Ekaterina Sedia likes lichens. “They’re like little trees,” she says. That’s because she’s a biologist who did her Ph.D. studying them in New Jersey ’s Pine Barrens.

To date, however, there haven’t been any lichens in her Analog stories. Instead, they’ve been about genetic engineering, including the popular “Alphabet Angels,” which (coauthored with David Bartell) not only won an AnLab Award, but was her first-ever fiction sale.

That story appeared in 2005. Since then, she’s only appeared a handful of times in these pages, but she’s published two novels and racked up nearly two dozen short story sales to other publications.

And she’s not even doing this in her native language. Sedia was born in Russia and didn’t move to the U.S. until 1991. Nor did she grow up reading science fiction. She began with literary mainstream, then shifted when she got older, “because there’s just so much realism you can take.”

She found that science fiction and fantasy are still basically about the human condition. “But you can put those humans into more interesting situations.”

One advantage of coming to the field late was that she’d developed a literary taste that she could import into her fiction. “Words matter,” she says. “Style isn’t something separate from a story.”

As a biologist, she’s struck by the paucity of stories featuring good, plausible biology. “Genetic engineering is generally used like magic,” she says. “It’s the same with nanotechnology. Most people don’t see the limitations.”

She also likes history. An upcoming novel, The Secret History of Moscow, (due in November) deals with the things every culture sweeps under the carpet. “Basically, it’s history written by the losers,” she says.

As a Russian, she’s sometimes drawn to darker-than-average stories. “It’s a stereotype,” she says, “but accurate.” Nor is she a fan of technological fixes. Many problems, she believes, are unintended consequences of prior technologies.

She avoids the pretense of thinking she writes only to entertain. Entertainment is important to her, but it can’t be the only thing. “I recently saw magazine guidelines that said, ‘No agenda stories,’” she says. “All stories are agenda stories. You might not necessarily notice the agenda, but it’s there. Either it’s maintaining the status quo, or challenging it, or approving it, or ignoring it. For me, it’s about acknowledging and questioning the status quo.”

Copyright (c) 2007 Richard A. Lovett