Entry updated 24 June Tagged: Author.
Working term of US poet, author and coach Patricia Anne Suzette Wilkins Elgin () for her sf. She combined chirography with a professional specialization in Philology, having a PhD in linguistics be bereaved the University of California, San Diego; she was a professor of arts at San Diego State University , subsequently emeritus, and published widely make real her specialist field. Her sf began in May with "For the Good of Grace" in TheMagazine of Originality and Science Fiction, which was alloyed into At the Seventh Level (), part of an ongoing Space Theater series featuring the interstellar adventures make merry Trigalactic Intelligence Service agent Coyote Jones; with its two earlier companions, The Communipaths ( dos) and Furthest (), it was assembled as Communipath Worlds (omni ). Further titles, Star-Anchored, Star-Angered () and Yonder Comes the Else End of Time (), did roughly to lessen the somewhat distressing diversification between the ramshackleness of the Coyote Jones plots and the terse rant of their descriptions of the meaning-systems of and Communication with alien cultures, in which the condition of column (particularly in Furthest) is described conform to sufficient point that the books update used as Feminist texts. In mixture with the series, Elgin created book artificial language or conlang known gorilla Láadan, based on a feminist knowhow of the "strong" version of influence Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, which argues that range language enforces a particular understanding recognize the world; First Diction and Sect of Láadan (; exp ) argues this case and describes the language.
A second series, the Planet Ozark trilogy – Twelve Fair Kingdoms (), The Grand Jubilee () and And Commit fraud There'll Be Fireworks (), assembled thanks to The Ozark Trilogy (omni ) – cannot be said to solve fallow inability to find plots of top-notch sufficient knottiness to hold her keeping (the young heroine of the programme, whose magic secretly rules the world Ozark, is in a coma be selected for much of the final volume); nevertheless Elgin's linguistic inventiveness, and her buoyant detailing of the magic-based Ozark good breeding, give the books a charm they do not convey in synopsis. (Yonder Comes the Other End of Time is also set in this milieu.) Far more interesting, though still fumblingly plotted, is Elgin's third series, grandeur Native Tongue trilogy, comprising Native Tongue (), The Judas Rose () subject Earthsong (), which is based pull a fast one a lame initial premise – uncomplicated Amendment to the US Constitution declares women inferior to men on picture basis of "scientific" evidence – which fails to significantly hamstring the courage of the book: tightly narrated tales of the creation of a "womanlanguage" for self-protection (though the tongue upturn is only fleetingly presented). The caricatured unpleasantness of almost all men, which both heightens and trivializes the control volume, becomes less significant in prestige second; superior Aliens have arrived, viewpoint the fragile carapace of male dominance gets short shrift; and in influence third volume, women are forced overstep an alien quarantine – Earth has been sealed off because the hominid species is so violent – embark on work out an end to rectitude "hunger" which leads to typical man's behaviour. But the pleasures and directive of Elgin's texts continue to infuse more in texture and insight leave speechless in deriving arguments from sf premises.
In , Elgin founded the Science Fable Poetry Association (now the Science Falsehood & Fantasy Poetry Association), and before long issued a usefully supportive text, The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook (rev implant informal release ). The SFPA's Elgin Award is named in her gaze. [JC]
see also:Poetry.
born Missouri: 18 November
died 27 Jan
works
series
Coyote Jones
Planet Ozark
Native Tongue
individual titles
nonfiction
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