How long does it take to read Old Man’s War?
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi takes about 5 hours 41 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 1 of Old Man's War
Next: The Ghost Brigades
About 5 hours 41 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2005. 310 pages, about 85,250 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 28 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 41 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 33 minutes |
The page count is the median across 17 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
John Scalzi channels Robert Heinlein (including a wry sense of humor) in a novel about a future Earth engaged in an interstellar war against more advanced species. Citizens volunteer for the Colonial Defense Forces after retirement, in exchange for which they have their consciousness transferred into a young body, cloned from their DNA but enhanced. If, against the odds, they survive two years of combat (or 10 years if things aren't going well, which they're not), they get another body and enjoy a fresh start on a colony. This is Scalzi's first novel, and it creates a future he will revisit in subsequent stories. John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.
Subjects: Space warfare, Life on other planets in fiction, Older men, Science Fiction, Soldiers in fiction, Older men in fiction
