a similar take on Scalzi recently. I remember starting in Starterville and I was like, I wonder if this main character is going to be a snarky... sarcastic loner who's not good at his job. Oh, sure enough. Yeah. Turns out he has a move right now. So yeah, I really hope that Scalzi gets back to writing stuff more like this because I ended up
I'm picking up the audio books for the ghost brigades and the last colony. And we can talk a little bit about those if you want. I did see in my research for this, that for the first time in years, there is a new book in the old man's war universe coming out this year. Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, he did The Human Division, which was like a – it was serialized more or less, right? You can buy it as a novel now, but it was serialized, I think, on Tor.com.
Yes. So I don't know if it's something similar to that. I'd be curious. I haven't read the human division yet, but if you have, we can get your take on it. Okay. Let's see. What else do we want to talk about? I mean, just anything in non-spoilers that you want to talk about. I don't think we should. I had forgotten how little information John had, John Perry had in the book about what exactly happens other than we go off planet.
yeah and so like going off planet's not a thing so one thing i thought was neat about this book it's a non-spoilers was a skip drive and you see and like in sci-fi books there's always like what are they going to use for faster than light travel. And this is like, well, you can't travel faster than light, so use a skip drive. And you don't drive, you just go to a different universe. That's as similar to your other one as possible.
And that's how it works. That's how you get 10 stars. I love the way he did that, where he had the one character who had a background in physics, and he kept saying, well, you don't have the math for this. Yeah, I actually have that written down with Alan's, you don't have the math. And that became a pervasive theme. And to all people, yes, yes, we know it.
have the math. As a career soldier, that works for me because I definitely don't have the math. But yeah, I like the whole concept of that. I mean, if the multiverse exists, an infinite number of universes just like ours exist. Yes. That are not different in any significant way. Right. And so the idea is we skip off to go to that planet to carry out this mission, but it's in a different universe. And so this universe, we never do anything in, but.
In this universe, another version of us skips in and accomplishes the mission. Yes. I thought that was just a unique way of handling that. Yeah, it kind of bakes your brain a little bit, but I like it. I like that in my science fiction. Yeah, and he dwells on it just long enough that it doesn't... bake your brain all the way and then he moves on so just when you're like how does this work and then he's like okay next thing yeah you know i mean he's he's not he doesn't have a hard science fiction
sensibility to it. It's more on a popular level. And just that repeated line of, you don't have the math for this. He's talking to the reader. And he's right. And probably himself. Yeah.
I'm trying to think what else we can talk about in non-spoilers. I mean, we can talk a little bit about, you know, he was planning on doing this with his wife, right? And there was never any guarantee that they were going to end up assigned the same place. And so he meets up with a bunch of... other people and they call themselves the old farts um yeah he kind of develops relationships with and and that was fun i love the old farts and like the different personalities that come into that and
So Harry Wilson, part of the old farts, becomes one of my favorite characters. And if you read the extended universe, he's actually one of the ones that appears in more of the books. Yeah, yeah. I've only read the three, but he's in a couple of them. Just those guys leaving Earth, their stories, talking about their lives and dealing with different personalities you had. his roommate's name Leroy or something like that Leo I think isn't it there we go yeah yeah
Who sucks. You get the last non-spoiler of Volunteer for the Ghost Brigades. And it was on a subsequent read-through that I was like, oh, I see what they meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is an interesting concept. And yeah, we can definitely get to that. I like the, you know... people come from a different range of backgrounds, right? They've gone through their whole life and some people, you know.
think they're important. And now they're conscripts, essentially. Not conscripts. They're new recruits, right? But I love the way they refer to the one guy as private senator, ambassador, secretary, bender. Oh, that's one of my favorite parts of the whole book. And that's one thing I thought he... that are really good with the military is that people come from everywhere. And so you have all these backgrounds. And now it's not just everywhere backgrounds and...
young adolescents. You have people that have lived full lives of all sorts of lives that are now coming together. You don't need to just humble some young 18-year-old. You have a guy who's led a very successful political career, and now he's a private. And he needs to do private things. Yep, yep. But he still has that instinct to be like, well, you should listen to me. Yeah.
Well, there's always the guy with the theory, right? Who's going to interject himself and say, hey, you know, if we just talk to these people, then maybe we could avoid this conflict. And then you end up a grease stain. Yeah. Hey, maybe you should listen to people that have been doing this. No, no, no. I know better.
Yeah. Yeah. Which I do love the idea of getting a, of all your new recruits coming to you that aren't, that are have life experience that aren't going to go out and do the young, the crazy things that a lot of young soldiers do. which is, it was just kind of fun. Like I can only imagine being a squad leader for, or a platoon Sergeant for a group of older people who at the end of their day, just want to go relax and talk and don't want to stay out all night doing wild things.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's the other side of that though, right? Where there's more stuff to untrain because. I remember when we took our son for swimming lessons and the person who was doing the swimming lessons, I was like, oh, you taught him to doggy battle. Well, I'll have to unteach that now. Yes. You have an entire life of bad habits you're going to have to untrain. And it's going to be way harder to get someone who's not 20 years old to do something incredibly dangerous.
Yeah. Not young and stupid, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, so I often have this, and just kind of going back to the old man side of this, right? As a man in my fifties, right? I often think, man, it would be great to just go back and- re-experience some moments from my earlier life. I remember them, but I want to experience them again. I want to smell the ice in that hockey game that I was in. Oh, heck yeah. Yeah.
They're almost always hockey or sports, some kind of thing. Like, look, I had that one really great game in Little League. But yeah, you hear the youth is wasted on the young. Yes. Very much. I'm at the age where I understand it. Yeah, it really starts to show. And that's when you realize, hey, I'm not youth anymore. Yeah. And so the recruits all...
are curious, you know, they're like, well, they're obviously going to soup us up in some way. They're going to, they're going to give us back our youth somehow, but nobody knows how it's going to work. Yeah. That's a recurring theme of the old farts is talking about, right. How is this going to do it? Like they can't send a bunch of us.
75-year-olds into combat, I can barely walk. There has to be some trick, which for some of them is the incentive. They're going to come at the chance to be young again because they think that might be how it works. Yeah, because part of it too is you serve your term and then you get to muster out and you become a colonist, right? Yes. Aside from coming from a vastly overpopulated area, that's your only chance to be a colonist. Yeah.
Yeah. You want to switch over to spoilers and just we can take the gloves off? Sounds good to me. Lots of spoilers to talk about. It sounds like from both of us, it's a recommendation. I think it's a really fun book. And it's a good example of military science fiction that has more to say than just...
your cool battles it's a big recommendation for me in fact for a lot of people when they're asked about getting into sci-fi this is one i almost always recommend because it's a good balance of like we said earlier seriousness and fun yeah yeah All right. Full spoilers from here on. I had forgotten.
how much they didn't know, right? How little they actually knew about the process. And then, you know, they end up getting that brain mapping thing done. That's quite painful. And it sounds awful. Despite the fact that the doctor says, nah, it's not too bad. Right. Well, what are they going to say?
And then, then I think like everybody was super mad at the doctor and it's like, well, I mean, you know, we have to say that and say it that way. This book certainly doesn't take a, like a mind brain singularity model, right? Consciousness is a separate. is separate from the brain and can be transferred. Yes. And that's interesting where the body then left behind is an empty vessel. Yeah. Which I thought he does well where like he,
his consciousness makes him seem like he's falling into another place and then appearing in another place. And then he has like two streams at once. It was, I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. Where, where all of a sudden he's like, Oh, I'm, I'm looking at my old body. Yes. Yeah.
And so one of the big things, and this is in spoilers, obviously, is that they do get a brand new body that their consciousness is transferred into, and it's green. And not just any new body. Yeah, it's green. You have... brain pal in you it's young your body's already whipped up into shape where you can run into an olympian speed and and jump and uh they do a whole long series about how
Everyone's body is good looking so that they all bond very well. Right. And by bond, you mean they all nut boots right away. Oh, right away, straight off the bat. Yeah. And there's some fun stuff in there about the way sexy times are. for younger people. Oh, I'd forgotten how easy that was. Yeah.
But yeah, then they start to get, so the basic training is a little different, right? Because it's not training raw recruits into, you know, who already think they're invincible, like, you know, 19, 20 year olds might. training people who think they're 75 in their brain, but to have no idea what their body is capable of. Yes. I love, I actually love his training secrets. That's one thing I wrote down is, uh, it was like the right amount of tropes.
where it's still like new and fun. We have like the, the tough drill instructor, but I thought about how awesome, like as someone who spent years training people, how awesome it would be to get a whole fresh group that. You don't need to get in shape that you just need to train techniques. Like these guys come in great shape and he's just needs to teach them. He needs to train out old habits and he needs to train in new.
