Moffett, Judith
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1942- ) US academic, poet and author; a professor at the University of Pennsylvania 1979-1994. She was first active as a poet, publishing two collections – Keeping Time (coll 1976) and Whinny Moor Crossing (coll 1984); the full-length study, James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry (1984), contains an extensive study of Merrill's work of greatest sf interest, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). She began to write sf with an Apes-As-Human tale, "Surviving", for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in June 1986, which won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and was later assembled with "Not without Honor" (May 1989 Asimov's) as Two that Came True (coll 1991).
With her first novel, Pennterra (1987), Moffett came into immediate prominence, partly because of the rousing sexual explicitness of some scenes between humans and the pheromone-emitting Hrossa (see Exogamy; Sex), a mysterious group-mind species named – oddly, given C S Lewis's prurient distaste for sexual material – after one of the Martian races in Out of the Silent Planet (1938). Having escaped a terminally polluted Earth, a party of Quakers has landed on the planet Pennterra and been permitted restricted residence on condition that they do not breed indiscriminately, attempt to claim further territory, or introduce invasive Technologies. All goes well until a second human expedition arrives with no intention of changing any of the behaviour which has ruined humanity's first home (see Colonization of Other Worlds). The Hrossa warn them that Pennterra herself (see Gaia) will punish any disobedience, and the novel – taking on the hues of a grave and didactic Planetary Romance – moves inexorably to the comeuppance. She won John W Campbell Award for best new author in 1988.
Moffett's main creative accomplishment – the Holy Ground sequence comprising The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth (fixup 1991), Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World (1992) and The Bird Shaman (2008) – soon followed. In the first volume, a series of stories – including "Tiny Tango" (February 1989 Asimov's), about AIDS – is fixed up into a remarkably effective mosaical portrayal of Climate Change, Disaster and redemption, the latter at the hands of a deus ex machina cabal of Aliens that ambivalently seems intent on defending Earth from its otherwise uncontrollable natives. The second volume focuses on the private, isolated life of a young girl, whose apprehensions of the Holy Ground of Earth seem ineffective, in sf terms, as the planet suffers crisis after crisis. The Bird Shaman, even less easy on the home species than its predecessors, hints perhaps that the End of the World will come soon: though the radiance of its human protagonists suggests, perhaps, a happier alternative. By choosing controversial subjects and then treating them to generic solutions as experienced through the lives of fully-modulated characters, Moffett shows a mature sense of balance, and an active engagement with sf as an exploratory mode. The risk of focusing on characters who do not themselves change the world is of not being read: it is to be hoped that Holy Ground, now that it is complete, becomes a central text for the times. [JC]
see also: Edisonade; Pastoral; Supernatural Creatures.
Judith L Moffett
born Louisville, Kentucky: 30 August 1942
works
series
Holy Ground
- The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991) [Holy Ground: hb/Ron Walotsky]
- Tiny Tango (no place given: Amazon Digital Services, 2014) [novella: ebook: chapter three of the above: first appeared February 1989 Asimov's: Holy Ground: na/]
- Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World (New York: St Martin's Press, 1992) [Holy Ground: hb/Harlan Hubbard]
- The Bird Shaman (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bascom Hill Publishing Group, 2008) [Holy Ground: pb/Alexis Allred]
individual titles
- Pennterra (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1987) [hb/Bryn Barnard]
- Two that Came True (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse, 1991) [coll: in the publisher's Author's Choice Monthly series: hb/George Barr]
nonfiction (selected)
- James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) [nonfiction: James Merrill: hb/nonpictorial]
links
previous versions of this entry