Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Old Man's War poses a quietly devastating bargain: trade the years you have left for a body you no longer recognise and a war you barely understand. John Perry enlists at seventy-five, carrying decades of hard-won human experience into combat against alien species fighting for the same scarce real estate humanity needs to survive. It is science fiction about the cost of starting over — what you give up, what you become, and whether wisdom is any armour at all when the odds are brutal and the galaxy is indifferent. Readers drawn to it tend to want stories where survival is earned, stakes are interstellar, and the moral weight is never flinched from.
Old Man's War is a military science fiction novel by American writer John Scalzi, published in 2005. His debut novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006.
From the Wikipedia article Old_Man's_War, available under CC BY-SA.
Film
Cosmic Sin
A retired general pulled back into interstellar conflict when humanity faces a sudden, overwhelming alien threat.
Film
Battlefield Earth
Humanity subjugated by a ruthless alien race stripping Earth bare, with human survivors forced into desperate resistance.
Film
Ajin Senshi
An interstellar war fought with psychic weapons, centred on a half-human, half-alien soldier of a magician bloodline.
Film
Battle Beyond the Stars
A young farmer recruits diverse mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet from an evil tyrant.
Film
Battlestar Galactica
The last survivors of a destroyed civilisation flee through space, searching desperately for a new home planet.
Film
Starman
A stranded alien and a grieving human cross a hostile country while a government pursues them at every step.
Series
Message from Space: Galactic Wars
Two men organise armed resistance after an alien force invades their solar system.
Series
Next War Chronicle Ehrgeiz
Colonial rebellion against Earth escalates into full-scale war fought in repurposed military vehicles across space.
Series
Battlestar Galactica
Remnant humanity flees extinction aboard a warship, hunted by a cybernetic enemy that obliterated their home worlds.
Series
Starship Troopers
A young recruit endures brutal military training before deploying against an alien enemy in interstellar war.
Series
Exosquad
An engineered underclass revolts against human colonisers, turning terraformed planets into brutal battlegrounds.
Series
Battlestar Galactica
Survivors of a machine-race genocide search for Earth, the last hope for a species on the edge of extinction.
Game
60 Parsecs!
An unlikely crew survives deep space after a catastrophic evacuation, making hard choices about who and what to save.
Game
Last Days of Old Earth
A strategy game set on a dying Earth in its final days.
Game
Star Wars: The Old Republic
A story-driven game placing you inside your own interstellar Star Wars saga of soldiers and contested worlds.
Game
Citizen Sleeper
A narrative RPG about survival on a ruined space station, where thousands scrape by on the margins of a harsh society.
Game
Syndicate Wars
A ruthless corporate empire uses its agents as weapons, with loyalty measured purely in results and expendability.
Game
Polaris Sector
A space strategy game set in a harsh, resource-thin sector where survival depends on military strength.
Book
The quiet war
A future Earth locked in political struggle between powerful dynasties and millions displaced by environmental collapse.
Book
Star Corps
Humanity's soldiers confront an ancient alien empire that once held the entire human race in chains.
Book
Redshirts
A starship ensign discovers the deadly pattern hidden inside routine military missions — and fights to survive it.
Book
Master sergeant
A military sergeant wages brutal jungle warfare against an alien enemy on a planet humanity calls The Green Hell.
Book
To the last man
Soldiers and commanders swept up in World War I, where individual lives are ground up by vast historical forces.
Book
The revenge of seven
A team of fighters trains harder as a powerful alien enemy proves far more dangerous than expected.
Redshirts and Star Corps are strong next reads — both follow soldiers navigating an interstellar military structure where survival is never guaranteed and the enemy is far stronger than expected.
The 2004 Battlestar Galactica series shares the same sense of humanity on the edge — a small surviving fleet making desperate choices against a relentless enemy. Starship Troopers (1988) covers similar ground with harsh training and alien warfare.
It marries a genuinely clever premise — enlisting the elderly for their wisdom, then making them fight for their lives — with dark humour and honest stakes. The bargain John Perry accepts is both exciting and quietly heartbreaking.