Imagine if, as you reached the age of 65, with another ten or twenty years of growing older and facing the usual geriatric problems, there was an alternative. You could sign up for an option ten years ahead - thus, at 75 - to join an off-world army and fight in interstellar wars. Implicit in this is that somehow you’d be rejuvinated. Exactly how and why isn’t known, as at the moment of taking up the option you are declared legally dead, shipped off-planet, and never seen again - because no-one doing this has ever come back.

You wouldn’t do this at 40 or 50 - maybe - but at 70 ? Be young again ?

“An Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi, and the two follow-up books - “The Ghost Brigades” and “The Last Colony” - are built around this theme, and got rave reviews in the British press. I ordered them, (from amazon - not expensive) opened the first page and have not been able to put them down again.

Submitted by Robin Flood