Writing in the outer limits

By Susan Chaityn Lebovits | March 30, 2008

Jennifer Pelland has prevented genetics from going haywire, built bubble cities to deter solar mutations in the human race, and created future societies for those who have been affected by global warming.

The 38-year-old science-fiction writer also has been nominated for this year's Nebula Award, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, for her short story "Captive Girl."

Over the past eight years Pelland has published around 30 stories and written two novels. A collection of her short stories, "Unwelcome Bodies," was released by Apex last month.

"In some stories I invent everything," said Pelland, who lives in Waltham. "Others require research."

Pelland belongs to a science-fiction and fantasy writers group that meets monthly to discuss the classics and their personal projects. "It could be anything from the high fantasy of 'Lord of the Rings' to the work of Neil Gaiman," Pelland said.

Pelland grew up in Springfield on a diet of "Creature Feature" films and science-fiction novels that she'd fish out of her father's collection.

"I probably shouldn't have read some of them, as they had sex scenes," said Pelland, "but what I didn't understand went over my head anyway."

"Star Wars" was the first full-price feature film that she attended with her family. The movie, she said, "blew the walls out of my mind," and she mentally wrote herself into the script.

An academic whiz in elementary school, Pelland skipped half of second grade and was pushed ahead. In retrospect, she said, it wasn't the best move for her social life.

"I lost track of how to interact with human beings until high school," said Pelland.

By then she fell in with the drama club but never gave up watching "Dr. Who," a British science-fiction series that began airing on television in 1963.

Pelland attended Wellesley College and a month after arriving connected with members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts, skills, and traditions of pre-17th-century Europe. They would hold weekly dance practice at MIT in Cambridge, and take part in medieval-theme events each month. It was during that time that Pelland was first exposed to the world of wiccans.

One evening a friend handed her a large chunk of quartz. When she took it, Pelland said, she immediately felt a force radiate up her arm. The experience caused her to look at things above and beyond the scientific and rational.

"For a while I dabbled in witchcraft," said Pelland. "But the earth goddess variety - not the 'Malleus Maleficarum' variety from the Middle Ages where people were burned."

Pelland said that since she'd left the Catholic Church during college, being able to have spirituality again was great. She became involved in Dianic witchcraft, which has a focus on women. She also was a member of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender pagan group.

While Pelland has never really questioned her own sexual identity, she said, she is drawn to people who've questioned themselves.

"It's fascinating," said Pelland. "I couldn't imagine not being drawn to that."

Pelland met her husband in 1987 at a medieval dance that was held at MIT.

After graduating from Wellesley, she landed a job with an organization that promoted international educational exchange between Latin America and the United States. During that period, Pelland spent a fair amount of time online with fan-fiction communities, focusing on expanding stories and characters created by favorite authors. She was an editor for a "Star Trek" newsletter, and traveled to conventions. "It was fun, but it was always someone else's creativity," said Pelland.

By the age of 30, Pelland was working on college textbooks for the publishing house Addison-Wesley, and questioning why she was spending so much of her free time on other people's science-fiction stories. So she set out to make a few life changes.

Pelland began writing original pieces, became a vegetarian, cut off her hair, and got her first tattoo - a crow footprint on her upper thigh. Since then she's added a crescent moon, a Celtic knot on her shoulder blade, some ivy, and a little star over a biopsy scar on her breast.

As she became more successful, she decided to share what she learned about science-fiction writing and launched jenniferpelland.com, which offers advice to aspiring and frustrated writers. The site also contains a blog that tracks her writing career.

Pelland and her husband have been together for nearly 20 years, and she said that she is childless by choice.

"The whole reproductive drive has always been alien to me," said Pelland. "But I love being an aunt, and love other people's kids."

Pelland's day job now is as a senior translations project manager at Integrity Interactive, a Waltham company that produces online corporate ethics training in 40 languages. She said they've covered material as granular as European chemical company regulations and as broad as antitrust and money-laundering laws.

But her real love remains science fiction.

Michael A. Burstein, a fellow writer, said Pelland's work has a rare brutal honesty.

"Even though Jen's stories spin out bizarre scenarios, I find I don't need to suspend my disbelief because her characters respond to their predicaments realistically," he said. "Jen is willing to go places in her fiction that most other writers, including myself, aren't brave enough to do."

Burstein cites one story in particular, "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceedingly Great," in which the AIDS epidemic infiltrates Boston.

"In the first line, a woman named Kathleen takes the Red Line to work wearing latex surgical gloves and carrying a can of mace," said Burstein. That image, he said, immediately thrusts one into the differences of the world she created.

"It's almost like Jen has actually been to the futures she writes about," said Burstein. "She just comes home and transcribes what she's seen there."

Jennifer Pelland will read excerpts from "Unwelcome Bodies" next Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at Back Pages Books, 289 Moody St., Waltham. Call 781-788-9988.