Hey everyone, welcome to my apartment, I guess.
I think it's more of a condo.
I'm not sure. I haven't gotten a clear answer on it.
I'm renting, so I don't own it. I don't have to know the details.
Welcome. It's a little messier than usual.
And by that I mean more cluttered. I don't leave trash on the floor.
It's been a busy week.
On Saturday Austin and I spent 15 hours together
recording a bunch of material for PrideRise Podcast
and it was a lot.
We got to know each other, maybe too well.
You know, sometimes it's better to...
the less time you spend with someone.
I'm just kidding. Fuck it, Austin. You're great.
That was a lot of fun. I forgot you listened to these.
So welcome to Wednesday Night Book Club.
Yeah, it's where once a week we get together, we talk about some books.
This week we're talking about Old Man's War by John Scalzi.
One of my absolute favorite books.
Sorry if I sound a little bit tired today.
This is day two of me running the comedy improv theater portion
of the theater summer camp that the city I live in puts on each year.
So this is a citywide, well, multiple citywide summer camp.
And these kids come in.
There's I think 60 kids that were here this year yesterday.
And they do a bunch of camps.
There's like football, basketball, soccer, a bunch of stuff.
And I just...
I'm very fortunate enough to have been asked to run the comedy improv portion,
which the kids are doing great at.
It's high school aged kids. I'll tell you this though, man.
It's a four hour session.
And after four grueling, I mean, we're talking long grueling hours
of teaching these kids improv, really hammering down like the fundamentals,
I looked up at the clock and realized 20 minutes had passed.
It's going to be a long day today.
Anyway, it's Wednesday Night Book Club.
The book is Old Man's War 2005 by John Scalzi.
So I'm going to try not to spoil this one.
I'm not going to do a breakdown.
This is going to be fairly quick because I just I really want you all to read this book.
I think it's phenomenal.
It's a science fiction book.
Space, you know, that kind of stuff.
The opening line, I'm just going to read you the opening line because this,
I was at a Barnes and Noble and I picked this up because I thought the title was interesting.
It was Old Man's War and I saw space.
So I was like, oh, like an old space, you know, captain or something maybe.
And I read the first line and here it is.
I did two things on my 75th birthday.
I visited my wife's grave.
Then I joined the army.
When I read those two or three sentences, I should say, I was hooked and I kept reading.
I'm so glad that I did because it's one of those books that just it's light hearted, but grip.
It's funny and sad.
It's exciting.
Oh, there's really no counterpoint that it's exciting pretty much the whole way through.
So I'm going to give you just a sort of maybe the first 20 percent of the book so that to kind of get you hooked.
So what in this world, in this earth, you have John Perry, who's the main character.
His wife, Kathy, had passed away a little bit earlier.
But on this earth, a company had a while ago, I don't remember how long, but created this technology that that builds an elevator to space,
which I don't know if that's theoretically possible or not.
I've seen other people talk about it outside of this.
And I mean, technically it would work right like the position of top, I feel like would never stay in a fixed place like you can.
But you could just build a space station at the top of it right.
And it would just rotate with the earth, I'm assuming.
You'd have to make the elevator like probably flexible.
I don't know. I have no idea.
But anyway, it exists in this world and no one on earth is allowed to go up to space.
It's it's locked unless you join the company that made it.
I for the life of me, I can't remember what it's what the name of the company is called.
Oh, yeah, it's the it's not a company. It's the Colonial Defense Force.
Yeah. So they that's the thing you have to see.
So if you when they when they first opened it up, they gave like third world countries that have like overpopulation.
They put a bunch. They grabbed a bunch of them, brought them up for free and then use them as colonists for different planets that they were colonizing.
You know, like settlers and pioneers.
So because Earth is becoming inhabitable, especially in like, you know, countries like India or China, you know, or it's like there's a ton of people.
So I'm not not China. Sorry, that's not a third world country, but you know, like or either is India.
But you don't talk about just like those those countries that have overpopulation.
That's what the CDF threw up there. Now, for the first world countries, the people that aren't, you know, living in in squalor or whatever, they in order to join the CDF in order to go to space, you have to join me.
You have to join the colonial defense forces and join their army.
The catch is you can only join the army at 65 years old.
That's when you can enlist, but you can only go up when you're 75 years old.