A lot of these guys have no military training, so you're training in basic military training, new space-based military training. But you don't need to get them in shape. They're already in shape, which is the toughest part. And they just don't know it, right? They don't know what their bodies can do. And so he's like, you run into that tower. And if anybody takes longer than 55 minutes or whatever it is, you know, then...
the whole group gets to do it again. And of course the slowest person is well under the time. Yeah. Everyone makes it, which is awesome. Yeah. They're immediately out there doing 25 K runs, no problem, you know, at a dead sprint. Yeah. And then, uh, I love how they worked the brain pal into it, which is such a neat.
A neat thing to think of, like how your brain pal connects to your weapon, how they spend basic training to learn how to use their brain pal to switch loads, switch ammo types, how it connects to their brain, how they can send... maps and routes and updates and battle plans to each other without even talking. How useful could be a terrible thought if you really think about it, about what the brain palette your head could be.
Well, yeah. And he goes through some of that, right? Where it's like, yeah, it's great that you can be so cohesive as a unit, right? Where you know what everybody's thinking and feeling at the moment. And the Ghost Brigades gets even more into this about the way it... It puts through emotion and that kind of stuff. But then when one of your platoon is killed, everybody feels it. Yes. I did like that they all nicknamed their brain pal because it's like they can rename Alexa.
Yeah. Yeah. And they're all just these. Yeah. And those are the PG ones. So yeah. Yeah. The most ones are not, not ready for air. Yeah. Um, But, so, and then, you know, it doesn't seem like, the training sequence doesn't go on for ages, right? No, it's not too long. It's actually less, I think, than the whole portion of them.
Getting their new bodies and traveling on the spacecraft. I think the training sequence is relatively brief. It is. Yeah. And so then, you know, they're basically immediately out into battles. And the one thing in the training that I thought was interesting was the whole.
idea of the smart blood um right where these bodies are useful and expensive and so they don't want them to just bleed out because they got shot in the leg and yeah the smart blood is able to to more quickly clot and heal and all that kind of stuff it carries oxygen better Right, carries oxygen better, so you're not going to drown in a couple minutes. No, you're staying under for six minutes.
They have the whole sequence where all of them are underwater, even though they're freaking out, they're scared of it. It helps them with their running because oxygen carries blood better, so it helps them for their running. They're able to breathe underwater. The quick clotting is an awesome part.
I thought they're green because they have chlorophyll in the skin, so you get a little extra energy, which I was like, well, that's a neat idea. I would have never thought about that. Yeah, that one kind of reminded me, have you ever read Sentence to Prism? So that's a fun one because it's like a really bright world. I'm like, I don't know if the sun ever sets. And so at some point a character gets injured and the locals modify her with, with these crystal.
parts of her body that can do like photosynthesis. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. It's really, really interesting. That one's it's on the list. I've been talking to a friend of mine about, Hey, let's do an episode on that. I want to reread that. I'll have to add that to my to-be-read list. I love little parts of that in sci-fi where they're like, what if, and then they insert it into, okay, this is how it could work.
So early on, John Perry ends up getting a commendation because he realizes that he can... kind of make a custom firing sequence for his weapon that allows him to defeat the Khonsu. And he also, and to me, the more important thing is he kind of astutely notices this looks like a religious ceremony happening before the battle.
Yeah, you could do a whole podcast just on the Kansu. They're so interesting. And that's like his first battle. And so, yeah, he gets there, he notices, like you said, they're going through almost religious rites, and this has to be done before the battle starts. And then... He has the aspect where I think, what is it? One.
like an armor-piercing round followed by an explosive round. So you're piercing their tough skin and then causing your damage after that. And that's after he comes up with that firing solution that they just slaughter him. Yeah, and that becomes really important later. The Khansu have like a carabin.
pace like a like a beetle kind of yes yeah yeah that's one thing i really like is you have to like they have the different battles you have the one with the consu then next they're fighting like teddy bear squirrels and then they're fighting little animals and then you have the ra like these little in inserts into like the various different types of
situations you could have other fighting aliens. Yeah. The little Lilliputian planet as well, which that's one of those things where I'm like, are we sure that we couldn't give them 20 acres someplace and they'd be perfectly happy. Yeah, like that would be a whole time worth of them. But then I'm starting to sound like private senator, ambassador, secretary, bender.
