11 thoughts on “A Meme I Can Do”

1. Leigh Kennedy is well worth reading. Her 1986 novel “The Journal of Nicholas the American” Library Journal in their review wrote:

   “Books in diary form are often stilted, but by presenting interesting people, a provocative story, and good writing, Kennedy’s novel avoids this pitfall. It should be considered for purchase by most libraries.”

   Well worth traking down, there seem to be plenty of copies available online if one is so inclined.

   And I’d be surprised if you haven’t met her … her husband was one of the Guests of Honor of Interaction.

   1. Actually I don’t recall ever meeting her, but she has now friended me on Facebook. The title of the book is, of course, very familiar.

2. I’m more than a little surprised and puzzled that you don’t recognise Katherine Maclean or Zenna Henderson.

   But you’re clearly younger than I am, so it may just be a generational thing.

   1. I’m always happy when someone says I am clearly young than they are. Mostly they are wrong. But I should note that I didn’t read much SF (aside from the likes of Verne, Wells and Wyndham) until the New Wave hit.

   2. Surtac: I suspect we all have blind spots that would surprise others.

      While I recognize all of the names, I’ve been a reader/collector/con attendee since the mid 60s, I haven’t read ’em all.

      I pity someone just discovering the genre and wanting to “catch up” on the important stuff of the last few decades – and in a sense I also envy them: they get to read lots of good stuff without having to read the dross. But reading the dross also gives one an appreciation of why some stories were/are important.

      But I digress.

3. I *recognize* almost all of them, and have books by all but 18.

   Like you, I wish Liz Williams had been included. And I might have preferred it if the table had stuck to fiction: Teresa Neilsen Hayen is a wonderful writer, for example, but she’s an essayist, not a novelist.

   I’m pretty sure, however, that “Kristine Smith” is a pseudonym for Kristine Kathryn Rusch, so the dual inclusion is problematic.
   _____
   Dennis

   1. Ahem: Kristine Smith

4. It turns out I am really quite lazy so I will link to the wikipedia article on MacLean

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_MacLean

   And recommend whatever works by her you can find (Probably The Missing Man, although I think ‘Pictures Don’t Lie’ and ‘The Snowball Effect’ are fairly easy to run into).

   St. Clair also wrote as Idris Seabright, I believe, and was one of the earlier authors to use Wiccan ideas in her fiction. I think she largely stopped being active around 1960.

5. I wonder if Douglas Adams ever read ‘Pictures Don’t Lie’?

6. The excellent Margaret St Clair – who deserves a NESFA type collection – stopped writing short fiction in the early sixties, focusing on novels until the mid seventies; she made a brief return to short fiction in the late seventies.

   I’ll add my list of omissions too, apart from the already mentioned Liz Williams: Tricia Sullivan; Sarah Monette; Evelyn E Smith; Mildred Clingerman; Storm Contantine; Kay Kenyon; Hope Mirelles; Sarah Genge; Tina Connolly; Linda Nagata; Mary Rosenblum; Steph Swainston; Eugie Foster; Molly Gloss; Kathe Koja; Holly Phillips; Vera Nazarian; Doris Piserchia; Alison Sinclair; Aliette de Bodard; Carolyn Ives Gilman; Wilma Shiras; Mary Soon Lee. Also, Barbara Roden (if you’re including supernatural fiction).

   Also a few I haven’t actually read myself: E Mayne Hull; Amy Sterling Casil; Jody Scott

7. If one wants to go to early commercial US skiffy, i.e. Hugo Gernsback then one needs to add Clare Winger Harris.

   And H. P. Lovecraft wrote of “Claimed” by Francis Stevens: “One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read”.

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