The author of a handful of well-received science fiction novels, Sarah Zettel deals in themes from first contact to the matters of the environment. Her novels feature strong female protagonists, both human and alien. Born in California in 1966, Zettel began writing sci fi and fantasy when she was in junior high school, and sold her first story at age twenty; later in her twenties, she sold to Analog, one of the most prestigious of the traditional science-fiction periodicals, guided toward the genre by her father, a fan. Well traveled in the United States and England, where she spent a summer in London, Zettel graduated from the University of Michigan, then settled into a day job as a writer of software instruction manuals. At first, she felt she was not well-informed enough to write science fiction, and decided she might be better suited to writing fantasy. Her critical success...