Old Man’s War

John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (2005) is his first published novel. Its universe currently has three other books in it and a movie, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is set to come out in 2012.

The plot starts as follows: On his 75th birthday, John Perry (the main character) visits his wife’s grave and joins the Colonial Defense Forces as a recrui– Oh hell, I’ll just quote the back cover; it actually describes the book in question:

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-and aliens willing to fight for them are common. The universe, it turns out, is a hostile place.

So: we fight. To defend Earth (a target for our new enemies, should we let them get close enough) and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has gone on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force, which shields the home planet from too much knowledge of the situation. What’s known to everybody is that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve your time at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine-and what he will become is far stranger.

So, you say, apart from the downright miraculous fact that the blurb writer actually read the book, what do you think, Ms Reviewer? I don’t see much of an opinion here.

Well, your wish is my command: This book is friggin’ excellent. (Despite the fact that it is written in first person.) Seriously, words can’t express how well thought out it is. Read it. Now.

All right, all right, the blurb isn’t really all that exciting. However, the really interesting, this-is-what-I-read-it-for stuff is all spoilery, so I cannot enhance your knowledge of the book without taking away some of its shine. Let it just be said that Mr. Scalzi is going on my keep-track list.

On Basilisk Station

On Basilisk Station is the first book in David M. Weber’s cult hit Honor Harrington series.

The book opens with a prologue that has the People’s Republic of Haven’s Hereditary President discuss with his cabinet the military and economic situation. Basically, they have something of an economic problem (they’ve taken over countless worlds recently as well as increased their Basic Living Stipend) and decide to take over Manticore, since one of its wormhole’s termini is in the way of their most advantageous (and economically beneficial) routes of expansion.

Then along comes the first chapter and Honor Harrington. She’s just been assigned to be Captain of HMS Fearless. Unfortunately for her, Lady Sonja Hemphill, Admiral of the Red, has come into power with her… interesting notions of what a battleship’s armament needs. After testing, Honor and the Fearless are banished (the grav lance did not work as well as “Horrible Hemphill” had hoped) to the dumping ground for unwanted officers – Basilisk, the terminus that the Havenites were eyeing in the prologue.

Next, it turns out that the Senior Officer at Basilisk is Honor’s longtime enemy (and attempted rapist), Lord Pavel Young. He then decides that his ship needs urgent refitting and that he absolutely must be there to watch, and leaves Honor with the impossible task of covering the security of all of the system alone, knowing that if she fails, she’d take the blame.

In her astounding success, she stumbles upon a plot on Medusa, Basilisk’s lone inhabited planet, to do something. Now, who’s behind it, how to catch them and why are they doing it?

On Basilisk Station is a crossover of Military Science Fiction and Space Opera. It is also the first book in a series of fourteen so far, plus ten spin-offs, so obviously someone liked it. A lot. The worldbuilding’s solid, too.

Honor does, admittedly, give off a bit of a Mary Sue-ish vibe, and the prologue doesn’t quite fit the book, but watching her succeed in the face of adversity is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and the prologue is the prologue not just to On Basilisk Station, but to the whole Honor Harrington series.

Overall verdict: Recommended for any SF aficionados or people looking for a feel-good type book. I liked it.

Final Days

Final Days is the science fiction author Gary Gibson’s first book in his Final Days series. It was published in 2011.

The story is set in the 23rd Century, after the discovery of a means of travelling across light-years via wormhole. Well, Earth’s also discovered an ancient alien civilization’s remains, but that’s rather classified. They’ve also been bringing in shipments of alien tech, more on that later.

The book opens with Jeff Cairns at one of the aliens’ ruins, set so far forward in time that the stars have burned out. (The wormholes are a form of time travel – they connect t=0 point at, say, Earth, with t=x at some other location.) There, two people – Mitchell Stone and Erich Vogel – fall into a sort of pit. Mitchell soon reappears in the vicinity, sans clothing. (The human explorers had sealed the building and pumped air in.) He is then taken to a government-run laboratory to be examined.

