RIP Patricia Anthony

The news has just come out that sff writer Patricia Anthony died early in August. She was remarkably little known considering the quality of her books. My favorite is Flanders, about a young sniper from Texas, serving in the British army during the First World War, who begins to have visions of the dead. Characterization and philosophy (the young soldier's convention-defying friendship with a gay officer, his simultaneous complicity in and horror of the war) are at least as strong elements as the fantasy. Flanders could have been marketed as a mainstream novel, and I think if it had been it might have become much better known. (If you decide to read this book, I'd better warn you that there is a major plot thread involving a rape that the protagonist witnesses.)

Anthony's other novels are all more straightforward science fiction, at least in premise, but like Ursula Le Guin, Anthony is always at least as interested in the question "what would people be like in these circumstances" as in science fiction bells and whistles. Her books are not always tightly plotted, and her endings are often downbeat and ambiguous, morally and otherwise. Besides Flanders, I'd recommend Happy Policeman, about a small Texas town that has been sealed off by benevolent (?) aliens to save it from the nuclear holocaust that may or may not have engulfed the rest of the world.

Anthony stopped writing novels in 1998 and turned unsuccessfully to screenwriting. So far as I know, all of her books are out of print but can be found used.

ETA: A couple of Anthony's short stories are online, linked to from this article.

more of the meme

A couple of late answers for the "name a character and I'll tell you one of their hangups" meme.

lilliburlero asked about ( Havelock Vetinari (Discworld) )

halotolerant asked about ( Owen Triggers (Wings) )