I was very sorry to hear this morning that Sheri S. Tepper had passed away. She started writing later in life, or at least publishing later in life, as a number of fine writers have, and ended up being extremely prolific through the 1980s and into the 1990s.
I first encountered Tepper’s work through her early novels in the ‘True Game‘ trilogy of trilogies and the ‘Marianne’ series, all books that read like fantasy but mixed science fiction and fantasy in a way that now seems prophetic. She wrote horror and mystery just as effectively, but probably hit her peak with Grass, a Hugo nominee (it lost to Dan Simmons’ Hyperion) and first in the ‘Arbai’ trilogy. I think it’s a masterwork that far outstrips her later work from the 1990s and 2000s.
A number of her more than 30 novels remain in print, but sadly, despite being awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement, I don’t think she ever achieved the level of recognition she deserved. I could speculate on why (her gender, her politics, her somewhat more frank and even heavy-handed approach in her later novels), but I can only hope that will change. Â She was remarkable.
That’s sad news. I must confess that, as a fan of short fiction, I hadn’t heard of her when, a year or two ago, I saw that Gollancz had produced one of those big yellow SF Gateway omnibus editions of her work. And now, too late,I feel I should check that book out.
Her work really is terrific. Sadly, she wrote very little short fiction.