A while ago, just after I finished Old Man’s War, I threatened to come back to the blog and give a scathing account of why John Scalzi’s fantastically entertaining space opera was the single most wrongheaded book I had ever read. It was, I was going to tell you, a filthy piece of right-wing shittism of the kind that I thought even the sci-fi reactionaries had left behind. I was going to set Mr Scalzi straight on a few things, I can tell you.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. The very clever Niall Harrison from Torque Control had the good grace to stop me making an even bigger arse of myself than usual by pointing me in the direction of Nicholas Whyte (who, god bless him) took a bullet for the rest of us and got there first.

The gist of the whole debate – to save you going off and reading the whole thing and forgetting to come back to read my much more interesting post (no, really, don’t do that) – is that Mr Whyte read Old Man’s War and had more or less the same reaction I did (he got more upset about the Northern Ireland reference and generally liked the book less) and (being a fellow Ulsterman and, therefore clearly in possession of the quiet introspection of all of our race) told the world what he thought in surprisingly reasonable terms (given that he was posting online and, therefore, not necessarily bound by any rules of etiquette).

Then, slightly to Mr. Whytes’ surprise, I think, he then found himself debating with the author (and a number of other scifi worthies) about what the book meant and what was going on in the Old Man’s War universe.

Scalzi’s point was that John Perry, the narrator of Old Man’s War, was not speaking from a perspective that allowed him to be a reliable narrator and that the sequels (The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony) would reveal a more complex and less politically one-sided plot.

Well, the truth was that even allowing for the horrendously right-wing politics, I’d had so much fun with Old Man’s War that I was going to read the other two books anyway. All this revelation did was speed up the ordering process and place them right at the top of the “to read” pile – pissing off an awful lot of other books.

And the obvious question is, is Scalzi right? Do the subsequent books recast the Old Man’s War universe in such a way that the liberal do-gooder in me is assuaged? My answer is mostly yes, with a few reservations.

But before I go any further down this dry and slightly dour path, let me stop and make something clear. These are not dry our dour books. I laughed a lot while reading this trilogy (even if some of the humour is a distinctly black) and they can be read perfectly happily as straightforward space opera adventures. The vast majority of sane people who (unlike me) don’t find themselves compulsively judging everything they read against some appallingly detailed ideological checklist (think of it as a kind of political OCD) can just pick up these stories and get on with having fun.

Indeed one of Scalzi’s problems might end up being that people who read about the books’ politics might assume that the books are “worthy” and be put off buying them, while those who read about how much fun this trilogy is might imagine that it can’t be about anything important. In fact, one of Scalzi’s biggest achievements (imho) is that he succeeds in writing a rip-roaring yarn and, at the same time, creating a politically complex, interesting and believable universe.

Before going any further, what follows is a fairly detailed discussion of what occurs in these three novels. There are inevitably spoilers ahead – so if you haven’t read the books, reading this will reduce your enjoyment.

Attitude to government

It might, I think, be possible to read the green soldiers trilogy (or GST I shall now call the books) as a typical piece of American paranoia of big government. The American nation was born out of resistance to “government” imposed upon its people and a continuing thread in American political philosophy (both left and right wing) is a basic fear of government conspiring against the people, manipulating them and threatening their freedom.

In the GST the CU government controls all means of communication and transport for humanity and, as such, it becomes clear that the bureaucracy is not necessarily acting in the interests of wider humanity as much as it is the interests of preserving the bureaucracy. It is, tellingly, the rugged frontiersman who ultimately discovers the truth about the conspiracy against the citizenry and who finds a way of breaking their hold on humanity.

But the simple reading is made more complex by the alternative offered by Scalzi. Perry in the GST does not destroy a government to set his frontier colonies free from interference. Rather he brings down an isolationist government to drag it into a scary, multi-species confederacy that will require humanity to negotiate their future rather than try and grab it with clenched fist and blaster.

So rather than a simple attack on “big government”, the GST reveals Scalzi’s position as being anti-isolationist.

War and peace

In the first book, Old Man’s War, Scalzi has a former US senator now serving in the CDF with Perry look like a blustering, self-absorbed idiot as he (unsuccessfully) tries to bring his “political” skills to bear in a battle with an alien race. In his debate with Nicholas Whyte, Scalzi argues that his portrayal of this character was not an attack on pacifists but on opportunistic politicians – the way the story unfolds bears Scalzi out on this.

The universe of the GST is a violent and nasty place. Scalzi starts from the premise that his story is built around the idea that our corner of the galaxy is packed with species competing for the same pool of limited resources and that this has shaped relations between them.

Scalzi’s universe has his species constantly at war, and their inability to work together, trust each other or live in peace has locked them all into a status quo in which science and social advancement has all but halted. General Gau, the driving force behind the Conclave, has come to realise that this constant state of war is limiting the potential of all the sentient species. A slow, but unstoppable, decline seems unavoidable unless the cycle can be broken.

The Last Colony features some pacifists – Perry and Sagan’s colony is one twelfth made up of the Amish-like settlers who reject technology and violence. They are treated as appealling, sensible characters but who aren’t able to resist the cruelty of the universe.

Meanwhile Perry and Sagan, our central characters, are soldiers and their responses are those of practical warriors.

In the final book Perry negotiates to save his people from the Conclave against the wishes of the CU. Perry knows he has been lied to by the CU and possibly abandoned by the CDF. He has made the decision not to allow his fellow colonists to be needlessly slaughtered, but it is only later that Perry (really quite chillingly) reveals that he would not have surrendered his colony to the Conclave but occupied it on his own (or more likely with his wife) and forced the Conclave into ritually destroying the place rather than “betraying” the Colonial Union. It’s a response that manages to be both horrifyingly shocking and yet perfectly in sync with the character of Perry (and Sagan) as we’ve come to know them.

