Rereading, Re-Experiencing, and Becoming Who We Are

I started with a simple question.

Where, in Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium timeline, does Go Tell the Spartans belong in relation to Prince of Sparta?

That was all I meant to ask. I had been rereading the Falkenberg novels after more than twenty years away from them. Since then, more books had been added to the broader CoDominium and War World universe, and I was trying to decide where to go next.

Naturally, as a person, who considers himself a technologist, who uses AI and technology extensively in my job and life, I asked Copilot, my AI of choice.

But the conversation did not stay there.

What began as a chronology question became something larger: a reflection on rereading, identity, recovery, faith, duty, and the strange way old books can meet us differently when we return to them as changed people.

The Question That Started It

I had recently read:

1. West of Honor
2. The Mercenary
3. Prince of Mercenaries

The immediate question was practical: should I continue directly into Go Tell the Spartans and Prince of Sparta, or should I detour into newer books such as John F. Carr’s War World titles?

The answer was straightforward enough. If I wanted to follow the central Falkenberg and Sparta arc, the next stop was Go Tell the Spartans, followed by Prince of Sparta. A CoDominium/Future History reading order helped frame that chronology. The War World books could wait.

That answer was useful. But it also reminded me how much I missed Jerry Pournelle’s voice.

Missing Jerry Pournelle’s Voice

For years, I looked forward to Dr. Pournelle’s BYTE columns and “Chaos Manor.” He had a way of writing about technology, politics, institutions, history, and ordinary practical problems that felt both deeply informed and deeply human.

He could be funny, irritable, insightful, opinionated, practical, and sharp. He cared about competence. He distrusted bureaucracy. He respected engineering reality. He seemed to ask, again and again: what actually works?

That same sensibility runs through the Falkenberg stories. Beneath the military adventure is a continuing concern with institutional decline. Civilizations do not fail only because they run out of resources. They fail because they lose the ability to make competent decisions, preserve trust, and act in time.

That theme feels uncomfortably current.

Old Science Fiction and Current Events

Before returning to the Falkenberg novels, I had also reread Oath of Fealty, by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. Reading that novel, then returning to the CoDominium stories, made it difficult not to see parallels with modern life.

Divisiveness. Profiteering at the expense of social well-being. Isolationist tendencies. Compromises with foreign powers to preserve “peace.” Institutions that continue to exist outwardly while their legitimacy erodes inwardly.

Pournelle was not necessarily predicting our exact moment. That was never the point. His strength was observing recurring patterns of human behavior and institutional failure.

The CoDominium does not fall because every person involved is a villain. It falls because too many people pursue short-term interests, avoid painful truths, preserve appearances, and optimize for their own immediate advantage. Rational individual choices can still produce irrational collective outcomes.

That is one reason the books remain worth rereading.

But I found that I was not only rereading them.

I was re-experiencing them.

Rereading Is Not the Same as Re-Experiencing

A reread suggests that the book is the thing being revisited.

A re-experience acknowledges that both the book and the reader participate in the encounter.

The book may be largely unchanged. The reader is not.

That became especially clear when I thought about another favorite science fiction novel: Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday.

I first read Friday soon after it was released. I was in high school, and I bought the hardcover edition. At that age, I read it largely as adventure: espionage, danger, travel, competence, independence, and escape.

Decades later, I encounter it differently.

Now I see more clearly its questions of identity, duty, belonging, and remaining true to oneself in a hostile or fragmented world. Friday’s struggle is not merely external danger. She is trying to understand who she is, where she belongs, and whether she can be accepted as a person rather than treated as a category.

At seventeen, I may have asked, “What kind of future will we have?”

At sixty-one, I am more likely to ask, “What kind of people should we be?”

Same book. Different reader.

Or perhaps the same reader at a different chapter of the story.

Identity, Recovery, and a Larger Truth

That theme of identity struck close to home.

As a person in recovery from substance abuse, it was crucial in the beginning for me to identify as an addict. I had to get that truth through my thick head. That was part of the First Step. It cut through denial. It allowed me to recognize myself in the stories of others. It helped me enter a community of people who were also trying to get well.

That identity was necessary.

But over the past eleven years, the label has shifted. It has not become false, but it is no longer the center of gravity.

Today I identify more deeply as a child of God who is in recovery.

That difference matters.

“I am an addict” was a necessary truth.
“I am a child of God who is in recovery” is a larger truth.

The first helped me begin the journey. The second helps orient where the journey is going.

Recovery began as survival: staying clean, being honest, doing the next right thing. Over time, the question changed. It was no longer only, “How do I avoid returning to who I was?”

It became, “Who is God making me into?”

Or more personally:

What am I staying clean for?

Becoming the Man God Created Me to Be

That is where faith enters the reflection.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Hebrews 10:14. I understand the first part as pointing to justification and the second to sanctification. We have been given a gift. The question is: what are we going to do with it?

Being made holy is not merely about becoming respectable or avoiding obvious sin. At its root, holiness means being set apart for service to God.

That involves stripping away what is impure and non-essential. It means letting go of what distorts, distracts, and enslaves. But it is not only about what is removed. It is also about what remains.

The goal is not to become someone else.

The goal is to become more fully the person God created me to be.

In that light, recovery is not merely the absence of substance abuse. It is part of a larger calling. It is a way of being restored to service, responsibility, love, and truth.

Why Old Books Still Matter

This is why old books matter.

Not because they change, but because we do.

A book first read in youth may offer adventure. The same book, read later, may offer warning, consolation, recognition, or conviction.

The seventeen-year-old who read Friday, the man who entered recovery eleven years ago, and the sixty-one-year-old rereading Pournelle and Heinlein are all part of the same story. None of them erase the others. But each understands the story differently.

The books have become markers along the way.

They remind me not only of what I once enjoyed, but of who I was when I enjoyed it — and who I am becoming now.

A Note on AI and Intellectual Honesty

This essay began as a conversation with Microsoft Copilot.

The conversation started with a factual question about the internal chronology of Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium and Falkenberg novels. Copilot assisted with chronology, research prompts, synthesis, and thematic development. It also helped me articulate connections among Pournelle, Heinlein, rereading, identity, recovery, and faith.

But the personal reflections are my own.

Copilot did not read these books as a teenager. It did not wait for BYTE magazine. It did not experience addiction, recovery, faith, regret, gratitude, or the slow work of becoming. It can synthesize patterns and help develop language, but it cannot supply lived experience.

That distinction matters.

AI can be a useful tool for research, organization, brainstorming, and refinement. It can help us see connections we might otherwise miss. But intellectual honesty requires that we remain responsible for the questions we ask, the claims we make, the memories we share, the conclusions we draw, and the words we finally publish.

In this case, AI helped me think.

It did not live my life for me.

Closing Thought

I began by asking where to place Go Tell the Spartans in a reading order.

I ended by thinking about what it means to become the man God created me to be.

That is the surprising gift of rereading old books. Sometimes they do not merely return us to the past. Sometimes they help us recognize the present more clearly.

And sometimes, if we are paying attention, they point us toward the person we are still becoming.