(1950- ) US writer with degrees in political science and north Asian studies, now best known for The Jane Austen Book Club (2004), a non-fantastic comedy of manners; two other late novels – The Sweetheart Season (1996) and Sister Noon (2001) – are also associational. She began publishing sf with "Recalling Cinderella" in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol I (anth 1985) edited by Algis Budrys, and caused considerable stir in the sf field with the quality of the work assembled in her first collection, Artificial Things (coll 1986), which helped gain her the 1987 John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short stories – later collections are Author's Choice Monthly Issue #6: Peripheral Vision (coll 1990 chap), Letters from Home (anth 1991), which contains separate tales by her, Pat Cadigan and Pat Murphy, and Black Glass: Short Fictions (coll 1998), which assembles stories from the previous two volumes, plus original material – give an entirely deceptive appearance of reticence, but soon reveal steely ironies, an insistence on the essential solitude of her protagonists (which evoke Feminist arguments about alienation but do not dwell upon the specifics of oppression or male-female discord) and an urgent hilarity. Some stories, like "Face Value" (November 1986 F&SF) or "Faded Roses" (November 1989 Omni) (> Apes as Human), are pure sf; others shift into fantasy or Fabulation, giving ambiguous cues as to any "proper" reading. Two of her later tales – "What I Didn't See" (10 July 2002 Sci Fiction) and "Always" (4 May 2007 Asimov's) – won the Nebula award for best short story.
This sure-footed refusal to give her readers much epistemological security, much sense that her worlds could be firmly apprehended, also governs the telling of Fowler's first novel, the remarkable Sarah Canary (1991), which – along with John Fowles's A Maggot (1985) – may be the finest First Contact novel yet written, certainly from a non-genre perspective. A strange female figure – woman or Alien, no one knows, or can even formulate the question – arrives in the state of Washington in 1873 and is dubbed Sarah Canary, because of the birdlike sounds she makes. In attempting to deal with her, the Chinese worker to whom she has attached herself is exposed to a long array of those outsider beings that the sciences of the nineteenth century attempted to control through the measurements of "knowledge": Indians, blacks, the insane, immigrants, women, animals, artists, confidence men. Sarah Canary, who stands for them all in the indescribable melody of her Being, finally disappears, never having said a word. As an emblem of the enigma behind the idea of first contact she is perhaps definitive. As a dramatization of the self-deluding imperialisms of knowledge, Sarah Canary is equally convincing. Wit's End (2008; vt The Case of the Imaginary Detective 2008) plays subtle and complex Equipoisal games in a story involving increasingly threatening interactions between "reality", Virtual Reality, Games and Sports, and hyperbolically overexcited online communities. [JC]
see also: Interzone; Sociology; Writers of the Future Contest.
Karen Joy Fowler
born Bloomington, Indiana: 7 February 1950
died
works
- Sarah Canary
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1991) [hb/Raquel Jaramillo] - The Sweetheart Season (New York: Henry Holt Company, 1996) [hb/Louise Fili]
- Sister Noon (New York: G P Putnam's Sons/Marian Wood, 2001) [hb/Royce M Becker]
- The Jane Austen Book Club (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 2004) [hb/Kirk Richards]
- Wit's End (New York: G P Putnam's Sons/Marian Wood, 2008) [hb/Patti Ratchford]
collections and stories
- Artificial Things (New York: Bantam Books, 1986) [coll: pb/Tito Salomoni]
- Author's Choice Monthly Issue #6: Peripheral Vision (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1990) [coll: chap: hb/George Barr]
- Letters from Home (London: The Women's Press, 1991) with Pat Cadigan and Pat Murphy [anth: could also be described as a collaborative collection, each author contributing six stories: pb/Elaine Kowalsky]
- The War of the Roses (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1991) [story: chap: first appeared December 1985 Asimov's: hb/Donna Gordon]
- Black Glass: Short Fictions (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998) [coll: hb/Raquel Jaramillo]
- What I Didn't See and Other Stories (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Beer Press, 2010) [coll: hb/Erica Harris]
works as editor
series
James Tiptree Award Anthologies
- The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, The Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2005) with Pat Murphy, Deborah L {NOTKIN} and Jeffrey D Smith [anth: James Tiptree Award Anthologies: pb/John D Berry]
- The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2006) with Pat Murphy, Deborah L {NOTKIN} and Jeffrey D Smith [anth: James Tiptree Award Anthologies: pb/John D Berry]
- The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2007) with Pat Murphy, Deborah L {NOTKIN} and Jeffrey D Smith [anth: James Tiptree Award Anthologies: pb/John D Berry]
individual titles
links
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