TRAVISS, Karen

PERSONAL: Born in Portsmouth, England. Education: Graduate of Clarion Science-Fiction and Fantasy Workshop.

ADDRESSES: Home—Devizes, Wiltshire, England. Agent—c/o Russell Galen, Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency, Inc., 381 Park Ave. S., Ste. 1020, New York, NY 10016. E-mail—mail@karentraviss.com.

CAREER: Novelist. Worked variously as a journalist, advertising copywriter, public-relations manager, media liaison for the police, journalism lecturer, and defense correspondent. Military service: Served in Territorial Army and Royal Naval Auxiliary Service.

WRITINGS:

SCIENCE-FICTION NOVELS

City of Pearl (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Crossing the Line (novel), EOS (New York, NY), 2004.

Hard Contact (novel), Del Rey (New York, NY), 2004.

The World Before (novel), EOS (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of science fiction stories to periodicals, including Asimov's and Realms of Fantasy.

SIDELIGHTS: British science-fiction writer Karen Traviss worked in a number of fields prior to becoming a full-time fiction author, including serving as a journalist, public-relations manager, advertising copywriter, media liaison for the police, and a defense correspondent. Her novels are influenced by the time she spent in the military—both the Territorial Army and the Royal Navy Auxiliary Service—as well as by a curiosity about science and astronomy that dates back to childhood. She started writing at a young age, primarily to amuse herself, and her stories reflected her taste for science fiction. In an interview with Andrew M Butler in Vector, Traviss explained: "I want to explore what people do when they have to live with the choices technology and science gives them, and how they handle relations with creatures that aren't the same as them. One of the themes that most occupies me is the dividing line between the 'us' that we treat with respect and can empathize with, and 'them'—the external bin into which we dump those who we can crap on and get away with it."

City of Pearl, Traviss's first novel, is a complex work that concerns alien races, several future societies on Earth, and an Earth colony. Heroine Shan Frankland is an Environmental Enforcement Officer sent on a mission to save a gene bank. She finds herself embroiled in a battle over a planet that contains an age-defying substance. Don D'Ammassa, in a review for the SFChronicle, remarked that, while it took some time for the story to get under way, the book contained "some intriguing details about the alien civilizations and enough active conflict to hold your interest." BookPage online contributor Gavin J. Grant commented that the novel is "a strong first installment and marks the debut of a writer to watch."

The follow up volume, Crossing the Line, picks up where the first book left off, tracking Shan Frankland as she attempts to keep the conflict from developing into an all-out war. D'Ammassa called the book a "well written adventure story, and worth the effort to track it down."

In addition to writing books set in her original world, Traviss has written a Star Wars tie-in novel, Hard Contact, part of the "Republic Commando" series. When asked why she chooses to work in the "Star Wars" universe, Traviss told Butler that "it takes a whole new level of discipline to fit the canon and remain true to the flavor of the world you've been invited into while still retaining your own style and approach—which is what they sign you up for in the first place. It's not ghost writing; it's your book. There was a time when I thought it wasn't something I'd want to do, but it turned out that it was right up my street—or one of my streets, anyway. I have many."