Zoe's Tale
February 24, 2025 9:04 AM - Subscribe
How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history?
Written by MeFi's own jscalzi.
I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.
Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try to make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.
It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of Old Man's War, and in anticipation of September's release of book 7 of the series The Shattering Peace, we're revisiting this SF mainstay with one post a week for the next 3 weeks.
This is a 'Reread' post, comments that touch on future events in the series are most welcome.
Written by MeFi's own jscalzi.
I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.
Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try to make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.
It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of Old Man's War, and in anticipation of September's release of book 7 of the series The Shattering Peace, we're revisiting this SF mainstay with one post a week for the next 3 weeks.
This is a 'Reread' post, comments that touch on future events in the series are most welcome.
I read this book but none of the other books from its apparent series. It was mostly coherent though there were definitely some indications that I was supposed to be familiar with things already.
posted by one for the books at 3:17 PM on March 18
posted by one for the books at 3:17 PM on March 18
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But I remember this novel as having a rather different voice for its main character than the Old Man's War novels whjich preceded it. It was well done, not childish or affected.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:54 PM on February 24 [1 favorite]