She was born near Littleton, Colorado, in 1929. She wrote several essays and poems in the 1960s, but her writing career was put on hold as she concentrated on raising her family. It resumed in 1983 with the publication of her first novel, King's Blood Four. This marked the start of a trilogy of trilogies known as The True Game. Her later Plague of Angels trilogy crossed over with this work, which concluded with her last-published novel, Fish Tails, in 2014.
Inbetween she wrote twenty-three other novels. Beauty (1991) won the Locus Award and Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1997), The Family Tree (1997) and The Margarets (2007) were all nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Sideshow (1992) was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award, whilst The Fresco (2000), The Visitor (2002) and The Companions (2003) were all nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
However, Tepper's best-known and most critically acclaimed novel is Grass (1989), which was nominated for both the Hugo and the Campbell. A novel melding feminist, ecological and hard SF concerns, the book was inducted into the SF Masterworks list in 2002. It was followed by two sequels: Raising the Stones (1990) and Sideshow (1992), the three books collectively known as The Arbai Trilogy.
Tepper's work is thoughtful, well-characterised and intelligent. She deservedly won a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
She was a great writer.
ReplyDeleteI read a lot of her books in the late 90s and she was one of my favorite author at the time.
Sadly, 20 years later, aside from their titles and a few things I don't remember much, I think it's time I re-read some of them.