Which is awesome. He has his time on the teddy bear one, which is kind of interesting because you see that he has his whole political diatribe that he gives him up front before the battle. And then he actually goes full.
full private mode for a little while following at that time i think it's corporal perry through um the towns and they're as they're engaged in the uh i can't remember the name of that species yeah um and then at the end He sees them, I think, conducting their religious ceremony, and then the full ambassador, Senator Bender, comes out, only to be, because he knows best, dies terribly.
Yeah. And, you know, at some point you do get kind of quickly into the, not quickly into the territory, but like Perry starts to crack up a little bit. Perry ends up with this moment of crisis, right? Where they're fighting like the one inch high foes that they're just stepping on, right? They're just kaiju, right?
And, and his, uh, his CEO, I think it's Lieutenant Keys at that point, you know, tells him, look, this is, this is normal. This is, everybody goes through this at some point. Yeah. You're right on time. It's like, what did you do when you had your freak out? He's like, I took a shot at the Lieutenant. Right. Yeah. And I like the part where they just kind of reminisce about what they miss about being human. It's very sweet that Perry is like, I miss being married. Yeah.
Yeah, I like that. And that was a recurring thing. A lot of his stuff would come back to his life. And I really like the way they connect that and have that recurring theme through the book. I remember Harry talking, I just want a morning with a hardcover novel. I'm like, I get that. Yeah, big time. Yeah. So then we have the pivotal battle of Coral against the Array, which I would not have known how to pronounce that if I hadn't been listening to the Ghost Brigades. Same. I read the book twice.
before I heard the audiobook and would have never gone that way. I was like, oh, the RA, okay. I wonder what else I've been mispronouncing. Yeah, yeah. That's always the fun thing about audiobooks. I mean, sometimes you do get audiobooks where you're like, is that the way you really pronounce that?
you don't want to put all your eggs in one narrator's basket, but, but usually with, with names and, and species and that kind of stuff, you can, you can trust him. Yeah. Yeah. The battle of coral. That's where he gets. The whole fleet gets ambushed, right? Yeah, the whole fleet gets ambushed. He's shot down. A lone survivor. Once again, after some terrible interrogation, he's...
He gets another accommodation. Now he goes from corporal to lieutenant, and I think it's just a matter of months. Right, right. Yeah. That's an odd promotion pattern, but they do things different in the colonial. Yes. He even remarks on it, though. Then after the Battle of Coral, we're introduced to some of the more interesting ones where you have John Scalzi's take on special forces in the Old Man's War universe. Yeah, yeah.
Right, because he's really torn up during that battle, right? He's the only survivor of his shuttle, which was one of the only ones to even make it off of their ship, because the array are able to ambush them as they come out of there. Skip. Yes. Which shouldn't be possible. Yeah. So they're just shooting down everyone as they come out. Due to some quick thinking, they survive.
He's just like, he loses like an arm or a leg. Yeah. One of his legs is basically torn off. His jaw is torn off and he gets rescued by somebody with a familiar voice. Yeah. And he sounds like his wife and then he wakes up and I guess the equivalent of a back to tank. Yeah, more or less. Very much. That's interesting, the whole limb replacement stuff. I assume you've read The Forever War? I have, yes.
So when they're on the planet, I think it's just called Heaven or something, right? The main character there, Mandela, is regrowing a leg. Yes. But in this, he's basically given a prosthetic. that then his body grows into with now technology. And that was, yeah. Like his DNA goes into the process, like just gradually takes over and what was a prosthetic becomes a new limb, which I thought was a very interesting take. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, really interesting stuff. And I love that the rest of the old farts, I mean, the old farts have started to get killed off, right? And they're not all together anymore. But some of his friends, when he tells them about... Look, I saw my wife. And then all of a sudden, she shows up in the cafeteria. Yeah. I'm just going to go thank her for saving my life. And of course, it goes phenomenally poorly. Yeah, just absolutely terrible.
And it turns out that his wife is special forces, but not traditional. So then you get introduced to the concept that he uses for special forces, where through this other character that... was his wife you get to see how they do it we're like the people that don't make it to 75 that die beforehand um are become their special forces which Alone is interesting aspects like they're born into service. So everyone else is not only like a volunteer for the army.
