Authors: Pamela Sargent
Child of Venus
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“Sargent is a sensitive writer of characterization rather than cosmic gimmickry.”
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Publishers Weekly
“One of the genre's greatest writers.”
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The Washington Post Book World
“Pamela Sargent is an explorer, an innovator. She's always a few years ahead of the pack.”
âDavid Brin, award-winning author of the Uplift Saga
“Over the years, I've come to expect a great deal from Pamela Sargent. Her worlds are deeply and thoroughly imagined.”
âOrson Scott Card, author of
Ender's Game
“Pamela Sargent's cool, incisive eye is as sharp at long range, visionary tales as it is when inspecting our foreground future. She's one of our best.”
âGregory Benford, astrophysicist and author of
Foundation's Fear
“If you have not read Pamela Sargent, then you should make it your business to do so at once. She is in many ways a pioneer, both as a novelist and as a short story writer. ⦠She is one of the best.”
âMichael Moorcock, author of
Elric of Melniboné
“[Sargent is] a consummate professional [who] exhibits an unswerving consistency of craft.”
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The Washington Post Book World
“An excellent piece of workâthe development of the mystery ⦠is well done. Ms. Sargent's work ⦠is always of interest and this book adds to her stature as a writer.”
âAndre Norton, author of the Solar Queen series
“Count on Pamela Sargent to write a science fiction novel that is both entertaining and true to human emotion. I wish I had had this book when I was a teen because all the loneliness, all the alienation, all the apartness I felt from my family would have made more sense.”
âJane Yolen, author of
The Devil's Arithmetic
and
Cards of Grief
“This story of Nita, a girl growing up in an insulated environment where she gradually comes to realize that she might be the last person left on Earth, has conflict and suspense from the beginning. ⦠Vividly depicted.”
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School Library Journal
“This finely crafted work never falters with false resolution. ⦠An honest and compelling examination of âWhat if â¦?'”
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Publishers Weekly
“An engaging narrative in Sargent's capable hands. An essence of otherworldliness is present in the gentle guardians, and since Sven and Nita are raised solely by the two aliens, there is a freshness in their perceptions of their own species. ⦠Clearly and simply presentedâthoughtfulâa worthy addition to any SF collection.”
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Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)
“Sargent does not lower her standards when she writes young adult fiction. Like the best of young adult writers, her artistic standards remain as high as ever, while her standards of clarity and concision actually rise. ⦠The intelligence and resourcefulness she showed in
The Shore of Women
are undiminished in
Alien Child
.”
âOrson Scott Card, author of
Ender's Game
“Thoughtful, serious, and written without condescension, the novel contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author.”
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Science Fiction Chronicle
“Pamela Sargent deals with big themesâgenetic engineering, immortality, the ultimate fate of humanityâbut she deals with them in the context of individual human lives.
The Golden Space
reminds me of Olaf Stapledon in the breadth of its vision, and of Kate Wilhelm in its ability to make characters, even humans in the strangest forms, seem like real people.”
âJames Gunn, writer and director of the film
Guardians of the Galaxy
“Clearly,
The Golden Space
is a major intellectual achievement of SF literature. It will not be possible for any honest story of immortality hereafter to ignore it; it is a landmark.”
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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Brilliantly handledâall of us have got to hand an accolade to the author.”
âA. E. van Vogt, author of
The World of Null-A
“Sargent writes well, the many ideas are fresh, and their handling is intelligent to the extreme.”
âAsimov's Science Fiction
“What next, after universal immortality becomes a fact of life? Pamela Sargent's brilliant book,
The Golden Space
, shatters the imaginative barrier that has held stories about immortality to a simplistic pasticcio of boredom, degeneration, and suicide.”
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The Seattle Times
“[Sargent] is one of our field's true virtuosos, and in
The Mountain Cage: and Other Stories
she gives us thirteen stunning performances, a valuable addition to a repertoire that I hope will keep on growing.”
âJames Morrow, author of
Only Begotten Daughter
“That rare creature, a perfect book.”
âOrson Scott Card, author of
Ender's Game
“A cautionary tale, well-written, with excellent characterization, a fine love story, as well as much food for thought ⦠An elegant science fiction novel.”
âAnne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series
“Pamela Sargent gives meticulous attention to a believable scenario. ⦠A captivating tale both from the aspect of the lessons that the author tries to impart and from the skills she has used to tell it.”
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Rocky Mountain News
“How many perfect science fiction novels have I read? Not many. There are at most three or four such works in a decade. Pamela Sargent's
The Shore of Women
is one of the few perfect novels of the 1980s. ⦠Her story of a woman exiled from a safe high-tech city of women, the man ordered by the gods to kill her, and their search for a place of safety, is powerful, beautiful, and true.”
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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“A compelling and emotionally involving novel.”
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Publishers Weekly
“I applaud Ms. Sargent's ambition and admire the way she has unflinchingly pursued the logic of her vision.”
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The New York Times
“This formidably researched and exquisitely written novel is surely destined to be known hereafter as the definitive history of the life and times and conquests of Genghis, mightiest of Khans.”
âGary Jennings, bestselling author of
Aztec
“Scholarly without ever seeming pedantic, the book is fascinating from cover to cover and does admirable justice to a man who might very well be called history's single most important character.”
âElizabeth Marshall Thomas, anthropologist and author of
Reindeer Moon
“Masterful ⦠as in previous books, Sargent brings her world to life with sympathetic characters and crisp concise language.”
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Publishers Weekly
The Venus Series: Book Three
Pamela Sargent
Â
To George
there for the long haul
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From the personal record of Mahala Liangharad:
One of my earliest memories is still vivid enough that I can call it up at will, even though it was a simulated experience and not one I actually lived through myself.
No unprotected human being could have survived it.
I am standing on a wrinkled plain of black basalt, feeling the intense heat that surrounds me and presses in around me and an atmospheric pressure that threatens to crush me. In the distance, against a dark red sky, sits a pyramid so vast that it dwarfs even the shield volcano I glimpse in the distance. There is so little light that I can see only in the infrared; I wait, knowing what will happen, excited by anticipation and fear.
And then the ground heaves under my feet, and the sound of thunder strikes my ears with such a blow that I cry out in pain. A web of bright light appears along the pyramid's black sides as lightning dances at its apex. The ground shudders again, more fiercely this time, hurling me up into the clouds, and as I fly up, the planet below me begins to turn more rapidly. I can see it moving beneath me as I hover; the pyramid below me sweeps past as the planet turns, and after that the bright glow of the erupting volcano, and the wind screams at me as my world tears at itself.
This was a depiction of an event that happened long ago, nearly a century before I was born, on the world that was to become my home.
I try to remember when that world was no longer the imperfectly comprehended and often mysterious background of my young life, when it first became clear in my mind. Occasionally, I have the feeling that my environment was always in the foreground, that there was always some understanding on my part of what my world was and how I came to be in it, but that has to be an illusion. The time when I was beginning to discover my environment, exploring my surroundings and seeking out the place I might occupy in themâmuch of that is clouded for me now, as if I were viewing it through a heavy veil. Much of it is lost.