In early July, we accidentally reported several sales for John Scalzi, which were the result of miscommunication with his agent. Now that plans have been made and contracts have been finalized, Scalzi contacted SFScope to give us the full scoop.
In July, he was talking with Tor “about writing a fourth Old Man’s War book, partly to fulfill a contractual obligation on another book series called The Big One which, for various reasons, I was unable to go forward on, and partly because I came up with what I thought would be an interesting idea for the character of Zoe Perry, the daughter of John Perry and Jane Sagan, and I wanted to move forward on that while I was still excited about it.” While negotiations with Tor were ongoing, he kept quiet about it, “mostly so I could have some space to work on it without people looking over my shoulder and wondering what I was up to.” However, since Tor’s Art Director Irene Gallo has decided to release John Harris’s cover image (see her blog entry), “there’s no reason not to let people know officially.”
As for the story of Zoe’s Tale, Scalzi says “I’m not going to go into detail at the moment, because I’m still writing it and because I want people to come in not knowing too much. I will say this: I don’t consider it the fourth book in the Old Man’s War trilogy. Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony were about John Perry and Jane Sagan and a particular narrative arc their lives followed over fifteen years. Now their story is done and it’s time for someone else to take center stage and be the focus of events in that universe. Zoe’s Tale is being written as a stand-alone, so that people who haven’t read the trilogy won’t feel like they have to backtrack to find out what’s going on. That said, quite clearly if you’ve read the other books, you’ll have a good perspective on the events in this book, too.”
When asked if Zoe’s Tale is the end of the series, Scalzi said “whether there will be more in the Old Man’s War universe is really up to readers, I’d say; personally I like the universe, so if they still want to to fly around in it, at the moment I would be happy to write more (as long as I don’t feel like I’m grinding my gears creatively; I have no desire to descend into hackery. The universe—ours and the one in the Old Man’s War series—deserves better than that).”
So it sounds like he’s going to be busy for a while. “After Zoe’s Tale I have The High Castle [the sequel to The Android’s Dream] to write, and then I’m likely to tee up a book unrelated to either the Old Man’s War or Android’s Dream universes, just to see what else is out there.”