Kate Wilhelm is most widely known for her Hugo- and Locus-winning,  Nebula-nominated, fix-up novel masterpiece Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang (1976).  However, this linked series of novellas (her favorite form) was already the product of a long and fruitful career starting with somewhat standard pulp in the late 1950s.  By the late 1960s and early 1970s her SF took on psychologically heavy and often devastatingly effective themes with great success: for example, in 1972 she was nominated for an astounding four Nebulas (winning none of them).

Most of her critical success focused on shorter forms which might be the reason why other than Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) little of her work has remained firmly entrenched in the SF canon.  Which is a crying shame as she is easily one of the most regularly brilliant writers I have encountered.

Thus I have rounded up my normal suspects from across the vintage SF blog sphere for my second guest post series! The first covered the work of Michael Bishop.  As always, I have no idea whether they like her work or not but the purpose is to expose my readers to the range of her amazing visions.  I will place links to their twitter accounts (if they have them) and Continue reading →