Author John Scalzi is offering a special pre-publication bound manuscript version of his newest novel, Zoe’s Tale, in an auction to benefit the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust. Scalzi says “this is an exclusive and extremely rare version of this novel (only four other copies of this edition exist) and will be the only way for a member of the general public to read the novel prior to its official publication in August 2008. All money raised by this auction, minus eBay and PayPal fees, will go to the charity.”
The auction is on eBay at this link, and closes at 9:10AM PST on 25 February 2008. Within two and a half days of the auction’s open (on 15 February), the bidding had passed $2,000.
Scalzi reminds bidders that “it is not a final version of the novel. It is a bound edition of the final manuscript—which means it hasn’t been copy edited.” He also describes the book:
Zoe’s Tale is the fourth novel in the Old Man’s War series, but like the other books in the series, can be read as a stand-alone novel—you don’t have to have read the other books in the series to get into it. Here is the description text that will be on the published book’s jacket flap:
Meet Zoe Boutin Perry: Friend. Daughter. A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player and a pawn in an interstellar chess match to save the human race.
Seventeen years old.
Readers of John Scalzi’s bestselling Old Man’s War series have met Zoe before, but now, in this compelling stand-alone novel set in the same universe, Scalzi brings her front and center, to tell her tale as only she can: “Not straight but true, and telling it all; the joy and terror and uncertainty, the panic and wonder, despair and hope.”
Zoe has a lot to tell. She and her family and friends are at a pivotal point in history, unwillingly placed at the center of a galaxy-spanning gambit by the human Colonial Union, which wants to draw an alien alliance into a war neither of them can win or afford. Zoe’s colony home of Roanoke is the flashpoint, primed by outsiders to explode and destroy everyone Zoe loves… unless she can somehow stop the seemingly inevitable process that will bring destruction to her door.
Zoe’s tale isn’t the one she would have chosen for herself, but it’s one she rises to tell, calling on every resource she has—every ounce of wit and guile and heart—to save her colony and become the woman she has to be to keep humanity among the stars.
For even more information on the book and the auction, see Scalzi’s blog posts here and here.
[Edited 25 February 2008: The auction ended with a winning bid of $2.051.01. vallate0cuf was the winning bidder. Congratulations, and well done.]