Ripley, Karen
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of US author Mary K Urhausen (1948- ) who began publishing work of genre interest with "In Another Land" for If in 1968 as Mary Urhausen, but whose later work is always signed Karen Ripley. It includes the Prisoner of Dreams sequence comprising Prisoner of Dreams (1989) and The Tenth Class (1991), which features the adventures of a female starship-pilot who must cope with repressive authorities and with planets named, for instance, Heinlein (see Recursive SF); romance also looms. The Slow World trilogy – comprising The Persistence of Memory (1993), The Warden of Horses (1994) and The Alchemist of Time (1994) – more impressively presents autism (see Psychology) as a metaphor for understanding, though not an explanation of, the relation between the real or Slow world (see Perception), and the fantasy world ruled by the eponymous Warden of Horses, an autism victim in the here and now; the Telepathic heroine, suffering either a Memory Edit or endogenous brain damage, or both, must cure herself of Amnesia in order to find Earth again. [JC]
Mary K Urhausen
born Racine, Wisconsin: 24 September 1948
works
series
Prisoner of Dreams
- Prisoner of Dreams (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1989) [Prisoner of Dreams: pb/Barclay Shaw]
- The Tenth Class (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1991) [Prisoner of Dreams: pb/]
Slow World
- The Persistence of Memory (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1993) [Slow World: pb/Nicholas Jainschigg]
- The Warden of Horses (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1994) [Slow World: pb/Nicholas Jainschigg]
- The Alchemist of Time (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1994) [Slow World: pb/Nicholas Jainschigg]
links
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