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This is book one of a planned four-book series that expands from one planet to two, then to the galaxy, then to competing universes. Three volumes have been published, with the final book coming in 2027.
It doesn’t get much worse than the prospect of a three-way civil war, and in a global superpower grown arrogant and complacent in its prosperity, one influential man leads the peaceful charge against corruption and tyranny, while others plot more radical solutions. Council Minister Merak Dorvallen’s allies are few, and now his youngest son Coren, a Lieutenant in the vaunted Irrianite military, is the target of government assassins. Desperate, Merak reaches out to Ohrim Sunvail, an old friend in exile who harbors potentially helpful secrets. Ohrim’s exceptionally competent and head-strong daughter Mei’ Shera accepts the assignment and thwarts the assassins, setting in accelerated motion events that will shape a drastically different future for Irrianon.
In the midst of the chaos, scientists in Irrianon have secretly cracked the code for interstellar space travel, which will shape a drastically different future for the entire planet of Toryl, especially when they find a sister planet of humans only a few years behind in technology. The winner of the Irrianite civil war will lay a solid first claim on the stars, unlocking a universe of possibilities for both progress and potential disaster.
by Brian Scott Pauls
This past Sunday, the World Science Fiction Society presented the Hugo Awards at LAcon V in Anaheim—the 84th Worldcon. Fantasy continued to dominate the novel categories, with one big exception. John Scalzi won the Hugo Award for Best Series with his seven (to date) novels in the Old Man’s War cycle. Tor published the first book, Old Man’s War, in 2005, and the most recent, The Shattering Peace, in 2025.1
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Born in 1969 in Fairfield, California, Scalzi received an AB in philosophy from the University of Chicago, where he edited the student paper and freelanced for the Chicago Sun-Times.2 In the nineties he worked as a film critic and opinion columnist at the Fresno Bee, then two years as an in-house writer and editor at AOL.3 In September 1998 he started his blog Whatever, still active today.4
Scalzi discovered the value of “shareware” marketing early on. In 1997 he wrote Agent to the Stars as an experiment, to see if he could handle writing at novel-length. In 1999 he posted it for free on his website, asking readers to mail him a dollar if they liked it. By 2004 he’d received about $4000 from satisfied fans.5
Learning from this experience, Scalzi serialized Old Man’s War on the blog in 2002.6 Then he sent Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden a link to an essay he’d written about the experiment. Two days later, Nielsen Hayden replied, “as the blurb cliché goes, I couldn’t put it down.” Tor published the book in 2005. The next year it received a Hugo nomination for Best Novel and won the John W. Campbell (now Astounding) Award for Best New Writer.7
The Best Series win is Scalzi’s fourth Hugo, following Best Fan Writer in 2008, Best Related Book in 2009 for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, and Best Novel in 2013 for Redshirts.8 In 2015 Tor signed him to a thirteen book contract over ten years.9
Scalzi lives with his wife in Bradford, Ohio.10
See below for the description of Old Man’s War, the first novel in the series, from the publisher’s website:
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 to the stars. The bad news is that, out there, planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.
Responsible for protecting humanity, the Colonial Defense Force doesn’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth, never to return. You’ll serve two years in combat. And if you survive, you’ll be given a homestead of your own on a hard-won planet light-years from home.
John Perry is taking that deal. He thinks he knows what to expect. But the actual fight is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.11
Thoughts about the Old Man’s War series? Please comment below!
Artificial intelligence tools performed multiple tasks in the creation and publication of this article.
This month, I’m sharing my thoughts about T. R. Napper’s Aurealis Award-winning novel 36 Streets on Club Codex, where any Cosmic Codex subscriber can follow along, comment, or ask questions.
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“2026 Hugo Awards Results,” The Hugo Awards, August 30, 2026, https://www.thehugoawards.org/2026/08/2026-hugo-awards-results/; “The 2026 Hugo Awards Report,” LAcon V, accessed September 3, 2026, https://www.lacon.org/2026hugos/.
John Scalzi, “A Brief Biography of John Scalzi,” Whatever, accessed September 3, 2026, https://whatever.scalzi.com/about/a-brief-biography-of-john-scalzi/.
Scalzi, “A Brief Biography”; “John Scalzi,” Wikipedia, accessed September 3, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi, which dates the AOL tenure to 1996–98.
“John Scalzi,” Wikipedia; John Scalzi, Whatever, accessed September 3, 2026, https://whatever.scalzi.com/.
John Scalzi, “Agent to the Stars, Ten Years On,” Whatever, July 22, 2015, https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/07/22/agent-to-the-stars-ten-years-on/.
“Old Man’s War,” Wikipedia, accessed September 3, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man%27s_War.
“Old Man’s War,” Wikipedia; John Scalzi, “The Offer on Old Man’s War: A Ten-Year Retrospective,” Whatever, December 30, 2012, https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/30/the-offer-on-old-mans-war-a-ten-year-retrospective/; “John Scalzi Awards,” Science Fiction Awards Database, accessed September 3, 2026, https://www.sfadb.com/John_Scalzi.
“John Scalzi Awards,” Science Fiction Awards Database.
“Tor Books Announces a Decade of John Scalzi,” Reactor (formerly Tor.com), May 24, 2015, https://reactormag.com/tor-books-announces-a-decade-of-john-scalzi/.
Scalzi, “A Brief Biography”; “John Scalzi,” Wikipedia.
Publisher’s synopsis for John Scalzi, Old Man’s War (New York: Tor Books, 2005), Tor Publishing Group, accessed September 3, 2026, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250359735/oldmanswar/.
