Arcadia

This is the sequel to QUANT?

Yes, ARCADIA is the sequel to QUANT. At the end of QUANT, Janice Quant, the computer entity, drops off colonists and their supplies on twenty-four planets. One of those planets is Arcadia. This is the story of that colony, and picks up when they are dropped on the planet.

The main characters in ARCADIA are the Chen-Jasic group?

Yes, the minor characters in QUANT were the suburbanites from the Carolina administrative region. At the end of QUANT, they formed an alliance with the Chen family, a group of poor peasant farmers from the Chingqing administrative region in southwest China. That group becomes the major characters in ARCADIA.

Is Janice Quant in ARCADIA?

Yes, although she is not a major part of the action on the planet Arcadia. She is off about her own affairs, but we follow along with those in ARCADIA.

You organized this book a little differently than your other novels.

ARCADIA is organized as four novellas, each of which covers a critical period in the story of Arcadia colony. The first one is obvious - the establishment of the colony. The novellas are separated by long periods, usually fifty years. In between the novellas, we get interludes into what Janice Quant is up to.

What's next for the COLONY series?

Next is Galactic Survey. The colonies were all dropped off on widely separated planets, and Janice Quant didn't tell anyone where they were. So when hyperspace travel is developed, allowing interstellar trade and travel, there is nowhere to go, because no one knows where the other human planets are. So they have to go out and look.

You step on some cultural norms in ARCADIA.

Of course. There's no reason to think that all of human culture's developed phobias and practices will survive transplant to very different conditions. Among others here: some of the couples, married and bearing children, are absurdly young by today's standards; the colonists have a relaxed attitude toward nudity, because initially clothes are expensive to make, to wash, and to maintain, and the colony location is a tropical paradise; and the average age of the population is absurdly young - fifteen or so - so people begin working early. There are no people here going to school until 25, and only then getting a job, getting married, and raising a family.

You took a bit of a chance here with all the Chinese customs. Are you sure you got them right?

Yes, I'm sure. I had the book read by a Chinese friend of mine and asked him to be picky about checking them out, making sure my characterizations were correct. I feel pretty good about how accurate ARCADIA is on that score. It is never my intention to be other than accurate on things that are not the science fiction component of the story.

And the cover? It's not very Sci-Fi.

No, but it's true to the book. This is Luca Oleastri and Paola Giari again, working to my specification. A very young married couple, looking out over the early stages of the colony, when all they have is the four buildings Janice Quant transported them in.