Because, although we see Perry and Sagan rejecting the Colonial Union’s domination of human interest, their shift shouldn’t be mistaken for a move towards straightforward namby-pamby liberalism. Scalzi’s characters remain basically true to their militaristic background. Perry finds a solution that (might) avoid a war and (might) free humanity from the well-meaning oppression of the CU, but neither Perry nor the Conclave’s creator General Gau are under any illusions that the ability to exercise overwhelming force is an essential ingredient in imposing a general peace in this real politik universe.

Democracy versus dictatorship

Democracy in any form is notable in the GST only by its absence. There’s a hint that the US (and possibly other Western countries) retain their republican/liberal democratic constitutions on Earth (there’s certainly some form of representative government there in The Last Colony) but the only representative of that government we see is the terminally stupid Senator Bender.

Elsewhere the universe appears to be ruled by forms of dictatorship. The Colonial Union is run by a bureaucracy – we don’t ever get to see the highest level of decision-making, but there seems little doubt that the CU and the CDF are organised around hierarchical lines and they rule by diktat. It is true that they have to negotiate the political consequences of their policy with the human colonies but their struggle appears to be primarily with vested interests (industry, rulers) rather than with the people.

The only human colonies we see running in detail are those controlled by Perry and Sagan in The Last Colony and both are controlled by what might be politely called benevolent dictatorship. On Huckleberry Perry hands down judgement in a system where he has been appointed judge and jury, while Sagan is the strong arm of the law. Neither seem subject to rules imposed by others. On Roanoke, Perry and Sagan must negotiate with a body representing the twelve different groups who make up the colonists, and there’s a sense that at least some of those groups come from worlds with recognisable polities. But the willingness with which the citizens of all the human worlds surrender basic rights and accept direction by Perry and Sagan suggest that the expectation of individual rights is not deeply held.

Nor is the Conclave any better. General Gau makes a deliberate show of attempting to create a union that is based on equality of the species, but this becomes a weakness and, following an attempted assassination, Gau asserts himself as a leader. His role in the later Conclave is that of a benevolent dictator. Gau is, at least, aware of the temptations and long-term dangers of relying on such a means of governance but he accepts that there is no alternative.

None of the other races represented in the GST look like they are ruled by anything like a democratic government.

Throughout the GST, whenever things need to get done, government falls by the wayside and decisions are taken on by a military-styled leadership. Such hierarchical forms of leadership appear to be the “natural order” within the worlds of the GST.

Ends and means

One of the most common assertions of extremists in the exercise of power both at home and abroad is that the means (no matter how extreme) are justified by the ends (securing the homeland, defeating the foe, discovering the terrorists).

Scalzi tests this assertion to destruction in the second novel in the GST – The Ghost Battalions. The crucial moment comes half way through the book – exactly halfway through the trilogy. It is the pivot around which even the most superficial reader must notice the shift in the tenor of the GST.

The moment sees Sagan’s troop of special forces sent into the capital city of the Eneshans, one of the races involved in an attempt to construct an alliance against the CU at the prompting of the “traitor” Charles Boutin. The special forces target is the child of the Eneshan’s ruler. As a bargaining tool to control the Eneshan queen and Eneshan policy they first render the child sterile, so that the Eneshan queen must choose a new husband (one who will be sympathetic to the CU) and then to cold-bloodedly kill it.

It is a truly stomach churning moment.

Scalzi takes characters who, until this point, have been more or less straightforward action heroes and turns them into merciless assassins whose target is a defenceless child.

Sagan has no hesitation in carrying out her orders. She summarily dispatches the child, and has no qualms that the means (this assassination) is justified by the ends (the protection of the CU from a threat). But it is clear from the way Scalzi has the rest of the special forces react to the mission, and particularly the way Jared Dirac is unable to carry out the final order to kill the child, that this is supposed to be a moment that causes the reader to pause and ask serious questions about the nature of the Colonial Union and the extent to which we can support them.

The GST and the modern world

It seems clear to me that there are elements of the situation in the GST that are intended as allegories for the world we live in today. Scalzi’s basic starting position for this universe is that the universe is a place where peoples with similar needs are drawn into warfare in an attempt to secure scarce resources. It is tempting to draw an analogy between this situation and that which has drawn the superpowers into constant struggles around the Middle East for the last 50 years and has the US and UK embroiled in an unwinnable struggle in Iraq.

It’s also tempting to see parallels between the CU, distorting the information it receives from its citizens and behaving in an aggressively isolationist fashion, with the present American administration – who appear to have mislead their people over the evidence they used to start the war in Iraq and who continue to seek new enemies in an attempt to preserve their position by keeping their population constantly terrified of the “other”.

The Conclave, an inclusive exercise in shared government, sounds more like the European Union (its instigator is General Gau – is it only me or is that a little like General de Gaulle?) or (even more radically for an American?), like a giant United Nations where the demands of each nation have to be moderated by diplomacy and negotiation.

Conclusion

The GST is not a straightforwardly partial story. The narrators are complex and often in possession of only fragments of the facts of their situation. What appears clear, though, is that initial reactions to Old Man’s War – which would place it in the tradition of Starship Troopers (something Scalzi surely encourages with his acknowledgement to the influence of Heinlein) – are wide of the mark. The GST is essentially liberal in its orientation and, as such, belongs more firmly amongst the descendents of Haldeman’s Forever War.

However it is notable that democratic institutions and principles are quickly cast aside by even the likeable characters in this universe and Scalzi retains a distinctly American regard for the legitimacy and importance of the military forces – a European writer might, I think, have been harder on the CDF than we see in the GST. Even American liberals retain a regard for the military as a fundamental signifier of nationhood that would be quite alien to most on the European left.