SciFiChick.com recently had the chance to interview author Pamela Sargent. Her latest book Seed Seeker (third in the Seed trilogy) will release from Tor Books on November 9th, 2010.
Can you give us a brief synopsis of your latest, Seed Seeker?
The novel is set on the planet Home, settled by people from Earth a few generations ago who were brought there by the artificial intelligence Ship, who has promised to return. When a new light appears in the night sky, Bian, a girl from the village of Seaside, travels upriver with her friend Arnagh to find out what an isolated group of settlers in the north, the only people on Home able to communicate with Ship, might know about the mysterious light.
Seed Seeker is a sequel to my earlier novels Earthseed and Farseed, the first two novels in the Seed trilogy, but it also stands alone as a story.
After such a long break between the Seed series novels, was it hard to jump into the story again?
I did have to reread Earthseed, but it wasn’t too hard after that! Since some of the young characters in that earlier book were adults in the later ones, I had to consider what kinds of adults they would become. Sometimes they surprised me.
You have written a variety of novels for both youth and adults. Do you change the way you write when the audience is younger? Or is it just the subject matter?
To me, the only difference between novels for adults and novels for younger readers is the age of the central characters.
What’s next for you after the Seed series? Any other stories on the horizon?
Right now I’m revising a new novel, which I hope to be submitting to publishers soon. Asimov’s SF magazine published my novella “Mindband” last year, and World Literature Today published a new short story, “The True Darkness,” which can be read here: http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2010may/sargent.html. It was part of a special issue, both online and in print, on international science fiction: http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2010may/webcontents.html.
What is it that you enjoy most about science fiction?
These days, it’s the more serious writing, either novels and stories that aspire to the highest literary standards or those that take on serious issues—environmental problems, political issues, and scientific speculations. This wasn’t always the case, and I can still enjoy an intelligent piece of fiction that’s simply a damned good story.
What originally attracted you to the genre?
The idea that just about everything could be other than it is.
i was so delighted for an interview with pamela sargent she has been a writer i have enjoyed i find her books give me topics to think about and have revisited topics or situations in her novels, i read incessently very few books have me recallling anything