But the people, so their special forces are the only non-volunteers, which I thought was an interesting aspect because if you look, one of the almost universal aspects of special operations and special forces throughout most militaries is there's... is even in a conscripted army where everyone has to is a force to serve or a compulsory service your special operations special forces are almost universally volunteers and there's an assessment and selection process because
the nature of special operations special forces is is hard it's difficult uh more difficult than others and you need a certain type of person for it and so usually like volunteers and they work for it and they're selected there's like a there's a buy-in aspect to it
But in this, they're the only ones that don't have a choice. They're born into it. There's no assessment of personality. They don't need to assess them physically because they're all physically fit. But they're the only ones that have no choice in service, which I thought was interesting.
Yeah. And the other important part to mention, and this is covered more fully in the Ghost Brigades, is that as part of the enlistment process, they give DNA samples and that kind of stuff. And so the army is... And the colonial forces are creating these advanced bodies for them to be hosted in, right? Yes. Well, and then when the person dies before they're able to use them, do they throw away all that expensive and useful?
Technology? No, they don't. They repurpose it. And instead of transferring a conscience into it, not a conscience, consciousness. There we go. I knew I could get it. I'll leave that in. People can realize what an idiot I am. But they use the brain pal, right, to essentially substitute for consciousness. Yeah, they just sort of wake them up and a new consciousness develops. Yeah. And so like that whole concept is really interesting about, you know, they're a few days old. Right. But but they.
the maturity comes along a lot more quickly, right? Yes. Yeah. They don't, they don't have a childhood. They don't need to be reared. Like they, they, like, I think, uh, Jane Sagan, the character that would, uh, is in the body of John Perry's former wife. makes that remark like i was just born with all the knowledge of history and science and math immediately uh yeah and that's another inverse is like usually like you take your special operations special forces
from within your force. So they already have some maturity, some experience. These are the least experienced people you have. Though by the age of six, they're all extremely battle-hardened. Well, and they're so... kind of bound up with their unit too. That's one of the things that make them really effective is that it's like using the brain pal to communicate is second nature. They can communicate faster than normal humans can.
Yeah. And they remark that anytime that they have to talk to the other ones, it's painful for them because the real borns, as they call them, speak so slowly and don't use their brain pals. Yeah. It's like when I accidentally start listening to a podcast at 1.0 speed. Nobody talks like this. I really enjoy the passages where Jane and Perry make up at some point, right? Yes.
How should I react to that knowledge, right? And she's not prepared for it. Emotional maturity is not really a thing with the special forces. Yeah. And you get like those, these little touching moments in that and outside of this, like the military sci-fi aspect where he's teaching her what a human life was like. Tell me about your, like what, what she was like. She liked baking pies.
We like, and talks about like, Hey, we had a marriage. Our marriage had some problems, but we always loved each other. And it was like those little touchy elements where she's learning what a normal person is like, and they don't ever get to see that. Yeah, yeah. And I liked that. I felt like a lesser author might have had them get together a little more quickly. I like the fact that this is, you know, it's basically put off until the end of the Ghost Brigades. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that as an aspect of it. And it could have been easy for them to just, hey, we're husband and wife, boom, back together. But no, there's a little more intimacy to it the way it's done. Yeah, yeah. So it turns out that the Kansu gave the tachyon detectors to the array. And so Perry gets assigned, and this is where he ends up being promoted to an officer, right? Yes.
commissioned as an officer there we go um and uh they're like well we need to go ask the consu some questions and the way we get access to to ask these questions is we have uh arena battle like from the original trek with the gorn right with we choose five they choose five of us yeah i guess they they bring out their five warriors they they actually handpick the warriors and the only reason that we're able to do it
is because they really respect you because you slaughtered them. Yeah. You slaughtered them, but 2000 Katsu. So you've won them over. And so we get to have like the amount of, was it the amount of time? People they have that win in single combat equals the amount of questions they get to ask. Yeah.
Yeah. And so they get to do, and it's really cool, like just the different fighting techniques that the special forces have, right? Because they're willing to sacrifice a limb because they know they can regrow it.
Yeah, that's one thing. I think the author remarks, I thought it was really cool. The soldiers were going close and they'll give up an arm and a leg just to go in for the killing blow, knowing that their smart blood will clot it and they'll just be taken off and two weeks later they'll have a new arm.
Right. And that's not the kind of thing that somebody with 75 years in a normal human body is going to be able to do. No. No. That's where you have the advantage of the young people who are like, yeah, I'll do that. And so, yeah, they get to essentially confirm, yeah, the Kansu gave them that technology. And I love the bit about where he asks, you know, you're so much superior in terms of technology.
to everybody else, the cons you are. Why don't you just wipe us out? And I love that they say, well, because we love you. And it's really interesting. They feel like they have this responsibility to all the other species who are lesser. to help bring them into their cycle of rebirth, I think they call it. We're like children to them. Yeah, yeah. And it's a very kind of Klingon thing, right? Like only through combat can you be redeemed more. Yes.
