The reason we use force when we deal with other intelligent alien species is that force is the easiest thing to use. It’s fast, it’s straightforward, and compared to the complexities of diplomacy, it’s simple. [p. 166]
Widower John Perry celebrates his 75th birthday by saying goodbye to Earth, his life and everything he's ever known. He enlists with the Colonial Defense Forces, who have technology which is rumoured to 'reverse ageing'. The downside is that, should you survive your two years' tour of duty (which may be extended to ten years), you can't ever return to Earth: instead, you will be given a new life in the colonies. Perry is fine with all that. He's still mourning his wife Kathy, and there's nothing left for him on Earth except old age and death.
Turns out the 'anti-ageing' is a brand-new body (the 'full body transplant' of which I have been dreaming lately), a BrainPal AI assistant (which Perry names Asshole), and plenty of weapons training; a bunch of new friends; and the opportunity to visit exotic new worlds and kill whatever's already living there. For this is not a friendly universe. Humanity is (as usual) in a race to expand, to colonise, to boldly go et cetera. So are all the other intelligent species out there, and apparently (a) there are a lot of them and (b) they all want Earth-like planets too. (Why yes, Scalzi does acknowledge a debt to Heinlein in his afterword.) Much of the book is a montage of battle scenes, as Perry becomes initially blasé and then increasingly uncomfortable about his job. He maintains friendships with the people he trained with, a diminishing pool as one by one they're killed off; he discovers the Ghost Brigades, and some highly dubious ethical practises; and he kills things people.*
I enjoyed this much more than I'd expected to: I am not a fan of military SF, and I'm more or less a pacifist. Scalzi's take on the Huge Intergalactic Melee has room for conscience and grief as well as slaughter, though I think he also made an effort to include a variety of shocking scenarios. I did have two issues. One is that the Colonial Defense Forces seem to be wholly American (we don't encounter anyone who isn't from the US); one is that a person 'grown' from the DNA of someone else seems to acquire their emotional connections, which is horribly close to Destined Soulmates.
When I finished this book (which I've owned for nearly 10 years) I doubted I'd read more in the series: but actually I'm intrigued...
Fulfils the ‘apostrophe in the title’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.
*"The people! The things!"
"The things," said Ford quietly, "are also people."
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