In Jane Rogers’ terrifyingly plausible novel, an ordinary girl faces an extraordinary situation. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her
Jane Rogers
The struggle Jane Rogers faced before setting her book in the future was with herself. A present-day story meant ‘knee-jerk reactions’ but she was ‘very resistant to the move into the future!’
Her longlisting proved how right she was to overcome her resistance: The Testament of Jessie Lamb also won the Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction. Currently her struggle is more existential: ‘It is hard to feel writing is as important as I used to think it was,’ she says. ‘I have actually been putting more time into Extinction Rebellion, because the climate emergency will be the next catastrophe we face.’ Rogers is also a practiced adapter and writer of radio plays and the television series of her novel Mr Wroe’s Virgins won four BAFTA nominations in 1994.
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