Posted by Athena Scalzi
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/20/the-big-idea-jane-mondrup/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56149
Sometimes when you look in the mirror, it can feel like you don’t even recognize yourself. This might be doubly true if you’re looking at a perfect copy of yourself that thinks you’re the copy, not them. Author Jane Mondrup brings us such a conundrum in her new novel, Zoi. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how evolution is just the beginning.
JANE MONDRUP:
An endosymbiosis involving humans and set in space—that is, in very few words, the big idea of my science fiction novel Zoi.
Symbiosis is a close relationship between two life forms, often (though not necessarily) to the degree of mutual dependency. Endosymbiosis is when one of those life forms gets integrated into the other, living inside it.
One very important endosymbiosis, which happened around two billion years ago, provided the conditions for the evolutionary jump from the simple life forms—the procaryotes (bacteria and archaea)—to the much more complex eucaryotic cell, of which we and our multi-cellular relatives are made. This is a whole little world in itself, full of internal structures and mobile elements, all with specific functions.
To furnish its lavish lifestyle, the eucaryotic cell needs energy—lots of energy—and that energy is provided by an organelle called the mitochondrion. And the really interesting thing is that this extremely important element didn’t develop inside the cell but was originally an independent organism; a small procaryote that somehow ended up inside a larger procaryote, managing to survive in there and become an integrated part of its host and all its descendants. These proto-mitochondrial lodgers were the kind who not only pay the rent and keep their room in order but start refurbishing the whole place, in this case developing a small hut into a veritable castle.
Not being a biologist, I heard about the origin of the mitochondrion on a podcast, the 2016 episode of Radiolab titled Cellmates, and found it endlessly fascinating. My subconscious started working on it, until it surfaced again in the shape of a dream vision of two identical women drifting apart. I knew it was a cell division, happening in space. Like proto-mitochondria, the women (originally one person) had become part of a larger organism and was now included in its procreation.
There was a story here, but what story exactly? And how could I tell it?
That’s often how a story begins for me, with a situation I either have to work from or get to. Making up what feels like a plausible background for this (usually quite strange) situation will send me in all kinds of interesting directions. In this case, I had to invent a creature fitting the picture, a cell-like, space-dwelling species that I decided to call zoi, based on the Greek word zoion (living being).
The zois, I figured, had not developed an immune defense, but the opposite. In space, life would be very rare. You wouldn’t have to defend yourself against parasitic intruders, and the chance encounters with other organisms would represent an evolutionary opportunity.
Whenever the zois came across another life form, they would invite it in, immediately discern its basic needs and start to accommodate them. Some needs would either be impossible or very costly to meet, and it would be more rational to solve the problem the other way around, helping the life forms it had engulfed with adapting to their new environment. Changing them.
This was the unsettling situation the woman (I named her Amira) was in—residing inside a living creature, experiencing changes to her body, and then starting to grow a double. It seemed very scary indeed, and my story could easily be a classic SF horror, ending in some terrible conclusion. But that wasn’t what interested me.
The horror elements were there, and I absolutely planned to harness them for emotional impact, but the horror ending didn’t fit my dream vision. The women in it had looked desperately sad. They obviously had a very close relationship which was now broken up. There was regret too, a hint of unsettled conflicts. But no enmity.
When a cell divides, the two resulting cells aren’t parent and offspring, but equally newborn. I saw the two Amiras in the same way, not as a human being with an inhuman clone, but a set of identical twins—one person becoming two. While the double grew, there was only one consciousness. Then, the two woke up with identical memories, both convinced of being the original. That would be a difficult situation, and very interesting to explore.
Amira would be part of a small crew of astronauts, the first to leave the solar system inside a zoi. They would know some but not all of the consequences, and they would react to them in different ways. The impact of these differences on their relationships to each other would be another backbone of the story.
Even before the cloning began, the astronauts were undergoing physical changes, starting with adaptation to the lack of gravity. In zero g, humans quickly start to lose bone and muscle mass, which is why astronauts on space stations have to do a lot of exercise. The zoi would recognize the deterioration as something that needed correction. This would be the first of many adjustments helping the mutual adaptation along.
Just like the bodily transitions and upheavals of a normal human life, such changes would have consequences for mood and physical well-being. This parallel allowed me to draw on concrete experiences with puberty, pregnancy, illness, menopause, and aging. These are all processes involving bodily reactions outside our control, influencing or even determining our thoughts and actions.
I have a lot of themes in Zoi, but they are all related to the big idea: becoming part of another life form, and what that would entail. My aim has been to write something both visionary and tangible, based in science but easily understandable, equally comprising ideas and emotions. If you find this essay concepts interesting, there’s a good probability that you will like the story. I hope you will read it.
Zoi: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Indigo|Kobo
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook|Bluesky
Read an excerpt.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/20/the-big-idea-jane-mondrup/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56149
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chaikat's singable translation (Twitter), with very detailed translation notes (Gdoc) that cross-reference with novel chapters.
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