No Specialized Knowledge Required: Rebecca Stead Discusses the Fun and Fantastic THE EXPERIMENT

If there was a theme to the last American Library Association Annual conference in Philadelphia it may have been, “I haven’t seen you in so LONG!” I think I may have uttered that exact phrase somewhere between ten and twenty times in the span of just a few days. Folks that I hadn’t seen in years and years were present and accounted for, including many of my old friends from when I lived in NYC a decade ago. And amongst them, to my utter delight, was Rebecca Stead. Of course, that made a fair amount of sense. The Newbery win of Erin Entrada Kelly’s The First State of Being brought to mind, for many, its time travel predecessor When You Reach Me. But as cute as that connection is, that wasn’t why Rebecca was necessarily at ALA. Not entirely. Because, you see, she has a new science fiction title out this year.

The Experiment (out September 16th) has all the hallmarks of a good Stead tale. A bit of mystery. A bit of the surreal. And a bit of science fiction as well. Or, as the plot reads:

“Nathan wants to help his people, but first he has to figure out who they are…

Nathan never understood what was “fun” about secrets, probably because he’s always had to keep a very big one.

Although he appears to be a typical sixth-grader (with parents, homework and a best friend, Victor), Nathan learned at an early age that his family is from another planet. Now, their time on Earth may be coming to an end.

Nathan, his parents and nine other families are part of an experiment that suddenly seems to be going wrong. Some of the experimenters, including Nathan’s first crush, Izzy, are disappearing without a word. After his family is called back to the mothership, Nathan begins to question everything he’s been taught to believe about who he is and why he’s on Earth.

The Experiment is a fast-paced coming-of-age novel that asks universal questions about how we figure out who we want to be, and whether it’s ever too late to change.”

And today? I get to pepper Rebecca with questions about it. Bliss.

Betsy Bird: Rebecca! What a delight to talk to you today! And what an even further delight to know that you’ve a middle grade novel out this year. THE EXPERIMENT is alluring in its mysterious description and premise, but I want the true backstory. Where did this book come from? What’s its origin story?

Rebecca Stead: Hi Betsy! It’s delightful of you to have me, thank you. Hmm, the true backstory: The Experiment is a story I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I loved the idea of a kid who knows he’s an alien and who’s trying to be “a perfect human” when something goes very wrong: He grows a tail. But, for years and years, this idea lived in my head in a sort of “stuck place.” I was getting nowhere with it because I wasn’t actually writing it. I only discover my stories by writing them. Walking around and trying to have story ideas is not useful to me unless I’m also putting words down on a regular basis. So I decided to embrace what I call the “not-knowing” and started writing scenes. This is always my process, but for some reason I have to rediscover it every time. For The Experiment, I tried very hard to say yes to big plot moves, instead of being afraid of them, which is my instinct. Nathan gets called back to the mothership? Yes. He discovers a secret lab? Yes. Lots of plot in here. But I’m still holding the hearts of the characters with care.

BB: Your books have always incorporated science, even from the very beginning. I well recall your book FIRST LIGHT which was set in the Greenland and included everything from global warming to mitochondrial DNA. When You Reach Me was more science fiction, but it logically works through the fallibility of time travel in way that kids totally grasp. Now you’ve gone a step further with aliens. You are perhaps, I would argue, one of our top science fiction authors working today. Do you have a particular love for the genre or is it almost more of an accident that you return repeatedly to the form?

Rebecca: Thanks for remembering First Light. It’s not an accident. I think I’m drawn to science fiction, including aliens and time travel, because it’s material that still feels kind of unleashed and magical to me. I loved sci-fi and fantasy when I was a kid: I read Robert Heinlein, Madeleine L’Engle, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, and Anne McCaffrey, and watched Star Trek, Star Wars, The Twilight Zone, etc. I also read comic books. Kitty Pryde was one of the people I most wished to be when I was young.

BB: Your publisher is comparing this book to A Wrinkle in Time and The First State of Being. I guess that A Wrinkle in Time was the only interstellar book they could think of, since First State of Being is more on the time travel spectrum (and I well remember you were on a Wrinkle of Time panel back in the day, which was very cool). We don’t see a lot of books about alien life for kids published in a given year. Why do you think that is?

Rebecca: Book comps are impossible, don’t you think? It’s like saying, “this person is like that person,” which is never really true. But I do feel a kinship to both of those books, because they’re doing something I hope I’m doing: exploring big “what-if” ideas without relinquishing an honest connection to our world and the ways in which we live here together. One of my book-goals, as both a reader and a writer, is to finish a book feeling more connected to the people around me and to this planet on which we all spend our days.

Your second question is such a good one. Why not more supra-terrestrial-life stories? Maybe the science-fiction label is something some writers try to avoid. I will admit that when I got my first review and saw that it was labeled sci-fi I immediately thought, I hope that doesn’t make anyone feel unqualified to read it. There’s no special knowledge needed to enjoy science fiction, but maybe there’s a vague feeling out there that it’s specialized somehow? I’ve been thinking about it, but I don’t know the answer. I’m interested in your thoughts.

BB: Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna steal your thoughts on special knowledge and science fiction and how they relate to one another for a future post. My next question is one I hesitate to bring up, but there’s no avoiding it. In our current political situation, there seems to be a lot of good to be found in books in which kids question authority in some way. Was that on your mind at all as you wrote THE EXPERIMENT?

Rebecca: I definitely noticed myself writing about a character who is ready to accept some truths that his family, his dad especially, is not ready to deal with. When a family, or any group of people, is living inside in a story that tells them exactly who they are and why they were put here on Earth, they probably won’t give up that story easily. Nathan’s parents are very loving, but when he asks questions, they deflect. At one point his dad tells him that he doesn’t have to “think” or “worry” because his dad will do the thinking for both of them. So one of Nathan’s questions becomes “how do I step away from this story but keep loving them?” It became something I paid extra attention to as I wrote.

BB: Beautifully put. Were you able to include everything in the book that you wanted to include? To what extent does the final form of the book resemble what it looked like at the beginning?

Rebecca: At the very beginning, Nathan’s journey was a short story that didn’t add up. I knew the premise and I knew the feeling that I wanted to touch at the end, but that ending wasn’t fully earned by the in-between. Now it’s a novel, which means it has several endings. And I’m pretty happy with all of them. Most of all, I wanted to write a book that’s fun to read.

BB: Mission accomplished, madam. Finally, what else do you have coming out these days? What else are you working on?

Rebecca: Thanks for asking. Nothing is coming out anytime soon, but I’m working on another story, which means I’m back to feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. But this is what writing feels like a lot of the time, so I’m trying not to worry.

Ah, Rebecca. A class act through and through. Many thanks to her for entertaining my questions today. You’ll be able to read The Experiment for yourself on September 16th, so be sure to look for it then. Thank you to Rebecca for answering my questions and thanks to Samantha Sacks and the team at Macmillan for arranging this interview in the first place.

Filed under: Interviews