MacLeod, Sheila
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1939- ) Scottish author, married 1963-1976 to actor and pop singer Paul Jones (see Privilege), an experience reflected in her first novel, The Moving Accident (1968), which is nonfantastic. Her second, The Snow-White Soliloquies (1970), is a Fabulation with surprisingly firm sf underpinning, describing in technological terms the Suspended Animation of its eponymous heroine as the search for a Prince continues in a grey world. Xanthe and the Robots (1977), set in an Institute for Advanced Robotic Research, explores the creation of "Philophrenics" (Robots of near-human capability) and the problems their all-too-human designers face in deciding how far to attempt to exploit their development; it is an intelligent and sophisticated novel. Circuit-Breaker (1978) entertainingly mixes Inner Space and outer, describing an astronaut's attempts to use his Psi Powers to save his ship – assuming the hero is indeed an astronaut and not a mental case or an sf writer: the ending is ambiguous. [MJE/PN/JC]
Sheila MacLeod
born Stornoway, Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland: 23 March 1939
works
- The Moving Accident (London: Faber and Faber, 1968) [hb/Jerome Gask]
- The Snow-White Soliloquies (London: Secker & Warburg, 1970) [hb/Graphics Partners]
- Xanthe and the Robots (London: The Bodley Head, 1977) [hb/Gerard Lecoeur]
- Circuit-Breaker (London: The Bodley Head, 1978) [hb/Gerard Lecoeur]
links
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