Zoe's Tale

Zoe's Tale is a science fiction novel by the American writer John Scalzi, published in 2008. It is the fourth full-length book in his Old Man's War universe, and it retells the events of the third novel, The Last Colony, as a first-person narrative from the point of view of Zoe Boutin Perry.

Zoe was adopted as a baby by John Perry and Jane Sagan, two soldiers involved in the earlier books, and this volume follows the founding of a new colony from inside her own experience. It covers the same period as The Last Colony, including a treaty mission and the arrival of the Conclave, and the change of viewpoint alters what the reader sees, particularly at the moments when Zoe is the one who has to act.

Scalzi wrote the book because readers wanted Zoe's side of the story, and it works as a companion rather than a sequel. It was followed by further books in the same universe, and it is the volume that gives the series a younger narrator.