Interview with Susan Fletcher, Author of Sea Change
I’m delighted to be here! Thanks so much for inviting me!
Sea Change is a YA science fiction love story about a gill-breathing girl who changes herself so she can be with the “Normal” guy she adores. If that premise rings a bell…well, yes, Sea Change is a very loose reimagining of “The Little Mermaid.” Except that here, the heroine’s transformation is accomplished by 21st century technology rather than magic, and the issues raised are urgently 21st century, too.
To wit: A rogue gene hacker miscalculates, and a hundred human babies are born with working lungs and gills. One of them is our protagonist, Turtle, who, when the story begins, is fifteen years old and lives on a rundown cruise ship with the other Mer, as the kids with gills and lungs are called. The seas are rising fast off the coast of Texas. Turtle is scavenging in a flooded townhouse when she encounters Kai, a “Normal” guy, who, wearing scuba gear, is scavenging, too. There’s a scuffle over a lost watch; there’s a crack in a structural support in the house; and suddenly Kai is trapped underwater with a severed oxygen hose. Turtle breathes air into his mouth to save him, and…
Well, stuff happens! (Did I mention that Kai’s really cute?)
Anyway, I should also say that the title, Sea Change, cuts two ways. First, it refers to rising seas due to climate change. Second, it refers to the sea change in human history that’s headed our way right now: where we can edit the DNA of every person alive, as well as the DNA of future generations—going beyond just curing disease to engineering traits and abilities that no humans have ever had before.
The gene-hacked children in Sea Change have both lungs and gills, which is really the perfect mutation for a flooded world. But this enhancement creates new problems and divisions. Is this a statement on technological solutions (even AI) that promise to fix everything but create unexpected consequences?
Yes, exactly! Technology is a two-edged sword.
History is littered with examples—for instance, the development of DDT to get rid of insect-borne diseases and agricultural pests. As it turned out, DDT led to a host of unanticipated problems, including thinning the eggshells of birds of prey, leading some species to become seriously endangered.
Another example: Antibiotics, which have been used to cure so many horrible diseases but, through overuse, have led to resistant super-bugs—some even worse than the original pathogens.
In Sea Change, people are embracing human gene editing to solve all kinds of problems and even to create enhancements where there are no pre-existing problems at all. In some cases, it’s worked brilliantly. But, as in real life, unintended consequences are always a danger. Proceed with caution!
The novel opens with Turtle scavenging through a drowned town. The images of searching through submerged homes and belongings were so strong. It seems you’re setting this up for young readers to begin thinking about how we all process the past, yes?
See, this is what happens when you put a novel out into the world, and thoughtful people read and respond to it! I don’t remember consciously thinking about how we all process the past in general when I wrote this scene. Though, of course, Turtle has a strong confrontation with her own past in that townhouse. And the encounter with the detritus of her past life is part of what motivates her to make her drastic change. And, come to think of it, bringing past and future together is a major part of what resolves the main story problem. So, yes, you are absolutely correct! (I only wish I’d seen it earlier.) Sometimes writing fiction works that way, where you’re putting things in for practical reasons, not yet consciously aware that a deeper pattern is forming.
Turtle's father is in prison for the gene-hacking that created her. How does Sea Change explore the weight that children carry for their parents' choices, especially when those choices literally shaped who they are?
It takes Turtle a while to come around to the point that you’re making here, in part because she’s surrounded by other gene-edited Mer, like herself. They form a tight, excusive band—a little proud, a little prickly, a little defensive. Also, Turtle knows that her parents loved her and were well-intentioned when they decided to have her genes edited. But over the course of the book, Turtle looks more closely at the choice her parents made, and sees that, while understandable, it was irresponsible. There’s a point at which she thinks:
“My parents screwed up. It’s true they wanted me to have an advantage. One that could lead to opportunities other kids don’t have. Maybe everybody wants that for their kids, I don’t know. But those unintended consequences… You can have what seems like a good idea at the time, and things can still go keel up.”
I think this kind of evolution is a natural part of growing up. When we’re really young, we may accept our parents’ decisions without question. When we’re teenagers, we might rebel against them. But eventually, in seeing both sides—that some of our parents’ decisions were understandable, but probably not so great—we might see our parents more accurately as fallible human beings, like ourselves.
In your world, the unmodified humans are called "Normals" while the gene-hacked are "Mer." How did you approach the complex question of who gets to define what's normal in this world?
The word “normal” is an odd one, isn’t it? My dictionary defines it as “usual, typical, or expected”—in other words, “in the majority of cases,” without a judgmental edge. So, for instance, my usual temperature is 97.6, but “normal” is 98.6. No biggie. I don’t feel inferior to 98.6ers, nor do I lord my savage coolness (temperature-wise) over them. But often, we don’t use the word “normal” like that. Often, “normal” means “people like ourselves—the preferred standard; things as they ought to be.”
