{"version":"1.0","type":"link","provider_name":"Hardcover","provider_url":"https://hardcover.app","cache_age":86400,"title":"Old Man's War","url":"https://hardcover.app/books/old-mans-war-2005","description":"John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife\u0026#39;s grave. Then he joined the army.\n\nThe 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.\n\nEarth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity\u0026#39;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\u0026#39;t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You\u0026#39;ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You\u0026#39;ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you\u0026#39;ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.\n\nJohn 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.","author_name":"John Scalzi","author_url":"https://hardcover.app/authors/john-scalzi","thumbnail_url":"https://assets.hardcover.app/edition/18117782/5a87dd758427401aad14591ca552a763123f9b2b.jpeg","thumbnail_width":305,"thumbnail_height":500}