Kathleen Ann Goonan is the author of six novels. Her story in The Starry Rift is “Sundiver Day”.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

Ursula K. Le Guin stands out as the first science fiction that I read, and I was about twenty years old! At that time, other women, such as Joan Vinge and Elizabeth Lynn were also at the forefront of science fiction. But I also remember that when A Wizard of Earthsea came out, in 1968, when I was sixteen, it made a huge impression on me.

And during the 1960’s, I read as much Kurt Vonnegut as I possibly could. Perhaps, then, Slaughterhouse Five was the first science fiction book that deeply impressed me.

2. What do you think science fiction has to offer young readers today?

First of all, the experience of thinking outside the box, following extrapolations that are grounded in reality, but which lead to unexpected places. Perhaps most important is helping them become aware of the world in which we live, a world made possible by science and technology, which it is very easy to take for granted. Perhaps science fiction can make young readers aware that the world we live in exists because of the work of scientists and engineers, and perhaps make them more interested in the world within and behind our everyday experiences with computers, text messages, and medicine.

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

“Sundiver Day” is what the character, Elendilia, calls herself, because it is what her missing-in-action brother called her. The story is about how she comes to terms with his loss.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

My approach with any piece of fiction is to be the point-of-view character. I try to see how they would see, feel how they would feel, do what they would do, all the time trying to fashion a deep, coherent, real person.

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

Right now I’m working on THIS SHARED DREAM CALLED EARTH, a follow-up to IN WAR TIMES, which is the ALA’s Best Adult Genre Novel of the Year. Actually, readers who enjoyed “Sundiver Day” might also enjoy QUEEN CITY JAZZ, my first novel, which was classified as a YA novel by some librarians. It is about seventeen-year-old Verity, who lives in nanotech-changed Ohio, and who manages to get inside Cincinnati, a Flower-City, to find out the truth about herself.

Garth Nix is the author of sixteen novels for readers of all ages. His story in The Starry Rift is “Infestation”.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

My father is an avid reader of science fiction, so we always had tons of books to read. He also used to visit the USA regularly for his job and would bring back books not available in Australia. Probably the earliest SF I read was when I was around 9 or 10 years old, and would have been Andre Norton’s STAR MAN’S SON or CATSEYE, or Robert Heinlein’s HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL or CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY.

2. What do you think science fiction has something to offer young readers today?

I think it has the same things to offer today as it had when I was a young reader, great stories and interesting ideas. Sometimes even the two things together!

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

As is often the case, I was going to write a completely different story when INFESTATION arrived. I am best known as a fantasy writer, and this story appears to be fantasy initially, as it has vampires in it. Possibly it could have stayed fantasy, but because I wanted it to be SF, I had to think about a different kind of explanation for vampires, and also for my protagonist, J.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

I basically always write for myself and simply try to tell a good story. If I can manage that, it will work for readers of any age.

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

Well, today I am writing a space opera story for the forthcoming NEW SPACE OPERA 2 collection. It’s tentatively called “Doctor Starkill”. Apart from that, I’m working on the seventh and final book in my THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM series, which is called LORD SUNDAY. I think that if you like my style of writing, probably anything I do will be of some interest, though of course the different books and stories do have varying appeal for different tastes.

Ann Halam, who also writes as Gwyneth Jones is the author of more than twenty novels. Her story in The Starry Rift is “Cheats”.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

The first science fiction that excited me was, no contest, the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials, that were televised when I was six or seven years old. An enduring influence. And there was “Quatermass and the Pit”, about the haunted Tube station: a big sensation in the UK at the time. We children weren’t allowed to stay up for it, we used to sneak down the stairs and peek through the living room door, terrified. I don’t remember when I started reading sf, but I remember being very taken with a story about a lone pilot-explorer, set in the jungles of Venus. Sorry, no idea what the book was called, or who wrote it.

2. What do you think science fiction has something to offer young readers today?

Adventure, excitement, and the thrill of new knowledge.

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

The adventure with the kayaks in the reedbeds is based on a real experience. My brother and I did that: got lost, enjoyed getting lost and were amazed (and ungrateful) when they set the Air and Sea Rescue on us. . . The idea that information can “travel” instantaneously across huge, interstellar distances has fascinated me for a long time. We are information. It’s what our minds are made of, and our bodies too, in the final analysis. Who knows? One thing we can guess about the future (by looking at the past) is that impossible things can become possible.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

I’m often asked this question. I think the difference is character driven. I write, try to write, in character. If the people in my story are thirteen, fourteen, then I’m writing from that viewpoint. Otherwise, my approach is entirely the same.

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

I’ve just finished a space opera called (working title) The Princess Of Bois Dormant. It’ll be published as a “Gwyneth Jones” book, but it’s not something only adults could enjoy. I hope the readers of The Starry Rift will look out for it, if they enjoy my story.

Walter Jon Williams is the author of two short story collections and more than twenty novels. His story in The Starry Rift is “Pinocchio”.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

My first SF novel was HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL by Robert A. Heinlein. I was in second grade, which would make me, what, seven? (I was a pretty advanced reader for my age.)