Here’s a case where science fiction can give us perspective that might be harder to convey in realistic fiction. I think that everyone reading Sea Change would agree that the Mer—humans with working gills—aren’t “normal.” But within the fictional community of Mer, themselves, gills feel absolutely normal. Their ability to breathe underwater is natural for them; they’ve been able to do it all their lives. Plus, it’s fun! They accept themselves as legitimate variations on the human. Yes, they realize that they are a minority, a small group within a larger, non-gilled community. And they refer to people in the larger community as “Normals,” though with an ironic edge. But the Mer might ask, with reason, the very question you have raised: “Who gets to define what’s normal?”
At the same time, Turtle finds herself thinking that some of the other genetically modified people look offputtingly weird—and then catches herself, realizing that that’s just the kind of thinking that gets weaponized against the Mer.
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the various ways that people can be different from the majority in a given society. It’s that edge of self-serving judgment, though, that makes “normal” a dirty word.
You've chosen to tackle climate change through the lens of YA science fiction rather than contemporary realism. What do you think speculative fiction can accomplish in helping young readers process climate issues?
Science fiction looks forward. It tells stories about characters who are living with the consequences of the decisions that we will make today and in the future. Contemporary realism, on the other hand, shows what it’s like to live with the consequences of decisions made in the past. Today’s young readers have had no control over the decisions that led to the climate challenges we’re experiencing right now. But they are the ones who will begin making that kind of decision from here on out. So, in a way, science fiction speaks more urgently to them than to their parents and grandparents.
I’m not saying that science fiction necessarily predicts the future. But it raises questions. It allows us to imagine what might happen if we take this path rather than that one. It shows us that the decisions we make today…matter. It makes us think.
You chose the Gulf Coast as your setting for this post-climate change world. What specific significance does this region hold for your story, both environmentally and culturally?
I moved to Texas a number of years ago after spending most of my working life in Oregon. I wanted to set my new story in my new home state. Not long after moving, I visited a friend at her house on the Gulf Coast, in the middle of a sanctuary for migrating birds. Magical! I’ve never seen so many exotic birds in my life—including the lovely roseate spoonbills—my favorites. So, my attraction to the Texas coast wasn’t so much cultural, as personal.
As to the environment, it turns out that the Texas coast is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Researchers at NASA have warned that sea level rise is happening faster on the coast of Galveston Island, for instance, than nearly anywhere else on the planet. There’s been a two-foot sea rise in Galveston over the past 100 years; the global average over that period is eight inches.
This disparity has to do with the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. It’s 8,000 miles away from the coast of Texas, but it turns out that major ocean currents connect the ice melting on the Thwaites, to the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody knows how quickly the glacier will melt. So nobody knows how high sea waters will rise in Galveston, nor how soon.
My fictional Spoonbill Island—modeled on Galveston, Texas and named for the wonderful birds—seemed like the perfect place for my characters to experience the destabilizing future impact of climate change.
Despite the grim premise of rogue gene editing and drowned cities, there’s a kind of warmth in the book for those affected by change. How do you balance showing the harsh realities of this world while still offering hope to young readers?
Funny thing about hope. It’s not always a rational response based on a reasoned assessment of particular circumstances. Psychologist Richard Lazarus has said that hope is “fearing the worst but yearning for better.”
At the same time, hope can free us from the paralysis of fear, so we can think more creatively about situations in which we find ourselves. There’s something buoyant about hope. For Turtle in Sea Change, hope tends to come bubbling up of its own accord. Hope gives us vitality. It helps us to fully engage with life and enjoy it more. If you give up hope, you stop trying. If you keep trying, there’s all the more reason to hope.
In my life I have found that sometimes, even when things look really bleak, they have turned out okay. I was a child during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a lot of people thought the world was going to end in a hail of nuclear missiles—and soon. Now, more than sixty years later, here we are!
That said, the future is unknowable, and it can be really, really scary. Much of what happens is out of our control. But we can choose how we respond. As Turtle says, we might as well hope.
What’s next?
I’m working on a young adult mystery novel set in the 1930s. It has to do with the joys and dreams of early aviation, and also the deluded faith in eugenics. My protagonist, Daisy, has been abandoned by her parents and is chronically underestimated. She wants to learn to fly more than anything, but the cards, as they say, are stacked against her. And then a woman falls out of an airplane—or is pushed—and Daisy needs to find out why.
Where can we find you?
My website: www.susanfletcher.com
My Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575104510306
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susan.k.c.fletcher/
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