Rogers, Jane
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1952- ) UK screenwriter and author of Young Adult novels beginning with Separate Tracks (1983), none of her early work being fantastic, though Island (1999), a mundane fantasia on William Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed circa 1610-1611), comes close. Mr Wroe's Virgins (1991) – she also scripted the Television version (1993) – is her best known work. Of sf interest is The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2011), set in a Near Future world where a mysterious Pandemic has threatened the continuation of Homo sapiens: all pregnancies end in the death of both mother and child. The eponym's father has, however, created a cruel partial cure, which if agreed to saves the child although the mother suffers brain-death and her body is kept alive in intensive care to bear infant after infant. Jessie Lamb (her name deliberately evokes a Religious subtext) volunteers to undertake this "cure". The tale won the 2012 Arthur C Clarke Award. Body Tourists (2019) is set in a Dystopian Near Future Britain where social and income inequalities have markedly intensified, with much of the population sequestered in communal housing estates. The Invention of an Identity Transfer machine, capable of uploading dead consciousnesses into live bodies, provides some income to the impoverished young (see Clichés). The tale is perhaps over-cluttered with quoted tropes (see Mainstream Writers of SF). [JC]
Jane Rosalind Rogers
born London: 21 July 1952
works (selected)
- Mr Wroe's Virgins (London: Faber and Faber, 1991) [hb/]
- Island (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999) [hb/]
- The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Dingwall, Ross-shire, Scotland: Sandstone Press, 2011) [pb/Kirstie Cohen]
- Body Tourists (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2019) [hb/]
links
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