That novel had it all: adventure, mind-expanding ideas, interesting characters, and best of all, Heinlein’s writing. I re-read it every so often, and it’s still one of my favorites.

2. What do you think science fiction has something to offer young readers today?

The adult world prefers to stunt or crush the imagination and calls it “growing up.” Science fiction can set the imagination free!

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

“Pinocchio” deals with a teen icon— someone who has become famous /for being himself/, and what happens when he begins to doubt who he actually is. Should he continue in the belly of the media whale, or should he try to become a real boy?

The story deals with what it means to be authentic in a media-saturated world.

“Pinocchio” also has an unintended predictive aspect. It was written before several recent celebrity meltdowns, all of which are eerily prefigured in the story.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

I just wrote the story I wanted to write. In fact it’s set in the same future as two “adult” stories, “The Green Leopard Plague” and “Lethe,” both of which were nominated for awards. Let’s hope the tradition continues!

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

I just finished a novel titled This is Not a Game, set in the world of online computer gaming. It should see print early in 2009.

In the meantime you can chow down on Implied Spaces, which has just been released. It’s got a swordsman hero, unimaginably vast machine intelligence, a complex love story, and huge interplanetary wary, and a talking cat. What more do you want?

Cory Doctorow is the author of four novels and two short story collections. His story in The Starry Rift is “Anda’s Game”, which originally appeared on salon.com.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

My father had sf books and comics around the house from the time I was born and the first book I read on my own was Alice in Wonderland, which, I think, qualifies. Made the top of my head flip open and my brain do a victory dance.

2. What do you think science fiction has something to offer young readers today?

Science fiction is the didactic literature that explains how the world works — how the social and technological mesh and what that means for the person on the street. Childhood is a continuous process of figuring this stuff out, so sf is the right story.

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

“Anda’s Game” is a story about realizing that we all inhabit the same world and the same Internet, even if some of us — people from the rich developed world — are thousands of times richer than others. Anda is a young British girl who joins a girl-power gaming clan and finds herself involved in missions to knock over in-game sweatshops where little girls from Latinamerica toil to make virtual goods that are sold to rich players like her. The ensuing moral struggle makes Anda confront her place in the world and who she sees as allies.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

Not really — there are a few little vocabulary issues, but for the most part, writing for kids is like writing for adults, only more so, since kids tend to be sharper, more careful readers who pay close attention and aren’t afraid to send you an email when you get it wrong.

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

My new novel is LITTLE BROTHER, my first book for young readers. It’s the story of hacker kids in San Francisco who get caught in the terrorism dragnet and have to declare war on the Department of Homeland Security to win back the US Bill of Rights. You can buy it in stores everywhere and you can download it free at http://craphound.com/littlebrother.

Tricia Sullivan is the author of nine novels, most recently Double Vision and Sound Mind. Her story “Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome” appears in The Starry Rift.

1. When did you start reading science fiction? How old were you, and can you remember the first book or story that really excited you as a reader?

I read DUNE when I was around 12, but it was Arthur C. Clarke’s CHILDHOOD’S END that really impressed me when I was around 13 or 14. I’d read a lot of alternate-world stuff (Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Anne McCaffrey). But CHILDHOOD’S END was the first book that really made me think about our world from a completely new perspective. I also read Philip K. Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP because my parents said I was too young to see BLADE RUNNER (the movie based on the book). That was a major mindblower. I’ve never gotten tired of Dick.

2. What do you think science fiction has to offer young readers today?

Technology is changing our way of life so rapidly that it’s almost impossible to keep up with the leading edge. Science fiction is the literature that meets change head-on. It has a long tradition of exploring the boundaries of what it means to be a person. Young people are always testing those boundaries, and in particular young people today are facing possibilities and challenges that were never even imagined twenty years ago–except, maybe, in science fiction. Whether or not the technology in ‘hard’ science fiction stories ‘comes true’ doesn’t necessarily matter. Science fiction speaks directly to the blue sky thinking that older people tend to lose sight of. It’s about edges. That’s what being young is about, too.

3. Tell us about your story for The Starry Rift.

I had this idea of taking Greek champions and mapping star systems onto their bodies and then getting them to fight it out. Kind of a mental image of giant constellations battling one another. At first I thought it would be set on another planet, but whenever I sat down to write I ended up with…New Jersey, of all places. Go figure.

4. Did you find there was a real difference between writing for younger readers, or was your approach basically the same as when you’re writing for any other audience?

I realized I wasn’t going to get away with any postmodern hand-waving so I had to try to make the parameters of the story as concrete as I could. That was hard. Otherwise it was pretty much the same as any story.

5. What are you writing now? Is there something you’d recommend to readers who enjoyed your story in The Starry Rift?

I’m writing a science fiction novel called LIGHTBORN which is set in an American city where, thanks to a new self-improvement technology, all of the adults have gone nuts. I’d recommend my first novel, LETHE, to those who liked ‘Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome’.