<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Like most SF writers, Pamela Sargent (March 20, 1948-) started with short fiction, appearing fairly regularly during the early 1970s. Some of the best of these stories considered the possibilities and consequences of human cloning in a very serious fashion and those stories were combined to form the novel, Cloned Lives (1976). Her first three original novels were less popular though equally well written. The Sudden Star (1979, aka The White Death) was a thoughtful but unexciting dystopian novel. Watchstar (1980) was more interesting, focusing on the puzzle of a derelict starship and a lost colony. The fourth and best is The Golden Space (1982). A woman agrees to have her children genetically altered so that they will be in many ways superior to ordinary humans, but in doing so she discovers that she has forfeited her right to help shape their future.

Sargent's most serious and successful work often contains a strong element of feminism. In The Shore of Women (1986), women seize control of most of what survives of the civilized world following a nuclear war. Men are kept in subservient positions and most forms of technology are outlawed. A woman who believes society has overcompensated for past errors challenges the status quo. Her Venus trilogy, Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Child of Venus (2001) resembles a complex family saga, in this case set on the newly colonized planet Venus where traditional sex roles prove less valid than on Earth. As the series progresses, predictable tensions between the colonies and the authorities on the homeworld move inexorably toward conflict. Climb the Wind (1999) is an alternate history novel in which various Native American tribes manage to resist the onslaught of settlers and cavalry, set up their own nation, and prepare for a major war. In many ways it is Sargent's most polished novel.

Her various books for young adults are sufficiently sophisticated to appeal to mature readers as well. The first, Earthseed (1983), is an elaborate coming of age story in which children are raised by a sentient starship as part of an effort to spread humanity to the stars. The Alien Upstairs (1983) is less dramatic, the story of a family whose lives are altered by a mysterious boarder, who turns out to be an alien. Eye of the Comet and Homesmind, both from 1984, are sequels to the adult novel, Watchstar. Her most recent, Alien Child (1988) does not measure up to her earlier books for this audience.

Sargent is a noted anthologist, including the three Women of Wonder collections by female SF writers published between 1975 and 1978. She has also written four Star Trek novels, all in collaboration with George Zebrowski.