What is the novel about? What is the theme?
That depends upon whom I am talking to. There are three basic sound bite ways to describe it. One is that it’s a neat biological puzzle with some genetic engineering. One is that it’s a radical reexamination of gender and one is that it’s an adventure story set on another planet, so it really depends on who I am talking to at the time. I tend to think of it as a story about one woman who goes to a new place and discovers things about herself and other people. She does that in various ways. You’ve been selling short fiction for 4 or 5 years. I sold my first story in 1987, which didn’t appear until 1988. Most of my work, in fact, all of my work apart from one story, has appeared only in the United Kingdom. That one story was “Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese” which was in Aboriginal SF last summer. What provoked the swap between Interzone and Aboriginal? I believe that it was a marketing idea. It meant that they could all relax for one issue and go on holiday. They had one editor in Ameri
