She was older than I thought when she died – just short of 62. She was born on April 18, 1946 (I thought she was closer to my own age, and possibly a year or two younger). According to her husband on her own website, she died on March 1, 2008. According to Wikipedia and another site mentioning Gardiner Dozois in the header, she died on February 29, 2008.
As you can see by Itzl’s concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It’s also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail – a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you’re not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
She wrote two fine novels (Uhura’s Song, and Hellspark), one compilation of some of her short stories (Mirabile), a large number of stories that got published in Asimov’s and several other SF magazines, including The Nutcracker Coup (my favorite Christmas story), which won a Hugo for Best Novelette.
Janet Kagan came to mind as a subject for this iteration of IAN because I’ve been kosmailing FloridaSNMOM and Janet Kagan died of COPD.
Uhura’s Song is #21 of the Original Star Trek book series. The book is also available for Kindle, and I am probably going to buy it soon. This story was written before Paramount cracked down on using non-canonical species and characters, and is a good deal of fun.
There is a disease decimating the cat-like population of the home planet of a long-time friend of Lieutenant Uhura’s who she met when they were both beginning their careers (Uhura in Star Fleet and Sunfall of Ennien as a diplomat) and remained in touch with due to their mutual interest in all kinds of music. In the first chapter, Uhura says something to the effect that in the first two years when they were working together, they taught each other every song they knew.
Dr. McCoy is on-planet, attempting to help the natives come up with a cure and Star Fleet has sent a young female doctor to substitute as the Enterprise’s ship’s doctor until the crisis is over.
The planet whose population is succumbing to the disease is actually a colony planet, settled by those of their race who wanted to explore space. Clues to the possibility of a cure are found in some of their old songs, as well as clues to the location of the home planet. The Enterprise is sent to look for same, and much of the book is what happens when they try to negotiate. The (very enterprising) young female doctor is a major player in the book – and, no, she is not a stand-in for Ms. Kagan.
Hellspark is a fine murder mystery, set on a planet being explored for exploitable resources due to its having no discernible sapient native species. Much of the conflict and many of the clues involve how people communicate. The investigator sent to handle the case is a woman from the planet Hellspark (pronounced by the natives alternately “Hell’s-park” and “Hell-spark”). The planet provides many of the investigators and judges for human-colonized space because they specialize in the study of languages – both spoken and body.
Reading Hellspark introduced me to the works of Edward T. Hall. I managed to get my hands on The Hidden Dimension, The Silent Language, The Dance of Life, Beyond Culture, An Anthropology of Everyday Life, and his Handbook for Proxemic Research, which was out of print when I found a copy – and I finally ended up paying the book search company $20 I didn’t actually owe them just to get them to shut up and go away.
My favorite of her books, though is the compilation of her Mama Jason stories, Mirabile. The planet Mirabile has been colonized by people who lost some of the ship’s library in the landing and who are having trouble with what pops out of the genetics of the Earth stock, as well as figuring out how to deal with the native ecology. One of the quirks in the naming conventions is the name between first and last is the job the person does. The chapters are each a previously published short story; the main character is Annie Jason Masmajean (the “Jason” is her job title – the first important ecologist on the planet was named Jason, which is certainly simpler than “Ecologist”): The Loch Moose Monster; The Return of the Kangaroo Rex; The Flowering Inferno; Getting the Bugs Out; Raising Cane; and Frankenswine.
I believe I have often mentioned that I prefer my high adventure mixed with low comedy. That this woman managed to get me to read a great deal about linguistics, and more than a little about bats and other assorted wildlife as well as making me laugh, says a great deal for her skill as a writer. I miss her.