The novel “The Ghost Brigades” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2006. It’s the second novel in the “Old Man’s War” series, set in the same fictional universe of “Old Man’s War”.

The soldiers of the Special Forces, the elite corps of the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) who defend the Earth and the other human colonies from hostile aliens, are created in vitro using the DNA of the recruits who died before starting their service and for this reason are called Ghost Brigades.

When an alliance of three alien species against human beings are discover and the scientist Charles Boutin betrays his species, it’s necessary to take strong countermeasures. One of his inventions allows to record in a stable manner the contents of a human mind. The scientist has used it on himself to transfer his mind into a clone but he had to leave the recording before fleeing.