History Literature / OldMansWar

''The Human Division'' (2013) takes up the where the series left off, dealing with the fallout, bringing back old characters and introducing new ones. Scheduled for release in weekly e-episodes via Amazon etc, the novel-in-stories features cover art for each chapter by John Harris.

* AbortedArc: [[spoiler:The werewolves of Roanoke never come up against after the first conflict with them. Zoe's War goes into a bit more detail about them, though.]]

* AscendedExtra: Harry Wilson, one of the last three survivors of the Old Farts in ''Old Man's War'', returns as an extra in ''The Ghost Brigades'', and is a major protagonist in ''The Human Division'' (or at least its first book, ''The B-Team'').

* UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: The Colonial Union. English is the main language, the military is dominated by former US citizens, and the influential, older colonies are populated by many descendants of American colonists.

* SpaceAmish: The Colonial Mennonites in ''The Last Colony''.

* ScaryDogmaticAliens: The Consu. Curiously enough, though, that dogma makes them ''less'' dangerous than they might be - they could easily steamroll everyone else in the galaxy, but they prefer their battles to be religiously-significant (i.e., fair) instead.

* MachiavelliWasWrong: [[spoiler:And the Colonial Union gets itself into some serious trouble as a result.]]

* BullyingADragon: The CU's plan to break the Conclave turns into this. [[spoiler:They humiliate the Conclave by using Roanoke as bait for their unified fleet and destroy it. Somehow they missed that nearly every ship in the fleet was the flagship of each member race and give 412 member races a personal kick in the nuts.]] So they get the internal strife they wanted, but [[NiceJobBreakingItHero it's largely over whether or not to just kill us all off in retaliation]].

* AbortedArc: [[spoiler:The werewolves of Roanoke never come up against after the first conflict with them.]]

(Some of this text is reprinted from JohnScalzi.)

* DeadpanSnarker: All of his protagonists either start out this way (John and Zoe) or grow into it (Jared). Each has their own flavor of snark too.

* CasualInterstellarTravel: Averted due to the CU monopoly on skip drive, most human starships are either warships or colony ships. Though it's implied that some other species do travel to other systems casually and the monopoly is mostly to prevent unauthorized colonization.

* LostColony: Roanoke, though it's both deliberate and temporary. LampshadeHanging ensues when, after he figures out what's happening, the main character chews himself out for having missed the reference.
** Before the CU monopoly on skip drive "Wildcat" colonies were fairly common, most failed within a year.

* MentalFusion: Special Forces are raised with an active [=BrainPal=] from "birth", allowing them to share their senses, thought, emotions and memories. While not a HiveMind, it creates a powerful anti-self pro-group type of bias in them.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The members of the CDF, their skin is photosynthetic.

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Specifically the Colonial Union, which is often of the [[MagnificentBastard magnificent]] variety. It keeps Earth, its source of colonists and soldiers, as an isolated, technological backwater. It strictly controls communication and travel between the colonies themselves. Even set against a backdrop of hundreds of feuding alien species, very few of whom are nice guys, humanity stands out for its merciless tenacity. That said, the series does note that a lot of the more bastardly tendencies are justified by the more horrifying tendencines of the opposing species. For example, most (hostile) alien species are depicted as eating humans and other intelligent species. Humans don't. And mostly humanity is just absolutely, completely ruthless, far from actually malevolent, which is actually required for survival because humans are one of the newest and smallest species on the galactic stage. Anything else means extinction, at best, or being farmed for meat, at worst.

** The entire first book feels like a tribute to Literature/StarshipTroopers.
*** Because [[http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/002329.html it is]].

* WorthyOpponent: John gets two in 'The Last Colony', in the form of [[CommanderContrarian Manfred Trujilo]] and [[VisionaryVillain General]] [[NecessarilyEvil Gau]]. [[spoiler:By the end of the book, he's good friends with both.]]

* RadioSilence: Forced upon the Roanoke colonists in order to avoid the Conclave's attentions.

* BrainUploading: Charles Boutin in ''The Ghost Brigades'' perfects the storage and downloading of mental copies, though it has kinks.

* HumansAreBastards: Specifically the Colonial Union, which is often of the [[MagnificentBastard magnificent]] variety. It keeps Earth, its source of colonists and soldiers, as an isolated, technological backwater. It strictly controls communication and travel between the colonies themselves. Even set against a backdrop of hundreds of feuding alien species, very few of whom are nice guys, humanity stands out for its merciless tenacity. That said, the series does note that a lot of the more bastardly tendencies are justified by the more horrifying tendencines of the opposing species. For example, most (hostile) alien species are depicted as eating humans and other intelligent species. Humans don't. And mostly humanity is just absolutely, completely ruthless, far from actually malevolent, which is actually required for survival because humans are one of the newest and smallest species on the galactic stage. Anything else means extinction, at best, or being farmed for meat, at worst.

* LostColony: Roanoake, though it's both deliberate and temporary.

* WorthyOpponent: John gets two in 'The Last Colony', in the form of [[CommanderContrarian Manfred Trujilo]] and [[VisionaryVillain General Gau]]. [[spoiler:By the end of the book, he's good friends with both.]]

As the namesake novel, first published in 2005, explains: Elderly Earthlings sign up ten years in advance of leaving the planet. But what happens to those who don't live that long? Their genetic code is adapted to create Special Forces soldiers, who are physically adult from birth, are specially souped up for combat, and have mental technology allowing them to communicate at faster speeds (this makes it hard for them to deal with "normal" people, since norms are slower thinkers and Special Forces soldiers aren't known for tactfulness and social skills).

As the namesake novel, first published in 2005, explains: Elderly Earthlings sign up ten years in advance of leaving the planet. But what happens to those who don't live that long? Their genetic code used to create Special Forces soldiers, who are physically adult from birth, are specially souped up for combat, and have mental technology allowing them to communicate at faster speeds (this makes it hard for them to deal with "normal" people, since norms are slower thinkers and Special Forces soldiers aren't known for tactfulness and social skills).

* LongevityTreatment: The CDF's main selling point