BOOK REVIEW: SCALZI, ZOE'S TALE

John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale, Tor, $24.95, 335 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1698-1). Publication date: August 2008.



When I reviewed John Scalzi's The Last Colony in the October 2007 Analog, I found it a nice conclusion to the Old Man's War series. The original premise was a nice inversion of traditional modes of warfare and a lovely echo of a line I first heard in the sixties, when critics of the Viet Nam war would say that it was so typical, old men sending young men off to fight the old men's war, and wouldn't wars be a lot simpler and shorter and even less likely if we could send the old pharts off to fight their own battles.

Maybe, but it wasn't very likely, then or now. So Scalzi imagined a future when humanity goes to space and discovers we're not the first. There are plenty of folks already out there, they're constantly fighting over colony worlds, and not one of them appreciates a new kid on the block. Hence the Colonial Defense Force, a need for troops, and at least a perceived need to keep the folks back home in the dark about how dicey things really are. So the CDF makes Earth an offer: Once Earthlings pass age 75, they qualify to join the Colonial Defense Force and be given a nice new super-strong young body with which to stave off the hordes of ravening aliens who threaten the colonies. The first novel started with John Perry and his wife Kathy. Alas, Kathy died too soon, but those who volunteered and died before their transformation got their DNA used to produce even superer soldiers for The Ghost Brigades. In due time, John became a hero and met Jane, who looked just like Kathy, presumably because she was Kathy's "ghost." Together they went off in pursuit of a traitor scientist, Charles Boutin, who was trying to help the aliens defeat humanity, in part by tinkering up an electronic gadget that would give the definitely sentient Obin true consciousness. John and Jane wound up adopting Boutin's daughter Zoe, who came with two bodyguards from the eternally grateful Obin.

Last Colony opened to show John and Jane on the colony world of Huckleberry, where he was an ombudsman with a Solomonic gift for conflict resolution. Then the CDF's General Rybicki showed up to announce that they have a new assignment, managing a new colony called Roanoke being set up in defiance of an alien ban on new colonies. In other words, they were being planted right in the middle of a big red bull's-eye, all so the CDF could try to weaken the alien Conclave that forbade new colonies. Not that Rybicki was very forthcoming with this. The CDF was big on the mushroom theory of governance (keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em horse manure), so all John and Jane knew at first was that Roanoke was supposed to be the very first colony settled from the colony worlds instead of Earth, and it was up to them--somehow!--to keep Roanoke from being pounded into dust. Where the earlier novels were pretty pure space opera, this one was all politics, of course, with much of it sounding fairly familiar. Zoe and the Obin turned out to be very helpful, and the CDF wound up with plenty of egg on its face as well as having to face some major changes in the way it did business, rooted largely in what John did to the mushroom farm.

Scalzi now let's us know that readers didn't want the series to end. They wanted more. Specifically, they wanted more about Zoe, as well as about Roanoke's natives. To boot, he felt that he'd glossed over some important events. So he wrote Zoe's Tale, from Zoe's teenaged female point of view (a tough trick for a guy!). The overall flow of events is familiar, but though the book starts at the same time as Last Colony, with Rybicki's arrival, Zoe just isn't privy to what is going on. Her life is that of a kid, an intelligent kid, and a kid who just happens to be something like a goddess to the Obin, but still just a kid. She's busy growing up, becoming and learning who she is, as opposed to what she is. In due time, she solves the mystery that has obsessed the Obin for ages (why did the Consu give them intelligence but not consciousness?) and gains help from the Consu for herself and Roanoke, all largely because of who she is.

And that's the moral of the tale: Who you are is much more important than what you are. It doesn't sound very profound when said so flatly, but think of how many people get killed because someone sees the what (ethnic identity, religion, gang membership, political affiliation, etc.) as more important than the who. Needless to say, galactic civilization--the CDF and all the aliens out there--have a lot to learn from Zoe, for the conflicts that embroil them have much more to do with what than who.

We could learn something too, and if enough young people read this book, it could have a salutary effect on the next generation.

Oh, but I'm a dreamer!