So you have to wait 10 years after enlisting at 65.
Now, this sounds strange because why would an army want a bunch of 75 year old, you know, retired, can barely move people for their army force?
And that's what a lot of people on on Earth are asking themselves as well, including John Perry and his wife, Kathy, when they both sign up at the age of 65, they both sign up and they're like, well, why not?
It's shrouded in mystery as to what happens when you go up there and they are deciding to roll the dice.
They've lived their lives. You know, why not try living, you know, having a cool final chapter?
So the CDF does promise that you'll be able to fulfill your commitment as a soldier and you'll be rewarded after with something, you know, like something cool, like you'll be able to it'll extend your life.
And so they sign up in between 65 and 75.
Kathy, unfortunately, passes away.
I think she has an aneurysm in the just in the kitchen.
And it's sad. So John now kind of lives alone.
And because of that, he's I think a little bit more resolved to just doing the CDF thing because he doesn't really have any any reason to stay at home.
And so at 75 years old, he visited, he visits his wife's grave.
He says goodbye. He goes to the recruiting office.
He talks to the young lady there. She gets him on an elevator.
He meets a few other old people that are also going up into space.
A couple of them are dicks, you know, but one of them's dick, but he makes a few friends.
They call themselves the old farts and they go up.
And so when they get up to the CDF, they are put into green cloned bodies.
They're all like perfect 20 something year old bodies or like 30 something year old bodies are like like in perfect shape.
Even if you weren't in shape in your regular previous life, you are now in like a ripped body, like just a shredded body that's super strong and fast.
And you're green because that's just the cloning procedure.
I think they just want to be able to tell them like what they're there, who their troops are, whatever.
They've got artificial blood that's nanobot, nanobot enhanced, like their eyesight.
They have a brain computer in their head called a brain pal, which can let them seamlessly interact with each other.
So this was the whole thing. This was you join.
Once you get up there, you get put into this really, really slick, genetically engineered, enhanced body.
And then you're told to fight for the CDF and you're told they're told very quickly that the survival rate is very, very, very low.
And the chances of making it through very slim.
But if you do make it through, they're going to give you a regular, non enhanced cloned body, just a regular human one of yourself at like age 25 or whatever.
And put you on a planet and let you live out another life, basically, but just as a healthy, ripped, well, until you do otherwise, probably.
Like body. So one of the cool things about these clones is that they keep the physical aesthetic of your like face.
So you're basically you. You're just probably like the hottest version of you.
I mean, maybe maybe I'm talking to some people that right now are extremely ripped and are the best looking.
You know what? Everyone who's listening, you're the best looking version of yourself.
And don't let anyone say anything different.
That being said, I thought about this, about what it would be like to live in a world where having clones are available as like an option, you know, and I love it.
I'm totally for like the island situation, a movie.
And what's great is I can look down at my current body and just know instantly that I'm not being kept as a harvest as like someone to harvest my organs.
Like, if anything, I'm definitely a recipient of some like hot shredded clone in some factory being, you know, ripped open to give me like healthy, healthy stuff that because I'm looking down at me like who?
I don't even think if I were to die that like the donor card on on the back, like the donor on the back of my ID would I think people would reject it.
I don't know if you can. I don't know if like they come through and like they look at me and they're like, I'm I don't need a new heart that badly.
I don't need my I guess I'm cool with the liver. I've got dialysis.
Just just move them along, bring them to the next guy.
I mean, imagine how many times my corpse would be passed around before anyone decided to harvest my organs.
That's not fun to think about. So anyway, John, he makes his friends with the old parts.
Everything's going great. Well, not great.
They're they go into war and shit and war is hell and John Scalzi does not pull away from that. And he definitely tries to show that there's different.
There's always two sides. There's multiple sides, a hundred sides to every story.
You know what I mean? And John Perry starts questioning kind of the narrative of the CDF a little bit.
You know, just he he's just he's smart and he's not going to just fall, you know, toe the company line.
Although he is a great soldier and he does do great, but he's quick.
He's quick thinking and he and he helps people like he does.
He's independently minded, so he helps and ends up surviving.
But then something dramatic happens and that dramatic thing, which is the last part I'm going to end on for plot wise
before just giving my general impressions is he runs into a he sees like a group of soldiers and he asks, like, oh, who are they?
