We tend to think of Pandora as a “primitive” place. It is largely “untamed” (another word we like to use), and so it remains dark and unknowable in our imaginations, a place at the beginning of its history, not at a midpoint.

It’s the kind of thinking that Sherri Smith wants to see dismantled.

And she plans to do it, story by story. Smith is a fiction writer and historian who’s lived on Pandora for years, observing life there and talking to the Na’vi about their customs and beliefs. She translates her learnings into rich works of historical fiction and nonfiction, and her work aims to show that, far from a primordial wilderness, Pandora is rich with lineage, from myths carried on by oral tradition to the more recent histories of the human era.

Drawing from both historical sets, Smith works with illustrator colleagues to create graphic histories of the moon. Her histories, which are released serially, put people first, emphasizing “character” and social motivations over drier, academic concerns like dates and places. They represent narratives from various points in Pandora’s history, stories of fixed scope that nonetheless help us make sense of the whole place.

We sat down with her to get a sense of Pandora in the present cultural moment, and find out what Earth-bound humans get right about it — and what they get wrong.