A SPECIAL OFFER FOR THE TROOPS: The email I posted earlier from Major John Tammes, about John Scalzi’s book Old Man’s War, produced this from John Scalzi:

Maj. Tammes’ note about being “hyped up” to read Old Man’s War inspired me to call up Tor Books to see if we could do something special for the service people in Afghanistan and Iraq. I asked, and Tor agreed, to make available a free electronic version of “Old Man’s War” for our folks serving in those countries. I call it the “Over There Special Edition” — it’s an .rtf file, about 570kb, with the entire text of the novel.

To get it, service people in Iraq and Afghanistan should drop me an e-mail at “” and I’ll send them the edition as an attached file. They should be able to tell me their unit/general location so I know they really are in Iraq/Afghanistan. People should know that if I get a whole bunch of people who aren’t in those countries trying to get the text I won’t be able to continue. So please, leave this version to the folks serving our country a half a world away.

I want to take a moment to thank Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor at Tor, and Tom Doherty, the Tor publisher, for letting me do this special edition. It’s really something to go to your publishing house and ask permission to do something that might potentially cut into sales and have them some back and say, simply, “That’s a great idea. Do it.” From my perspective I may give up a few dollars in sales, but these folks are giving up a lot more doing their thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is just a small way to say “thanks.”

That’s a very nice thing to do. Bravo for Nielsen Hayden, Tor, Doherty, and Scalzi.

UPDATE: In response to a reader suggestion, Scalzi says to write him from your .mil address for authentication purposes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve mentioned it before, but reader Mike Powers points out that you can get free e-versions of a lot of books at the Baen Free Library.