And I like how they have the guy who, the Kansu who's chosen to talk with them, like, I am unclean for speaking to you with your words. I'm unclean for being in your presence. Luckily, after this battle, I will be allowed to die. Well, he was dishonored before, right? And so they choose those people, and this is their way of redeeming themselves. And then the entire area where they're...
where they're having the battle is unclean. And so they implode it and flush it down a black hole. And I love like every time it mentioned something like that, Perry's like, Which I still feel is overkill. Yeah. Yes. You made your point. Yeah. And then I think for that one, it was when he's promoted to captain, which I thought was fun. Like just keeps going, which is, or maybe that's after the next battle of.
of Coral. But that's when they find out from the Kansu that they only gave... Yes, the Kansu gave the skip drive detector to the RA, but they only gave him one. So the RA don't... really know how to use the technology so so they know that like yes they gave him one and yes it's on the planet and so like well we have to go get it yeah yeah and and it's interesting with
Perry having to kind of be integrated with the special forces, even though he can't communicate at the rate that they can. And so they kind of have to, like Jane is like, okay, you'll be with me. I'll handicap myself. having to drag you along essentially but then he ends up saving her life and and disabling the the weapon and i think he comes out with like a thumb drive that has like the the uh
architecture for the, for the, yeah. Yeah. They were trying to capture it, but they had to destroy it. And so, yeah, he takes like the owner's manual. Well, I think the digital copy, the owner's manual is like, all right. So like, well, this is the next best thing.
Yeah, and some of that reminded me of in the Ender's Game series when it talks about the Ansible and where they're like, well, once we knew this was possible, then we were able to figure out how to do it, right? Yeah. Because we found that the...
Debuggers could do it. The formers could do it. And so, yeah, OK, we're going to be able to figure that out. And so having that, knowing the technology exists for detecting the skip drives and then having the owner's manual, eventually that'll probably be fruitful.
Yes. And Harry gets put on helping figure out how it works. And I love that. Once again, that, that favorite line of, I don't, I thought you didn't have the bath. He's like, well, I don't, but it turns out no one else does either. Right. This math is well beyond anybody. So I'm as good a choice as anyone. With the brain pal and everything, I'm sure they're smarter than your average.
bear. And so, yeah, he can, he can, he can learn it. Yeah. So it's, I mean, that, that kind of wraps up the old man's war. If you want to talk about any of the other books, I didn't take a bunch of notes on them. Yeah. I will happily talk about more about it. The one after this is Ghost Brigades, which goes more into how the Special Forces work. I think Jane Sagan, his wife, becomes sort of the main protagonist as well as...
I guess the antagonist does as well, but you got to view like through, like the ghost brigades come into that. Harry Wilson makes another little pop-up in that one too. And that, that's a, that's a fun book. I'm trying to think of what all happens in that book, too. I also, like you, I didn't put a note down. Well, there's the human traitor. Yes, that's right. There's the human traitor character that they're trying to track down, right? And also there's an array.
who's now working for the humans. I really enjoy that character in those two books. And so you kind of have the two sides of that. But going back to kind of the... Private Senator, Ambassador, Secretary Bender, with his theories and saying, look, the problem with the Colonial Defense Force is it's too easy to use. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail kind of idea. We might be too quick to send in the military in a situation where maybe we want to send in...
an embassy, right, where we want to send in ambassadors and see if we can talk things out and go, okay, yeah, we don't need that planet. But he does talk about how, you know, essentially, there's lots of planets that... support life but not all of them are ideal for humans and yes a lot of other species need essentially the same conditions yeah like there's
Yeah, life can be done in lots of different ways. But yeah, there's also this small spectrum where almost all of it exists. And then you get to see over the course of the sequels where it does gradually shift from like strictly... military sci-fi where it stays in that theme but you see more of the ambassador aspect where i think by the fourth and fifth book which are i have them here the human division and the end of all things where you have the harry wilson character who's with
an ambassador team for the colonial union and earth. And so you're actually seeing them trying to use the talking aspect more. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that, you know, One of the, I can't remember, it began with an R, like Ruiz, that kind of name, is like, well, you know, the thing is, he was right.
it probably is too easy to send us in. Yeah. But, but that doesn't mean that in the middle of a battle, you want to go and try and form it. Yes. There's a time and a place for that. When you've just been shooting their people up all around town. that's not the time to go dangling the olive branch. They're going to be a little mad at you. So in the, in the other two books in the first trilogy, you, you get the, the creation of the conclave, which it's like a.
