Do you enjoy military science fiction? Exploring the personal, technological, and moral implications of inter-species warfare has long been a rich vein of material for sci-fi authors. If you enjoyed Old Man's War, you may also enjoy the following books:
- Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein - Hugo winner and grand-daddy of the subgenre, was also made into a (far, far goofier) movie in 1997. Every book mentioned here can trace its roots directly back to this seminal classic.
- The Forever War
by Joe Haldeman - Gritty, action-packed, and outstanding novel. Haldeman also wrote a follow-up called Forever Peace
that wasn't a direct continuation, but does deal with many of the issues raised in the first book.
- Armor
by John Steakley - A "splatterpunk sci-fi tale of armoured suits, survival instincts, and millions of murderous aliens;" for my money, Armor is the best book of the lot. It certainly has the best action scenes, by far: dizzyingly choreographed and thoroughly adrenaline-pumping. It also does a poignant job of illustrating the maxim that war is indeed hell.
Military sci-fi has also provided a memorable setting for a long series of futuristic strategy games:
- The 1992 computer game Dune 2 kicked off a frenzy of real-time strategy games that later led to Starcraft and the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series. The former was the better game, but it's worth taking a moment to remember the latter for its glorious silliness. As explained elsewhere, Red Alert "starts off with Einstein traveling back in time to assassinate Hitler. By the time we're finished, we have dolphin commandos, psychically-controlled giant squid, electricity-draining UFOs, psychic soldiers that set people on fire with their minds, cloning machines, teleporting commandos who erase their targets from space-time, and bear paratroopers." That's right: bear paratroopers. :)
- Popular military sci-fi games today include Dawn of War and Supreme Commander, the latter by the creator of the renowned Total Annihilation series.
Futurama, Vol. 2: "War is the H-Word" was probably the single best episode of the show's glorious run, standing on equal ground with any "best of" Simpsons episodes, too. Sadly, there are no video clips available online, due to Fox's hyper-vigilant lawyers. We'll have to settle instead for a long list of quotes from the episode. "War were declared!"
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Other posts on Book Club for Old Man's War, by John Scalzi:
by Cormac McCarthy. Posts about this book: