Once upon a time, there was a reviewer with a simple dream: to list every woman who wrote speculative fiction in English and debuted in the 1980s1, then discuss those authors with whose work he was familiar. (Editor’s note: Please, please read the footnote, which delineates the precise scope of this article.) He found there was an unanticipated problem: grouping authors by the first letter of their surname could result in sets of authors too large to discuss in one essay. (This was true for only some letters; at least one set, the authors whose surname started with X, contained only one author—Can Xue.)
Attempted solution: procrastinate. Perhaps results will arise as if by magic? After four and a half years of inactivity, it became clear that this would not work.
Epiphany: nothing says this project has to be tackled one letter at a time. In fact, there is another approach.…
Welcome to Dalkey to Devenport (Dal–Dev). [Note: previous installment of this series can be found here: Part I, Part II, and Part III].
Kara Dalkey’s debut was the 1985 story “The Hands of the Artist,” which was included in the first of the Liavek shared universe anthologies (titled simply Liavek). The story was followed in short order by her first novel, The Curse of Sagamore, a comic fantasy involving a magical monarchy whose designated heir is quite sensibly reluctant to be saddled with the crown and all that comes with it. Sixteen novels followed, along with enough short stories to fill a collection; if such a collection exists, I am unaware of it. With publication came accolades, in particular the 2003 Otherwise (then known as the Tiptree) for her novelette The Lady of the Ice Garden, which appeared in 2003’s Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Sharyn November.
Where to start my discussion of Dalkey? Well, there’s always the option of beginning at the beginning. As far as I can tell, the current ebook edition of Liavek does not include the Dalkey story, but used copies of the 1985 edition should be easy to find. An easier option might be to seek out 2021’s historical fantasy2 A Sword Named Sorrow. My favourite of her works is 2001’s Genpei, set during the clash between the Minamoto and Taira clans at the end of Japan’s Heian Period.3
Pamela Dean debuted with her 1985 novel The Secret Country. This was followed almost immediately4 by her short story “The Green Cat,” in Liavek5. Thus far she has published six fantasy novels, generally well-received, two of which (Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills) were nominees for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
Readers unfamiliar with Dean have several equally satisfactory options. Those who prefer short pieces can seek out Dean and Wrede’s 2015 Points of Departure: Liavek Stories. Those whose proclivities involve longer works could simply purchase all six of her fantasy novels. However, readers wanting a specific suggestion might consider 1994’s The Dubious Hills, featuring a community subject to an unusual geas constraining who can know what…
Camilla Decarnin (a penname for Karen Duff; she is also known as Mog) might be best remembered for her contributions to the vibrant field of slash fiction, as well as her involvement with the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree). Decarnin died in 2010, but although death frequently is followed by an almost immediate evaporation of online resources6, her slash fiction can still be found at the Garrett.
Fan fiction and slash fiction generally falls outside the specific scope of this series but Decarnin had at least one professional credit as co-editor, with Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, of 1986’s Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction and Fantasy. Such anthologies were rare birds in those day; Worlds Apart offered a solid selection of SFF. Although long out of print, inexpensive used copies may be found on AbeBooks and other purveyors of used books.
Marie DesJardin debuted with 1980’s “Birth of a Wizard,” which appeared in Kim Mohan’s Dragontales (whose Michael Carroll cover inspires in at least one person an almost intolerable wave of nostalgia). Technical writing appears to have absorbed much DesJardin’s attention; nevertheless, she has a small but respectable body of work. Readers enjoyed her short fiction enough for her “Long Haul” to have won second place in the 2017 Analog Awards.
If any collection of DesJardin’s works exists, this fact is well hidden. Her sole novel, 1998’s For The Time Being, whose tale of abductees attempting to elude alien kidnappers takes on unexpected scope, does seem to be easily available as an audio book.
Emily Devenport debuted with 1987’s “Shade and the Elephant Man,” which appeared in Aboriginal Science Fiction, May–June 1987. In the decades since, Devenport has written at least a dozen novels (mainly as Devenport but also as Lee Hogan, Emily Hogan, and Maggy Thomas), as well as scribing a steady flow of short stories. 1991’s Shade was a finalist in the 1992 Locus Best First Novel category.
Logic suggests that a collection would be a fine place to start but as no such collection exists, readers might consider Medusa Uploaded, the first volume in the Medusa Cycle generation ship series. Medusa Uploaded protagonist Oichi, one of the lowest of the low in an unforgiving social hierarchy, sets out to inflict just vengeance on the upper classes, in the course of which she discovers there is much she does not know about her home.