It's almost like a Cold War situation, right? It's like from the colonial union's perspective, that's the Russian bloc, right? The Soviet bloc. It's not necessarily that way. And I like that eventually kind of the... series comes around to well who's the bad guys here yes because because certainly the conclave is doing some some things that you're like well i mean wiping out wiping out entire colonies that's that's not a great look that's a bit excessive yeah and what is it the conclave says hey
All this fighting is just over colonies. So everyone just holds the colonies they got, no new colonies, and let's have peace. And they, yeah, like you said, they keep that peace by, if you violate this, we'll just wipe off all of your life on a planet. Yeah, and you get some of the – what information do you give the troops in those situations, right? Yeah. You show them, look at this. They wiped off a colony, and then they see the unredacted version of it where there was an –
an offer of you can evacuate your people. You know, you can, you can move your people off of this and we'll, we'll destroy the colony, but we don't have, you don't have to die. I know if, if you're going to do this, we're going to force your hand. So, yeah, I liked, um, Kind of going back to talking about the lack of suitable planets, right? There's a limited number of places where they can go. And there's one where they try and go there and there's just this slime mold.
Yeah, so that's one thing I love, the way they use the old parts. Their brain pal will send their last little bit of life to all the rest of them in their group. So you get these other little... peeks into the windows of the Old Man's War universe, where like you said, I think it was Thomas, who was the one who was the big eater, who was always trying to eat all the food, dies when he eats the slime mold. And that was an interesting one where they go there and they can't figure out what's wrong.
until all of a sudden this universal attack around the colony comes from the slime mold that had consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. It's fun to like, to have authors play around with what, what aliens might look like. yeah and then you had the other one who they were like in a like one of them died i think it was maggie that died in a colony that was kind of like bespin i guess you would say where it was like it uh you had a
Some sort of unit that was mining the atmosphere, another unit that was mining on the ground, and she fell to her death from that. Yeah, yeah. So have you read – you've read the entire series? Yes. Is it correct that – so Zoe is a character that comes in the Ghost Brigades, I think? She's the daughter of the human traitor. Yeah, the daughter of the human traitor. And then she becomes the adopted daughter of –
John Perry and Jane Sagan. They become colonial ministers, which you see in what is that one called? The Last Colony. The Last Colony, yeah. And then so you get, which actually became, I think my second favorite book of the series, which is Zoe's Tale, which he wrote to fix a plot hole in Last Colony where you had those, they're like the wolf-like species.
Oh, yeah, the sentient species on the planet, on the colony. Yeah, so you get the entire last colony just now through the perspective of Zoe, which is kind of fun. Okay. Okay. I haven't read that one yet. And I had heard some people are like, well, read one or the other. But it sounds like you get a fuller picture. You do. So I read the entire series, took a year break.
because I, someone said like, it's best to have a fresh mommy to read it, took a year break. And then I read Zoe's tale and it was a lot of fun. It's a blast. All right. Maybe, maybe I'll give it a few months or I'll put a hold request on it. I, I,
I, my library had it and it's like, it's going to take 13 weeks to get to you. And so I'm like, okay, well maybe I'll do that. That's just about right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I don't know. Anything else you want to talk about, about, uh, old man's war, the series, anything. No, I think I've covered most of the stuff in my notes I had. I don't know if you've got anything more to add. No, I got all through my notes. But yeah, it's a really...
engaging first, certainly first book. And then the series is really interesting too. And I like the fact that he, it's like, he pulls on the thread of something that he set up in the first book, right? And he's like, okay, let's, let's talk about the ghost brigades. What does that even mean? You get, you get little hints of it in the first book. And, and then much more fully explored in the, in the second one. And the whole early aspect of how they're.
how they're, how they come into being, how they're, how they're trained, how they learn to use their brain pal. That is just really fascinating. Like the entire book is worth like reading just as here, the, that goes for good. So it'll be like gaining consciousness and going through all the, everything that goes for that. Yeah.
