History Literature / OldMansWar

--> '''John:''' Out of every government or species or intelligent race, the Colonial Union is the one that is the best at looking out for us. For humans. But I've come to doubt that the Colonial Union is doing that job ''well''. Look how the Colonial Union treated us at Roanoke. It deceived us in the purpose of the colony. It deceived us in the interest of the Conclave. It made us complicit in n act of war that could have destroyed the entire CU. And then it was willing to sacrifice us for th good of humanity. But none of the rest of humanity ever knew the whole story, did they? The Colonial Union controls communication. Controls information. Now that Roanoke survived, the Colonial Union will never tell any of it. No one outside the CU power structure even knows the Conclave exists. ''Still''.... The British didn't sacrifice Coventry. And the Colonial Union shouldn't have been willing to sacrifice Roanoke.

* CloningBlues: The Old Man's War trilogy features extensive cloning, where the clones usually aren't brought to consciousness before having a progenitor's consciousness installed.
** The term 'clone' in this case is used loosely, because they are based on highly modified versions of the original DNA.
** Suffered briefly by Jane Sagan, but she seems to be at peace with it by the end of ''Old Man's War.''

* SapientEatsSapient: It's brought up repeatedly that multiple alien species are quite willing to eat humans, given half a chance. In one horrific instance that the protagonists get told about in boot camp, an unauthorized colony of humans got captured by another species which promptly killed and ate most of the men and used the few that were left to forcibly impregnate the women so they could [[EatsBabies eat the resulting babies like veal]]. When Colonial Union forces arrived on planet, they barbecued and ate a number of the aliens in retaliation after defeating them.

*** He runs across R. Daneel Olivaw from Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheRobotTrilogy''.

** At the end of the third book, Szilard comments that John's actions have forced the CU to rely more on the Special Forces and grant them liberties, but this isn't given much detail in the next book, (although this is somewhat justified if tyou sconsider what John did for them the end of the process rather than the beginning of it).

* AbusivePrecursors: Possibly the Consu to the Obin (a species artificially created by the Consu). The Obin [[spoiler:Have no souls or sense of individuality]] but have just enough awareness to ''know'' that their missing this and want to achieve it somehow, with Boutin speculating the Consu might have done that to them on purpose.

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:The use of trees climbing to avoid hostile guns]] in ''The Ghost Brigades''.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The members of the CDF, their skin is photosynthetic, they are all in perfect physical shape, they won't age past appearing to be in their early twenties, and they are possibly even altered to look sexier than their normal genetics would allow to encourage bonding and to exploit the natural human tendency to treat good looking people better. Ruiz calls out minorities during his spiel at the start of basic training... then yells "BULLSHIT! You're all green!" (He has NWordPrivileges, since his original body was Hispanic.)

* HumbleGoal: All that the Obin really want [[spoiler:Is individual souls and conciseness, to end their CreativeSterility and give them a sense of individuality and self]].

** In ''The Human Division'', this maneuver is used [[spoiler:for Wilson and Danielle to escape the destruction of Earth Station.]] When he has to do it ''again'' in ''The End of All Things'', he thinks to himself that he'd like to visit Earth the normal way for once.

** It occurs to some extent in ''The Ghost Brigades'', though, justified by the characters being SuperSoldiers taught to fight from birth: being an effective soldier is ingrained deeply enough into their identity that strict military discipline is redundant. But even they stick to business once they're on the clock, though.

* OlderThanTheyLook: All CDF soldiers, owing to the whole BrainUploading thing. Zoe hangs a [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] on it in ''The Last Colony'' by calling (the apparently 30-something) John "[[AffectionateNickname ninety-year-old dad]]".

** The Consu. Curiously enough, though, that dogma makes them ''less'' dangerous than they might be - they're so advanced that they could easily steamroll everyone else in the galaxy, but their philosophy/religion calls on them to fight 'fairly' in their continued effort to help other races 'perfect' themselves so they limit themselves to using the same level of tech as their opponents. In their eyes, it's a species-wide EarnYourHappyEnding: in the eyes of most of their neighbors, it's random, scary mayhem.