There’s another reason my series stalled: a fanatical enthusiastic science fiction and fantasy reader might have been able to keep up with the entirety of the field until perhaps 1970, and much of it until 1980. However, after 1980 science fiction and fantasy expanded so much that no single person, no matter how obsessed devoted, could possibly keep up. I find myself with a very long list of women writers who debuted in the 1980s and a much shorter list of women who debuted in the 1980s whose work I have read. Thus, my List of Shame, a list of authors who would have been mentioned above had I read anything by them—if you’ve read any of the following authors, please feel free to suggest where someone new to them could start!
Jo Anna Dale was a poet, with whose work I am unfamiliar.
Annie Dalton is an author of young adult fiction I have yet to encounter.
Dorothy Davies appears to focus primarily on horror, with an impressive CV; I’ve read none of her works.
Geri Eileen Davis is a poet.
Diane de Avalle-Arce has written a number of short stories, most of which appeared in venues with which I am not familiar. 1992’s “Bats” was selected for Datlow and Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection, which I have owned since publication and am planning on reading any day now.
Donna Death seems to focus on humorous Lovecraftiana and might well be a pen name.
Cynthia DeFelice (not to be confused with Cynthia Felice) is perhaps the most noteworthy author of children’s fiction whose sibling was a Secretary of Defense. Her debut being well after I was in the target market, I’ve not read them.
Carol L. Dennis debuted in fantasy in the 1980s. Unfortunately, her novels were published by Quasar, whose distribution in Ontario was spotty. Someone must have liked them, as they are still in print. More books for Mount Tsundoku.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
[1]It’s probably best to tackle some issues past experience suggests will come up. I will explain in a footnote that people are *sure* to read. First, this covers women authors ONLY (and yes, of course trans women are women). Second, this essay ranges from Dalkey to Devenport. Authors whose surnames precede Dalkey or follow Devenport are not covered. Third, the focus is on women authors whose work first appeared in the 1980s. Authors whose first work preceded the 1980s are not covered. Similarly, authors who did not appear in print until after the 1980s are not covered. Note that women SFF authors active in the 1980s might well have begun their careers well before the 1980s. Julian May, for example, may have been a regular on Reagan-era best seller lists but her first story, “Dune Roller,” appeared in 1951. Because conventional calendars do not commonly place 1951 between 1980 and 1989, she would not be mentioned in this series.
[2]My copy is somewhere in Mount Tsundoku.
[3]I would say more but the last time I discussed this book I infuriated someone by spoiling the outcome of the Genpei War (1180–1185).
[4]Going by the information provided on copyright pages and online.
[5]What are the odds two consecutive authors sorted by first letter of the last name would have debuted at short length in the same anthology?
[6]For example, all the LiveJournal entries on Decarnin. They could not be consulted because they no longer exist.
So, did you really enjoy Q getting decked by Sisko, or what?
hahahahahahahahahaah
At first I really hated the idea of Q. As a sci-fi fan, I hate the way sci-fi and fantasy are often lumped together in the same category and I saw an omnipotent alien as a way to sneak an element of fantasy into a sci-fi series. And that did happen: in the TNG episode “Qpid” — the last time we saw Vash — Q took the Enterprise crew on a romp through Sherwood Forest.
Nevertheless, in time I became a big fan of John de Lancie. His fun, charming and one-of-a-kind performances earned him complete ownership of the role. I couldn’t imagine another actor playing Q. This episode is not de Lancie’s best; it aired about the same time as the TNG episode “Tapestry” and I always thought that “Tapestry” was the stronger performance. Still, I enjoyed this one, too.
Vash is an interesting character because she represents one of the first efforts to steer away from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future where humans are no longer motivated by profit and material gain. That vision was most evident in the first season of TNG and it often had a whiff of smug triumphalism about it. The franchise was already backing away from that vision in TNG Season 3 when we first met Vash. In “Q-Less” — the last time we see Vash in TV Star Trek — the transition is complete. Vash may very well be a misfit in 24th century human society, but misfits make interesting characters and one of the refreshing things about DS9 is the way characters are given more individuality and are not merely stereotypes of their respective cultures.
I liked the sexual tension between Vash and Bashir. It looked like Julian was about to get lucky but then Q intervenes and sends him to bed — alone! The oo-mox scene with Vash and Quark was hilarious.
Q is seriously my ALL TIME FAVORITE SNG charachter ever!! I don’t think I’ve disliked a single episode he’s been in. He’s especially amazing in Voyager!! Him and Janeway crack me up lol
@2: I tend to agree: DeLancie’s performance was the only thing that made the ludicrous concept of Q palatable.