Meanwhile, Saul Dumont is on Earth, trying to get evidence to incriminate a businessman with suspected ties to separatist movements. The operation goes grossly wrong, so his superiors offer him an ultimatum: either go on an undercover mission to find out who of Constantin Hanover’s team is leaking out information, or a dishonorable discharge and a long jail sentance. He is also offered the option to find out who blew up the Galileo gate, thus isolating him from his wife and child.

Our viewpoint then switches to Thomas Fowler and Dr Amanda Boruzov, whose duty is to provide exposition in the form of a briefing of the high command of Earth (executed rather well). It turns out that, in an attempt to predict the future, the people at the nearest colony sent a wormhole gate back to Earth, about a decade into the future. They find only an empty, desolate Earth and Moon, populated only by huge growths. The only human being found is Mitchell Stone, in Luna City and deep in cryosleep.

The reader is then informed (along with the characters) that the first of those growths has sprouted in the Pacific Ocean…

All in all, the book is rather plot-driven, even the exposition flows in nicely, and the language used in clear and understandable. A definite recommendation to all fans of science fiction and to those wanting to discover the genre.

If you discover yourself a fan of Mr. Gibson, he has also written two standalone novels (Angel Stations, Against Gravity) and three books in the Shoal Sequence (Stealing Light, Nova War, Empire of Light). Another book is set to appear in the Shoal Sequence, titled River of Light, and a book set in the same universe as Final Days, titled The Thousand Emperors. Gary Gibson also maintains a blog: http://whitescreenofdespair.blogspot.com/

A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms is a novel by Ernest Hemingway, set during World War One and with autobiographical elements. It was first published in 1929 and, as one of Hemingway’s works, is considered a classic.

The novel is divided into five books. The first book introduces the main character, Frederic Henry (often called simply Tenente, “Lieutenant”), an American ambulance driver on the Italian front, as well as details his meeting of Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, via his Italian friend Rinaldi. It ends after Catherine and Frederic have begun a relationship and Frederic has been sent to a hospital in Milan due to a wound in his knee inflicted by a mortar shell. The second book is about the growth of Frederic and Catherine’s relationship’s growth (Catherine, being the loving woman she is, had herself transferred to the hospital Frederic would be staying at). It ends with Frederic being sent back to the front and Catherine being three months pregnant. In the third book Mr.Henry returns to his unit on the front, just in time for the Austro-Germans to break through the Italian lines, triggering an Italian retreat.

The actual retreat phase was by far the most interesting part of the book, since there I could actually convince myself that harm could befall these characters. Frederic is with three fellow ambulance drivers, one of whom gets shot by panicky Italians and another surrenders to the Germans. Later, Frederic is taken to the “battle police” (a group of Italians executing officers for “treachery” ) and escapes being shot by jumping into a river. In the fourth book Frederic and Catherine reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowboat; in the fifth, they live a pleasant, fulfilling life on the Alps until Catherine goes into labor.

Personally, I found this book to be tedious and couldn’t understand why it (or Hemingway’s writing style) could ever be considered excellent. The two main characters were rather bland and personality-less, and their interaction gave me the mental image of two bad actors reading a rather corny script to each other. Also, Hemingway failed hard on making the front seem like a war zone: there was no discernible mention of what was going on sound- and scentwise, and everyone seemed to have forgotten there was a war going on. Part of this could perhaps be attributed to Hemingway having been in a war zone long enough to think that the sounds and smells would be obvious, but even so, his proofreader should have commented on the fact. Almost all of the faults in characterization could be put down to the fact that, apparently, Hemingway tried to make Catherine and Frederic his ideal woman and ideal man, respectively. Ideals are far from realistic and boring to read.

All in all, I would definately not recommend this to anyone who likes books where things actually happen. If you like slow-paced novels about relationships, then sure, why not give it a try?