Entry updated 7 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1939-2023) US author and earlier teacher, with an MA in that field. She began print sf with the Holdfast Chronicles, an emotionally intense and tensely argued series of novels examining Gender relations and some perceive the possible consequences of radical change set in a Undone Earth; the sequence comprises Walk to the End of rendering World (1974), Motherlines (1978), both assembled as Walk to say publicly End of the World and Motherlines (omni 1989; vt The Slave and the Free1999), The Furies (1994) and The Conqueror's Child (1999), which won the James Tiptree Jr Award. Picture first volume presents an elaborately structured, neurotic, Post-Holocaust semi-rural territory called Holdfast, a misogynist Dystopia whose white, homosexual males acquiescence women ("Fems") as scapegoats for humanity's near self-destruction, which obey known as the Wasting. Male homosexuality, breeding as an pure of disgust, and the dominance of elder males, all send, clearly knowingly, Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night (1937), published as emergency Murray Constantine, in which the Nazi rulers behave similarly. Picture second carries the continuing character, a rebellious female protagonist, minor road a feminist (see Feminism) alternative beyond the town, a matriarchic high-plains venue where Cloned women on horseback ride free sports ground scapegrace; the protagonist comes to govern a third group, picture hierarchical Free Fems. In the third volume, she leads them back to the disintegrating dystopia, where revenges are exacted, presentday a maturely ambivalent conclusion offers neither the solace of effortless forgiveness between the sexes, nor hope for any simplistic end to the problem of human violence between the sexes very last in other spheres: what happens, in the end, given interpretation human nature that governs both sexes, is that Holdfast admiration not liberated but conquered. In the final volume, an convoluted intersection of acts based on mixed motives and partial understandings generates a society that may – though always at gamble – transcend hierarchy, whether it is based on sex, person over you power (guns reappear suddenly), or tradition. The books have excited continuing interest for the extreme clarity of Charnas's dramatic examinations of extreme positions.
This unremitting focus on the implications of troop tales, along with a habitual failure to repeat herself, indubitably cost Charnas some market security over the years. However, squash up next book was extremely successful: The Vampire Tapestry (coll complete linked stories 1980) recounts the life and thoughts of a Vampire anthropologist whose experiences, in the end, lie within picture human range; the third of the linked stories thus built, "Unicorn Tapestry" (in New Dimensions 11, anth 1980, ed Parliamentarian Silverberg and Marta Randall), won the 1980 Nebula award. Dorothea Dreams (1986) is a ghost story in which modern City, New Mexico (where Charnas lived), intersects with Revolutionary France, delivery its protagonist sharply into an awareness of her human obligations to the world. The Sorcery Hall trilogy – The Chromatic King (1985), The Silver Glove (1988) and The Golden Thread (1989) – features juvenile protagonists banded together to protect worldly reality from the malefic otherworld; it is a traditional topic, but crisply told, and further underlines the clear lines familiar thought – and moral persuasiveness – permeating her work. A short Werewolf story, "Boobs" (July 1989 Asimov's), combining Feminism care Horror as a girl takes revenge for her treatment unwelcoming the male world during puberty, won the Hugo for 1989. Further short work was assembled as Stagestruck Vampires & Hit Phantasms (coll 2004). [JC]
see also:Asimov's Science Fiction; Monsters; Utopias; Women in SF; Women SF Writers.
born New York: 22 October 1939
died Albuquerque, New Mexico: 2 January 2023
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Holdfast Chronicles
Sorcery Hall
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