How does reality shape the sci-fi I create? My writer’s heart is always drawn to writing the bizarre and fantastical. I’d written a lot of short stories and was always worried my ideas would be too strange for a reader to suspend disbelief. When I decided to write my first novel-length science fiction, The Last ­Cuentista [winner of the 2022 Newbery Medal], I went in search of how to make my unrealistic ideas feel like they were based in reality.

While attending a sci-fi writing conference in Seattle, I had listened in on a panel where author Fonda Lee said, “If you start with a kernel of truth, the reader will follow your imagination anywhere.” That was it! I’d had it backwards. In that instant, I knew that creating this novel wasn’t a puzzle of writing the fantastical idea and then figuring out how to make readers believe it. It was beginning the novel with truth and reality and letting my imagination spring from that bit of truth.

So no matter what wild ride or bizarre journey I’m about to take readers on, I always begin with scientific kernels of truth. Truth in character details. Like a girl with retinitis pigmentosa. Truth in how space travel may work. Mentioning magnetism. Or how in my most recent sci-fi novel, Alebrijes, a world without electricity might power an army of drones. Fusion energy. Truth in how human consciousness in relation to AI might work. We are literally in the midst of the creation of some of this science. A lot of it would have been considered complete nonsense not so long ago. But my mind never stops wondering about those things science still considers hogwash.

"Does your eye doc have a Newbery?" Photo courtesy of Donna Barba Higuera.

My love of science isn’t new. I have a degree in biology, with an emphasis in cellular physiology, and a minor in chemistry. I’m also an eye doctor. Big nerd! Those parts of myself don’t cease to exist while I’m writing. It’s just natural that those topics run in the background of my mind at all times, especially while I’m creating.

It would be really difficult for me to create the worlds that I do if I didn’t have a background in science. As I write middle grade and young adult sci-fi, I have to be especially diligent in ­ensuring the science and reality I begin with is factual. The age group for which I write can sniff out lies.

I have met so many sci-fi writers over the past few years. And I’ve found that the vast majority of us have some background in science, or medicine, or engineering. At first, I thought this was strange. Not anymore. I’ve found a club of science nerds with big imaginations who dream big.

From the May/June 2025 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Perception and Reality. Find more in the "Reality Reimagined" series here.

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