* SpaceAmish: The Colonial Mennonites in ''The Last Colony'', though they don't seem to actually have an objection to technology per se, but simply object to ''excess technology'', and that's why the CU sends a large group of them to Roanoke, which is likely to be cut off from the rest of the CU for a very long time, meaning that coping with lower tech levels would probably be necessary at some point.

* StarfishAliens: Just about everything in that isn't a human. There's only one race of aliens mentioned who get explicitly compared to humans, and they're about an inch tall. The most advanced race in the known universe look like giant, blade-armed stingrays.

* SterilityPlague: The Crimp, which caused a third of Earth's male population to become permanently sterile, and resulted in the Quarantine Laws. [[spoiler:''The Ghost Brigades'' reveals that while Earth believes that it was an extraterrestrial disease, the Colonial Union created it in order to justify said laws and help maintain the status quo.]]
* StupidEvil: One of the Colonial Union's key flaws (besides its arrogance) is its inability to look past short-term goals. They assume if they sow chaos among their enemies and win battles, they'll win the war. This worked for centuries because every other species was doing the exact same thing, but it begins to backfire when the Conclave actually proves to be a successful peaceful union between hundreds of disparate races.

* PocketRocketLauncher: The standard-issue weapon is the MP ('''M'''ulti-'''P'''urpose)-35, [[SwissArmyWeapon a gun that can adapt itself for whatever role the user needs]] by interfacing with their BrainPal neuro-implant, including launching salvoes of miniature missiles.

In August 2014, the Syfy Channel [[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/syfy-adapting-futuristic-military-drama-723323 announced]] it was adapting the books into a television series called ''The Ghost Brigades'' (it still will begin with John's story from ''Old Man's War'', they just thought the name [[RuleOfCool sounded cooler]]).

* AntiHumanAlliance: Certain things the CDF does bring about an alliance between many of their neighbors.

* BloodKnight: Many Special Forces soldiers, such as CrazyAwesome Harvey, and Goodal (who goes into a ritual duel with a Consu grinning, and does a little jig as he leaves victorious despite leaving behind one of his ears).

* DarkIsNotEvil: Or Horrifying Is Not Evil, as the case may be. This is [[InvokedTrope invoked]] during John's training as the recruits are shown two images of alien races, one a StarfishAlien that looks like something out of [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft's]] nightmare, the other a cute deer. They're then informed that the Lovecraft aliens are actually rather personable and friendly, whereas the deer-like aliens [[ToServeMan think humans are quite tasty.]]

* FalseReassurances: Downplayed, but after enlisting, the new soldiers are always told that 75% of them will likely die in their ten year tours of duty. This is a grim enough figure itself, but the fifth book reveals that this figure is actually ''too low'', considering the number who are killed after re-enlisting for a second tour.

-> I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. -- The opening lines of ''Old Man's War''.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Interestingly, John delivers one in ''The Last Colony" about the absent Colonial Union leaders (albeit in front of someone who can repeat this to them) about all of the major moral and policy mistakes they've made, and why that's leading him to [[spoiler: show the Conclave where Earth is to break their monopoly]].

* FasterThanLightTravel: Subverted: speeds approaching ''c'' are still impractical, so the skip drive drops your ship into a nearly-identical [[AnotherDimension analogue universe]] at the location you wanted to go to, while ''their'' virtually-identical version of the same ship drops into ''your'' original universe. For pragmati c purposes, it's teleportation: the physicists tend not to dwell on the fairly mind-boggling ramifications when laymen are around.

** An InUniverse example, as The Obi named themselves after the word for "lacking" in their own language due to feeling their lack of sentience and being bothered by it.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Subverted: speeds approaching ''c'' are still impractical, so the skip drive drops your ship into a nearly-identical [[AnotherDimension analogue universe]] at the location you wanted to go to, while ''their'' virtually-identical version of the same ship drops into ''your'' original universe. For pragmatic purposes, it's teleportation: the physicists tend not to dwell on the fairly mind-boggling ramifications when laymen are around.

* MeaningfulName: ''The Last Colony'' has a few spoilerish examples: [[spoiler:Roanoke colony and Perry calling himself a Commodore play it straight. Trujillo, the ambitious politician, is a subversion, since he's one of the good guys.]]

* BiTheWay: Several of John's fellow recruits turn out to be bisexual. It's dealt with in exactly as matter-of-fact a manner as the trope suggests.