Writing Sea Change: How a Girl Who Hated Science Became a Science Fiction Author

By Susan Fletcher

My mother was a chemist. Back in the 1940s, she did some of the first research on smog in the Los Angeles basin. One of my sisters is a mathematician and computer scientist; my other sister is a physical therapist. My sister-in-law runs a biochemistry lab at Stanford, and my daughter has a PhD in environmental engineering and microbiology.

Women in STEM run in my family, going all the way back to World War II. 

I, on the other hand, hated science in school. Call me a rebel if you like, but science just didn’t catch me. Ever since third grade, all I ever aspired to do was to be a writer. I was the kid with her nose in a book and a million stories floating around in her head.  And that’s how I’ve spent my professional life: writing novels and picture books for kids and young adults—mostly fantasy and historical fiction. Now, with my fourteenth book out in June, it feels like I’ve been doing that since forever. 

It wasn’t until my daughter began her doctorate that I realized that maybe I had missed something, science-wise. When she talked to me about her work, I was captivated.  She told me how, every day when she went to the lab, she might discover something—some small thing—that nobody in the world ever knew before that moment.

I’m telling you, it was exciting.

So when she explained to me that amazing things were happening in the field of genetics, I listened.

And then I began to read.

Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book, The Gene: An Intimate History, was a joy and a revelation. I read other books, searched the internet, read everything that cropped up in my news feed, and haunted science podcasts. I can’t remember exactly when I first happened upon the revolutionary gene-editing technique called CRISPR. But not long thereafter I decided to write Sea Change, a young adult science fiction love story about a community of kids who were born with working gills as well as lungs—as a result of a rogue gene hacker’s mistake.  

Me? Write science fiction?

Well, yeah. There’s stuff going on in the field of genetics that’s going to change the world…and soon. Mostly for the better, I hope. But there are some real dangers, too, and we’d better be prepared for them.

And CRISPR is hot. Over the years while I was writing Sea Change, two women scientists, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize for their work on CRISPR, and CRISPR cropped up over and over in the daily news. CRISPR has been used to treat humans for sickle cell disease, congenital blindness, and certain cancers, as well some super-rare genetic disorders. Up next: heart disease, diabetes, H.I.V., leukemia, and more. Meanwhile, spurred by the global pandemic, scientists raced to develop treatments, and CRISPR research made possible a new kind of vaccine, now running in my veins.

I mean, it felt almost surreal.

My work-in-progress was teetering on the brink of some crazy-wild but real developments in the near future.  

Because CRISPR is not just about curing diseases that have plagued humans for millennia. It’s also about who or what we humans might become. Should we draw the line at preventing and curing disease? Or go beyond to edit in things like increased muscle mass, altered skin color, or resistance to ageing?  What about going beyond what is possible for humans? There’s recent talk, in high-tech circles, of transhumanism. The ability to smell as well as a bloodhound, for instance. See as well as a hawk. The ability to travel through space for decades, immune to the harm of gamma rays.

Sea Change doesn’t predict the future, but raises questions about a future that’s barreling down the tracks toward us, coming fast.  Questions we should be talking about now, before the decisions have all been made for us by those in power today.

In A Crack in Creation, Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg say that we can now edit the DNA of every human alive, as well as the DNA of future generations. In other words, we can direct our own evolution. “This is unprecedented in the history of life on Earth,” they warn. It is beyond our comprehension. And it forces us to confront an impossible but essential question: “What will we, a fractious species whose members can’t agree on much, choose to do with this awesome power?” 

But as always, the most important thing about writing a novel is the story. Because if readers don’t care about the characters and what happens to them, they’re not going to care about the science part, either. So I wrote a story about love and friendship and alienation and struggle and tough decisions and hope. 

Like I’ve been doing since forever.

Sea Change

Sea Change is a contemporary take on “The Little Mermaid,” set in the not-too-distant future—a young adult science fiction love story about a gill-breathing girl who changes herself so she can be with the “Normal” guy she adores.

“Susan Fletcher’s marvelous Sea Change surges with affection for those afflicted by change, and those challenged by it.  With the brave and committed Turtle, we swim toward hope.  Take a deep breath and dive in!” –Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

“A gorgeous updating of The Little Mermaid that’s entrancing, deeply moving, and urgently contemporary.”  –Nancy Werlin, New York Times Bestselling author of Impossible

BUY HERE

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Susan Fletcher is the author of fourteen books for kids and young adults.  Her novels have been translated into ten languages and have received acclaim from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the American Library Association, the Children’s Book Council, Bookriot.com, Natural History Magazine, Western Writers of America, Women Writing in the West, and more.  Susan taught for many years in the M.F.A. in Writing for Children program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is now a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.  Reach her at www.susanfletcher.com.

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