Yeah. So the human division, which I mentioned earlier, was serialized. Does that follow any of the same characters? Did you mention that it had Harry in it? Okay. Yeah. So Harry is in the human division. Damn, let me see what you get. The Human Division and the End of All Things. And yeah, they were serialized. And so you get a bunch of short stories becoming a novel.
And you do get one theme when you're around Harry Wilson being embedded with these ambassadors. And then you just see like, because at that point, Earth is brought in, is allowed to...
send people out in the colonial union and other races. So the embargo that they sort of had on earth is stopped and you get ambassadors from earth, you get ambassadors from the colonial union, you get to see people on earth interact around colonial defense soldiers for the first time. But then you also, I think it's in.
the end of all things where you get other perspectives as well at that point a lot of like the uh there's sort of a a loss of the public's will to fight And so you start to see like perspective of soldiers who just don't want to do it anymore or who want to sue for peace or like you get, you get more perspectives brought into the universe, which makes it a lot of fun to see.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's if you're going to create a universe, then you can play around in it, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. I'll definitely check the rest of the series out at some point because I'm really good at reading the first book in the series and then never coming back to it.
Very similar. So I was glad that I at least got the first three because it kind of puts a bow on the whole thing. But I would like to go back and check out Zoe's Tale. I think the first three in Zoe's Tale are really good. uh human division and of all things are fun they don't quite have the same spark as the rest of them but they're if you enjoy the old man's war universe you'll enjoy the books just to get more of it and they do have a another book coming out
This year, Scalzi's going back and writing his first new book in the series, and that's supposed to be released at the end of the year. Okay. I'll be curious if it's more similar to the previous books in the series or more like his more recent output. Yeah. If it's a jobless slacker who's really smart but just unmotivated, we'll see.
Some of it I get, right? We're like reading the intros to some of his books. It's like, you know, I wrote this during the pandemic and this was my therapy, right? And so I get it. And it's just, they're not the kind of books that I want honored with awards. I think Kaiju Preservation Society was nominated. I don't think it didn't win, but it was kind of surprised because he even said it on the jacket where he's like, this book is Pepsi. It's nothing that special.
And it's a fun book, but I don't know if it's worthy of honor. Yeah, and Starter Villain was the same way for me. I'm like, this just isn't what I want. So to say nothing of the fact that it's a cat book. Yeah, exactly. The Talking Cats. So normally I would ask you for if you wanted to give out any contact information, but I know you don't in this case. Yeah. Sorry. In this case, I cannot. Okay.
just for security reasons, and that's totally fine. But I want to thank you for reaching out to me and connecting on this book. It's been a long time, I think, since we first connected, but we finally got here. Yes. I really appreciate you having me on. I'm a big fan of the podcast. Actually, every time I read a Hugo winner, the first thing I do is the next day I listen to your podcast.
Nice. I really appreciate being on. I enjoyed a great deal. And I'll always take any chance I can to geek out over Old Man's War. It's a personal favorite. Nice. All right. All right. Well, Tony, thanks again. Bye now. Thank you, Seth. Well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed that discussion. It was nice having Tony on with some of his knowledge of the military. And obviously, we can't give any more details on him. But I hope you enjoyed our discussion of a really interesting book.
I was really glad to see that I do still like John Scalzi. I just don't like some of his recent stuff. So I'm looking forward to that new Old Man's War book coming out. I'll probably catch up on the rest of that series. As usual, if you want to support the podcast, you can do that in a variety of ways. Links are in the show notes. You can share the episode with your friends. We are...
I guess by the time this comes out, we're in the Hugo nomination window. So if you want to nominate this podcast, I'd appreciate it. Take Me to Your Reader is also eligible to be nominated. We still have a great time doing that. And if you don't listen to Take Me to Your Reader already, I recommend it.
I recently have noticed, and maybe by the time this comes out, this won't be a thing anymore, but I'm not getting a lot of people taking up my Seth's Picks episode, so I'm going around and asking some folks to cover some titles. And that was... part of the intent. But if you want to look at that list along with the rest of the titles that are available, if you want a guest on the podcast, I do still need those. At some point, I'll run through that list perhaps, but even if I don't...
I don't mind actually just doing guest picks episodes just every now and then I want to read something off that list. And so what I've been doing is just, you know what, I'm going to read that one and I don't have to record a podcast about it because...
I don't have to podcast about everything, absolutely everything I read. All right. I think that's going to do it for this time. So thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you next time. Bye. The theme music for the Hugo's There podcast was composed and performed by Tim Kusky.