Old Man's War Universe

[Posner]

I recently read the Old Man's War trilogy by John Scalzi. I liked it, nothing groundbreaking, but enjoyable nonetheless. I particularly liked the idea that a universe with many different species would be pretty dangerous and dirty. The humans in the novel never shied away from massacring entire species. The idea is that habitable planets in the universe are suprisingly scarce and there is a huge drive to colonize as many planets as possible, inhabited or not. The general strategy is to populate planets to the point that it wouldn't be efficient to kill off all the humans. What are everyone else's thoughts on the books?

[Covenant]

Confusing premise... why even bother to colonize a world? There's almost no reason to put forth the effort required to start a new planetary colony when you could just create new ones entirely to spec. By the time you've got the technology it would take to colonize a new planet, you'd think you'd have the technology required to make some happy little deep-core colonies in a moon or something.

[TheMuffinKing]

Confusing premise... why even bother to colonize a world? There's almost no reason to put forth the effort required to start a new planetary colony when you could just create new ones entirely to spec. By the time you've got the technology it would take to colonize a new planet, you'd think you'd have the technology required to make some happy little deep-core colonies in a moon or something.

Wouldn't moon colonies be hampered by a tight population capacity? Having a whole world gives a lot of room to spread out and can support a higher population without having to worry if some idiot opens an airlock.

[TheMuffinKing]

I recently read the Old Man's War trilogy by John Scalzi. I liked it, nothing groundbreaking, but enjoyable nonetheless. I particularly liked the idea that a universe with many different species would be pretty dangerous and dirty. The humans in the novel never shied away from massacring entire species. The idea is that habitable planets in the universe are suprisingly scarce and there is a huge drive to colonize as many planets as possible, inhabited or not. The general strategy is to populate planets to the point that it wouldn't be efficient to kill off all the humans. What are everyone else's thoughts on the books?

I liked the first book, just having acquired the second, I can't really comment on the series as a whole. I do like the premise of custom built bodies though!

[Covenant]

Wouldn't moon colonies be hampered by a tight population capacity? Having a whole world gives a lot of room to spread out and can support a higher population without having to worry if some idiot opens an airlock.

There's actually a whole lot more room inside the moon to build than there is on the surface of the Earth, and there's a lot of benefits by digging into a small world down rather than spreading out across a big one, especially in terms of space colonization. Easier to dock and take off from for one.

Plus, the airlock probably wouldn't be a big issue--as it was stated before in other threads, the amount of time it would take to actually depressurize a massive internal habitat is extremely long.

Overall though, if you're in a universe where colonization is what drives species to commit XENOCIDE on each other, you'd think the more rational bunch would decide to just search for an alternative housing arrangement, even if it would be a little more dangerous, which it wouldn't. I'm sure the books are fun, I just was a little "Mweh?" at the concept.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I only read the first book, a fun read but nothing that give me "I want to know more" vibes.

The aliens with far superior technology who enjoy fighting on the ground and always use the same weapons technology as their enemies might have something to do with the funkiness of the verse.

The scene with the little humanoids a human could stomp like bugs did not work for me though, there are impossible small humans in one of my favourite SF series and I was always thinking that proper mini humanoids should kill their enemies with micro-nukes and people sized mechs. :p

[White Haven]

It's VERY campy SF. Bit of a fun read if you turn your brain off, few fun concepts, but it's definitely not a series that holds up to scrutiny well.

[Molyneux]

I only read the first book, a fun read but nothing that give me "I want to know more" vibes.

The aliens with far superior technology who enjoy fighting on the ground and always use the same weapons technology as their enemies might have something to do with the funkiness of the verse.

The scene with the little humanoids a human could stomp like bugs did not work for me though, there are impossible small humans in one of my favourite SF series and I was always thinking that proper mini humanoids should kill their enemies with micro-nukes and people sized mechs. :p

The Consu scare the crap out of me, frankly.
Have you read Zoe's Tale yet?

[Luzifer's right hand]

The Consu scare the crap out of me, frankly.
Have you read Zoe's Tale yet?

As I said I only read the first book.

[Molyneux]

The Consu scare the crap out of me, frankly.
Have you read Zoe's Tale yet?

As I said I only read the first book.

That'll teach me to post here before I've had breakfast...sorry.
Even so, just from the first book - creepy bastards, aren't they?