They say, well, those are the special forces, the Ghost Brigades, and they're like a whole they're all quiet.
They don't talk. They're they're bad ass.
They're like way cooler, stronger, they have better technology and shit than the regular soldiers.
And he sees one of them and it is a clone hot version.
Well, I mean, you know, like rip version of his wife, the one that passed away.
And that means that they used her to create a special soldier.
And maybe that's why they're called the Ghost Brigades, because it's based off of people.
I mean, that is the reason, but that's kind of I'm trying to leave it a little bit mysterious.
But so anyway, he runs into her and I'm not going to go any further because that is a critical like, I mean, that's one of the most important parts.
And it sort of fuels the rest of the book and the rest and definitely the rest of the series, because this is a series.
There are let's see how many books are there.
You have Old Man's War Questions for a Soldier. I don't know what that is.
I didn't read that. Looks like a little side book. But then Ghost Brigade, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, which is my I think my maybe my favorite of the three,
which was surprising because I really love Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades.
But then I read Last Colony, I was like, holy shit, that's great. Zoe's Tale, which is important.
The Human Division and then The End of All Things. And they are all phenomenal.
John Scalzi is wonderful. He has written some of my favorite books. He wrote Red Shirts, which is a perfect, absolutely perfect Star Trek parody that isn't
like not like a over. It's not like a scary movie parody or a national lampoon parody. It's a very
it's love letter. It's it's it's almost. Yeah, no, it's just a love letter to Star Trek.
And if you like Star Trek, it's one of the it's one of the best out there. He did the.
Oh, and then most recently, I read the Kaiju. Yeah, the Kaiju Preservation Society, which is like very good.
It's maybe I didn't know that it was meant for young adults. What the fuck?
Let's see. It says it was named the winner of one of 10 books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults age 12 through 18.
I didn't get that, but I thought it was like a legit for adults book.
But anyway, the Kaiju Preservation Society was great.
Overall, Old Man's War is one of my favorite sci fi.
None, I guess, non hard sci fi sci fi books series.
It's easy enough to read without having to think about all the science behind every, you know, like a Star Wars doesn't make you question
how a lightsaber works. This doesn't make you question skip drive technology or anything like that.
It just lets it be. You live and breathe.
You know, it's like this world that he creates.
And I love it. I was I've been hooked probably since I found it in Barnes and Noble, maybe 2006, 2007.
I've been I absolutely love it. I've been reading these over and over again for years.
Probably read them three or four times. The whole series. I absolutely love it.
So highly recommended. It gets my top marks as far as these go.
So I'm going to say it's going to get five.
Well, because I really want you to read Red Shirts, five red shirts, five red shirts, even though it has nothing to do with the book.
Yeah. So if you're looking for a great sci fi book, I highly recommend this.
And if side note, because I can't get this out of my head.
I if you're looking for a fun fantasy science fiction sort of modern day computer stuff book,
I read a series called Magic 2.0 and I know it sounds silly, but it's a guy who finds a way to he's like a hacker
and he eventually finds the code for the universe and when he puts in enough like parameters to find his own code in this like like his own part of the code,
he's able to like a change the universe to his will, almost like if he was living in the Matrix and then had a hack kit for the Matrix that he was living in.
And he does what all people would do if you want to disguise yourself as somebody with a you know,
or like live a life where you're allowed to have a lot of power and a lot of people wouldn't question that.
And it would be be a wizard back in old timey England.
Well, guess what? That's where all the other hackers who have discovered the code of the universe have also thought would be a fun idea.
And so he meets other people. It's hilarious. It's a whole series. I highly recommend it.
I don't normally do recommendations inside my own book club.
But anyway, go read Old Man's War, John Scalzi, go read Red Shirts by him as well.
I highly recommend the Magic 2.0 series. Any you know, so just go read anything.
I'm glad that you all join me today. Again, sorry for the clutter.
It'll be cleaner next week when you all come over and hopefully next week it's going to be running the light with Sam Town.
I think I said that last time. I'm so sorry. It's just I really want Austin and Sean if possible to be a part of that.
I don't want to review it on my own because I want to have some other comedians point of views.
So hope you all have a wonderful rest of your Wednesday evening, which I'm sure you only listen to these on.
You know, it has to be very specific. Listen to this on a Wednesday and again, thank you. Have a wonderful night.