Will Rhino asked Shaun David Hutchinson:

As an adult who dabbles in reading YA, your stories have very universal feelings of loss in them. The sci-fi elements as a metaphor for what your characters are going through is so well done. I was wondering 1) Why you choose to use sci-fi as coping mechanisms for your characters and 2) What would you say to adults to convince them to read you?

Shaun David Hutchinson I think I use sci-fi because it's what I grew up on. I can point directly to The Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, and Star Trek as my influences, and I think readers can easily see that. I think, in general, sci-fi allows us to approach topics that make us uncomfortable with a kind of distance that allows us to explore them without that feeling. A great example is the episode of Star Trek: TNG where Dr. Crusher falls in love with a Trill whose host dies and is replaced by a woman. The SFF aspect of it allowed a show in the late 80s-early 90s to explore the concept of same-sex relationships in a way that other shows wouldn't have been able to do.

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