I haven’t been interested in Science Fiction for a while. Too many bad books just burned me out. I’m not sure where I heard about Old Man’s War, but the premise interested me enough to check it out. I enjoyed it so much, I’ve already read the second one in the series and have started the third. John Scalzi’s book Starts out on Earth. John Perry, like many people on Earth, are joining the Colonial Defense Forces. This is the group that is colonizing space, and also in charge of protecting these new colonies. The only catch is, they only recruit soldiers from Earth, and they only let these soldiers join when they turn 75.

Perry joins a year after his wife has died, the the book follows him through the recruitment, training and everything that happens to him as a soldier in various parts of the galaxy. Along the way we discover why they only recruit the elderly, how they make them soldiers, and what happens after they’re done.

John meets other recruits and forms friendships, these characters that are introduced at the beginning continue to pop up throughout the book. As a character, John is great. He keeps his humanity throughout the book no matter what happens, and is usually the ethical voice of the book.

The story introduces fascinating ideas that I’ve never read in science fiction, interesting enough that I was ready to read more even though I knew one of the sequels had very few of the characters from Old Man’s War.