Gibson Publishes Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novel

In 1980, 20-year-old Janet Gibson boarded a city bus every day for a long ride to the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she was an undergraduate student in psychology. Day after day, she stared out the window of the bus, watching the neighborhoods of Philly go by.

“I just got bored,” Gibson says.

So she began writing a novel. “It was escapism,” the professor emerita of psychology explains. “The story is meant to be an escape.”

Like most kids who grew up in the 1960s, Gibson was fascinated by the space race to the moon while also consuming science fiction classics such as Lost in Space and Star Trek, and later Space: 1999, Dr. Who, and Star Wars. Not surprisingly, her book is science fiction, with elements of fantasy and mystery.

Jayel: Hands of a Healer explores what life might be like in another solar system, and how the residents would evolve over the centuries. “My answer was basically — they would be a lot like us,” Gibson says.

In the 40-plus years since Gibson started writing her book, much has changed. The first draft was typed on a typewriter; it would evolve with the technology of the times, from DOS to MacWrite to whatever came next. She finished it after retiring from the Grinnell College faculty and moving to Florida, where she joined a writing critique group.

With a PhD in psychology, it’s not surprising that Gibson included plenty of psychological elements in her fictional world. “The people are driven by self-actualization,” she says. “I’m a psychologist — what do you want?” In a nod to the liberal arts, Gibson also wove in elements of history, anthropology, philosophy, computer science, and more.

The book, which is available on Amazon, so far does not have a sequel and Gibson says she has no plans to write one, at least for now. “I kept saying, ‘Didn’t I come here to retire, to have fun?’” Friends who have read the book are already asking for a sequel, however, so time will tell.