The Mountain Cage

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“Sargent is a sensitive writer of characterization rather than cosmic gimmickry.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“One of the genre's greatest writers.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“Pamela Sargent is an explorer, an innovator. She's always a few years ahead of the pack.”

—David 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.”

—Orson 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.”

—Gregory 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.”

—Michael Moorcock, author of
Elric of Melniboné

“[Sargent is] a consummate professional [who] exhibits an unswerving consistency of craft.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“An excellent piece of work—the 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.”

—Andre 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.”

—Jane 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.”

—
School Library Journal

“This finely crafted work never falters with false resolution. … An honest and compelling examination of ‘What if …?'”

—
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 presented—thoughtful—a worthy addition to any SF collection.”

—
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
.”

—Orson 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.”

—
Science Fiction Chronicle

“Pamela Sargent deals with big themes—genetic engineering, immortality, the ultimate fate of humanity—but 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.”

—James 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.”

—
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

“Brilliantly handled—all of us have got to hand an accolade to the author.”

—A. 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.”

—Asimov'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.”

—
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.”

—James Morrow, author of
Only Begotten Daughter

“That rare creature, a perfect book.”

—Orson 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.”

—Anne 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.”

—
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.”

—
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

“A compelling and emotionally involving novel.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“I applaud Ms. Sargent's ambition and admire the way she has unflinchingly pursued the logic of her vision.”

—
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.”

—Gary 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.”

—Elizabeth 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.”

—
Publishers Weekly

Introduction:

THE OTHER PERCEIVER

by

Barry N. Malzberg

“The Summer’s Dust” is a remarkable achievement, a novelette of stunning implication, probably the only turn on A.J. Budrys’s “The End of Summer” and the theme of medically induced immortality itself which significantly advances the theme. This is really something, I thought, reading it and when I was done turned to the copyright page: was this original to the volume? Published in the late 1990s? Surely a work this impressive could only be very recent. If it were not recent, it would have been embedded in the canon of the genre and I, self-appointed expert and custodian would have known it well.

But no, it’s neither that recent nor is it embedded in the canon. “The Summer’s Dust,” a story of tragic dimension whose tragedy could only have been realized in terms of science fiction (take out the science and it all topples) was published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
in July, 1981. This story is over two decades old.

Shocking. Truly troubling. Okay, we cannot read everything our friends publish (and Pamela Sargent, a great writer, is, more importantly to me, my friend) and it is increasingly difficult as we age, as time contracts and the undone expands to keep constant the way that was possible when all the world was fresh and alive and to be an aspirant writer was the very heaven. But a story this fine, this central to everything to which science fiction aspires? Why was this unknown to me? A mortification, to be sure, but this goes beyond mortification. For more than three decades, Pamela Sargent has been putting work like this into the public forum, and too little has been made of much. Yes, “Danny Goes to Mars” in this volume won a Nebula Award in 1993, no small accomplishment and no small recognition either. But there is something anomalous to the presence of that award on the vita sheet; Pamela Sargent’s record: one Nebula final ballot, one win. One Hugo final ballot (for the same story): second place. Notable: this is an efficient writer. But the paucity of awards nominations, the relative lack of critical recognition in her own country, this is unreasonable. Sargent’s is another of those careers whose relative visibility functions as reproof of modern publishing, readership, critical apparatus.

Well, if we don’t like the public, then “We have to get a whole new electorate” as some politician is reputed to have said to H.L. Mencken. I say “in her own country” because Sargent was a celebrity in Spain when her Spanish publisher brought her to the country some years ago for a series of lectures and appearances. She was pursued on the streets for her autograph, lionized; she is regarded in Spain as one of the great American writers. Why she has not obtained that kind of honor in her own country is not clear. Remember that remark about “reproof.”