Nancy Kress's many books include over two dozen novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Kress’s work has been translated into two dozen languages, including Klingon, none of which she can read.Her latest novel is Terran Tomorrow: Book 3 of the Yesterday's Kin Trilogy.
From the author's File 770 Q&A with Carl Slaughter:
CARL SLAUGHTER: Where did you get the idea for the science premise?Visit Nancy Kress's website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
NANCY KRESS: The trilogy revolves around microbes, especially pathogens that cause epidemics of various kinds. Medicine has made good strides against bacteria-caused epidemics, but bacteria mutate, swap genes, and develop antibiotic resistance so fast that sometimes our drugs and vaccines aren’t effective (witness the hit-or-miss gamble with flu shots every year). And we really can’t handle viral epidemics except by containment (witness Ebola, until recently). Humanity is overdue for a major pandemic. These ideas fascinate and scare me. Fear is good for plotting.
CS: Same question for the plot.
NK: Science is only compelling to most readers if it happens to people. So in the trilogy, a variety of characters cope with a pandemic on two planets: a geneticist, an Army Ranger, two brothers with vastly different ideas on how to live on a devastated Earth, aliens who are not what they seem, a man more at home in the alien culture than in his own. These people fight, love, cope, strive. For me, plot always...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Tomorrow's Kin.
The Page 69 Test: If Tomorrow Comes.
The Page 69 Test: Terran Tomorrow.
My Book, The Movie: Terran Tomorrow.
--Marshal Zeringue