Autobiographical Scalzi

[stephbg]

Fan of John Scalzi's Old Man's War universe books and the blog Whatever, seek same for confirmation of a creeping suspicion. (And yes, asking this question over at Whatever would be more sensible, and I may try it some day).

I'm about half way through The Last Colony having finally got my hot little hands on a local paperback. Has it struck other readers that John Perry is John Scalzi, Jane is Scalzi's wife Krissy, and that Zoe is quite clearly Athena? I'm reading this wonderful SF work of space aliens, guns and politics, and it feels like I'm reading the family blog. Just, on a particularly interesting day.

Anyone else getting that? I'm too fuzzy to proof this properly now so I may not be making much sense.

Comments

[scalzi.livejournal.com]

I personally don't feel John Perry maps perfectly to my own personality (I've noted before that the OMW-universe character most like me is Harry Wilson), but he's certainly got my sense of sarcasm. I wouldn't mind if Athena turned out a bit like Zoe, but Athena's nine and Zoe's sixteen in The Last Colony, so at best there's some projection there. Jane Sagan, however, is definitely modeled after my own wife, because when one wants to have a female character be smart and strong and competent, it makes sense to model her after a smart, strong, competent woman one happens to know very well. That said, there are of course also significant points of variance.

So overall it's not precisely like my family. However, what I think is significant is that the Perry/Sagan family feels like a realistic sort of family; I want them to feel like people you could know in your everyday life (if, you know, you happened to live on a space colony).