"Remarkable new chapbook... By turns wide-eyed with wonder and increasingly sexually and sensually charged"

Locus Magazine

"It's with her characters that Tem shines... A wonderful exercise in exploring what makes us tick, delivered in her usual fine prose."

Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine

"Underneath the surface... this is more than a tale of ecological SF and Laura is much more complex than might be at first apparent."

The Chiaroscuro
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An excerpt from Pioneer

A cooling shadow fell over her. "Laura, you all right?"

A psychobiologist by both training and inclination, Cooper was forever inquiring about other people's state of mind, childhood, marriage, sexual history, dreams, somatic complaints. She'd have found his questioning less invasive had it had a legitimate purpose--reports back to Command, say, or research. But Cooper's interest in her and everyone else was personal.

"Heat getting to you?" he asked, concerned.

Laura frowned without opening her eyes. "I'm fine."

She heard him settle himself onto the hard dirt. His clumsy movements sent up faint dust that made her eyes sting and tear even through their lids. "Desolate place, isn't it?" he said.

She repositioned herself to come between him and the plant. To distract him, she said, with frustration that wouldn't have been feigned a few minutes ago, "And it shouldn't be."

Cooper nodded. "It should have healed by now."

"The conditions are right for life," she said. "Soil. Atmosphere. Climate. There's every indication that this planet could sustain life. We don't know why it doesn't." But it does now , she thought, and was grateful that the mask hid part of her face.

"Pay attention. Pay attention to how the world looks, smells, tastes, sounds, feels, in precise detail... Pay attention to other people's stories, especially the ones you don't understand and would like to." Melanie Tem

An exclusive interview with Melanie Tem

Melanie Tem's novels are Prodigal (recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement, First Novel), Blood Moon, Wilding, Revenant, Desmodus, The Tides, Black River, and in collaboration with Nancy Holder, Making Love and Witch-Light. The chapbook The Man on the Ceiling, written with Steve Rasnic Tem, is a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. New novels Slain in the Spirit and Round the Earth, Roaming About will be published by Leisure Books in 2002. Several dozen of her short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines, and she has published numerous non- fiction articles. Tem also was awarded the 1991 British Fantasy Award, the Icarus for Best Newcomer. Also a social worker, she lives in Denver with her husband, writer and editor Steve Rasnic Tem. They have four children and three grandchildren.