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Shwartz, Susan M

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1949-    ) US author who has been more clearly associated with fantasy than with sf, beginning with her first story, "The Fires of Her Vengeance" in The Keeper's Price (anth 1979) edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, later stories being assembled as Suppose They Gave a Peace and Other Stories (coll 2002). She soon however began to concentrate on extended works like the impressive Heirs to Byzantium Alternate-History trilogy: Byzantium's Crown (1987), The Woman of Flowers (1987) and Queensblade (1988); the Jonbar Point has some plausibility: Marc Antony defeats Octavius in the Battle of Actium, and with Cleopatra establishes Byzantium as the central power of the time, with Christianity severely marginalized. Her sf novels include White Wing (1985) with S N Lewitt, writing together as Gordon Kendall, which is a vigorous sf adventure; Heritage of Flight (fixup 1989), an adventure set on an alien planet; Second Chances (2001), a Space Opera, effectively combines element of Military SF and moral fable, the latter through its explicit retelling of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1901); and Hostile Takeover (2004), which is set initially in a moderately Near Future corporation-dominated Dystopian America, and carries its protagonist to a colony planet as a financial auditor for an unsavory interplanetary conglomerate. Though sf has not attracted her full attention, a caring literacy attractively infuses the action in all these tales. Habitats (anth 1984) contains several interesting Space Habitat tales original to that volume.

Shwartz's Ties contributed to the Star Trek universe – beginning with Star Trek: Vulcan's Forge (1997), all with Josepha Sherman – are serviceable. [JC]

Susan Martha Shwartz

born Youngstown, Ohio: 31 December 1949

works (fantasy titles are highly selected)

series

Heirs to Byzantium

Central Asia

Star Trek

individual titles

collections

works as editor

series

Arabesques

Sisters in Fantasy

individual titles as editor

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