But this episode illustrates how the writers often seemed to use Q as a sort of audience stand-in, voicing the criticisms you’d hear from viewers and basically giving the characters a chance to respond to those criticisms. The fact that he actually used the word “technobabble” in onscreen dialogue makes that clear; until then, that was just a bit of fan/producer vernacular, a teasing nickname for the technical dialogue. Q was almost a metatextual character, coming ever so close to breaking through the fourth wall and acknowledging the audience.
On the pre/post-ganglionic thing, I never felt that later fix was necessary. I never took his line here to mean that he mistook the actual items for one another, but rather that he misread a written question, thinking it said one thing when it actually said another.
Why does the Daystrom Institute, which is named for a computer scientist, have an archaeology department? I think that once the Institute was introduced, there was too much tendency by later writers to use it as a catchall science institution, which is a case of small-universe syndrome.
This in some ways seemed more like a half-baked idea than a fully thought out episode. “Hey, what if Q shows up on DS9?” says one writer. “But he has Vash with him” says another. “Bring her along and let her be disreputable with Quark” says the first. “What’s the problem in the episode?” says the second writer. “Make something up- it’s a Q episode… just technobabble a b plot…”
While I love the interaction between Q and Sisko (it further differentiates that Sisko is not Picard just as Picard was not Kirk) but there really isn’t anything happening here. As you pointed out, Vash has chemistry with just about everyone except Picard, but I think that’s because Picard is a very responsible and mature individual and you can’t quite imagine him involved with someone as irresponsible and immature like Vash. Picard is simply too serious to get involved with Vash, whereas Quark is appropriately irresponsible, Bashir is appropriately immature (and young enough to be motivated by lust) and Sisko isn’t so “by the book” like Picard is.
To follow up on CLB’s point in #4 about the Daystrom institute, I agree with your basic issue. The only thing I could think is that like Harvard University, which was built as a divinity school and remained as such for almost 170 years before it was secularized. Perhaps Daystrom started out as a computer/AI institute but became involved in other areas as it grew. A real world example is the US’ supercomputer network, run by the National Science Foundation. The supercomputer network is run by NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure but it touches on almost every other scientific discipline because of the growing abilities of computer based experimentation and modeling. But unless that’s what happened, Daystrom institute has basically been a catchall for non-Starfleet or Vulcan scientific research.
@@.-@ and @5: As for the Daystrom Institute, consider MIT. It is generally considered an engineering/applied science school; yet it has a stellar linguistics department and even the philosophy department is well regarded. Nevertheless, in a Federation of hundreds of worlds one would expect a number of top-notch research institutes. Perhaps the Daystrom Institute is the MIT of 24th century Earth and it appeals to Vash because Earth is home.
As much as I love John Delancie, I generally hate Q episodes (“Tapestry” is a major exception, perhaps because it’s never entirely clear whether or not it is a Q episode). But here at least he keeps this from becoming merely a Vash episode. Vash is never a good idea. Hetrick’s lack of on-screen chemistry with Patrick Stewart is odd, since they apparently had a fair amount of it off screen, even being engaged at one point. Still, that lack of chemistry poisoned the character for me forever. She’s never written very well either.
I do like that neither Vash nor Q recognize O’Brien at first. We know him, because he regularly had lines to speak and interacted with the main cast. But for guests of the week, he really was just the guy who pushed the buttons for the transporter (which meant that Q really never would have had anything to do with him).
@@.-@: I really like your explanation for Bashir screwing up the question by misreading it. Happened to me in high school where I flipped biography and autobiography in a test because I was going too fast. Unfortunately, the way the line is written it is difficult to interpret it that way. I think I’ll do so anyway, though.
One of my favorites from season 1. Sisko decking Q is also a favorite scene of mine.
Bobby
http://www.bobbynash.com
I had stopped watching early in the 1st season, so when I decided to pick it back up again, this was the last episode I remembered watching, so I started back up with the next ep. (Unfortunately I had already seen the next 3 eps. Just didn’t remember that I had.)
I always thought Q had a personal connection to Picard, but his appearance here made me wonder if Q pestered other Starfleet ships and outposts, not just those that happened to have a tv show. I haven’t read any of the novels, so I don’t know if that’s been addressed. I suppose it probably has.
I see the bug lunky alien that’s always hanging about is in the picture with Q and Sisko dueling (no idea whatsoever what his name is). Is this his first appearance? Personally I think he should have a section in the recap just letting us know if he appeared and where he was hanging out (you could even mention what he was doing, which would just be hanging out).
I always loved this episode because it really underscored the difference between DS:9 and TOS/TNG, as well as between Sisko and Kirk or Picard. “Picard would never hit me!”
DS:9 was a much darker, more violent – and yes, far more exciting – series. Sisko isn’t the Gorn; I seriously doubt Kirk & Picard together could take him in a fistfight.