Goonan, Kathleen Ann 1952-

views updated

Goonan, Kathleen Ann 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born 1952, in Cincinnati, OH; married. Education: Attended Virginia Technical University.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, Inc., 10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, 1990—. Has also worked as a school teacher and administrator.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Notable book citation, New York Times, 1994, for Queen City Jazz; Darrell Award Hall of Fame, Memphis Science Fiction Association, for body of work, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Queen City Jazz, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1994.

The Bones of Time, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Mississippi Blues, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Crescent City Rhapsody, Avon Eos (New York, NY), 2000.

Light Music, Avon Eos/HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of short stories to anthologies, including Blue Motel, edited by Peter Crowther, Little, Brown (London, England), 1994; Tombs, edited by Edward E. Kramer and Peter Crowther, White Wolf, 1995; Destination Unknown, edited by Peter Crowther, White Wolf, 1997; Year's Best SF 2, edited by David G. Hartwell, HarperPrism (New York, NY), 1997; Nanotech, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1998. Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Asimov's, Science Fiction Age, Interzone, Amazing Stories, Strange Plasma, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Tomorrow. Contributor of travel pieces to Washington Post.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kathleen Ann Goonan's futuristic science fiction builds stories upon the potential promises and pitfalls of escalating technology. In her award-winning tetralogy of novels, Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody, and Light Music, she paints a portrait of a globe dominated by nano-technology that can literally change a person's mind on the molecular level. The stand-alone The Bones of Time offers plausible scenarios of time travel, cloning, and space exploration. Although the author admits that she has always been more literary than scienceminded, her books are firmly grounded in hard science that she has garnered from studies of physics, nanotechnology, mathematics, and astronomy. Booklist contributor Carl Hays called Goonan "a major voice in contemporary sf." Elsewhere in Booklist, Hays credited Goonan with "a rare gift for grounding farreaching ideas in beautifully crafted, almost magical prose."

Goonan's tetralogy defies easy summarization, as her themes are as broad as the future of humankind and what exactly constitutes the human essence, and her plots are directed less by incident than by the explorations of a large cast of fully developed characters. In her debut novel, Queen City Jazz, a young girl named Verity leaves her technology-shunning Shaker community in Ohio and travels to a dystopian Cincinnati, where she learns that she is to play a role in saving the world by confronting the nanotech plague that has transformed reality. In Mississippi Blues, Verity and others on the run from the plague travel down the Mississippi in boats toward "Norleans," finding themselves under attack from within through a mysterious illness, and from without by pirates. Crescent City Rhapsody chronicles the onset of the nanotech plague and the efforts of its survivors to reconstruct humanity, and Light Music brings the work to a conclusion with help from renegades from all parts of the globe who bring their special talents to bear in an effort to reconcile humans and nanos. A Publishers Weekly critic found Light Music a "classic novel of ideas" and cited it as "the work of a powerful imagination with a superior command of language." Another Publishers Weekly correspondent, in a review of Crescent City Rhapsody, concluded that Goonan's series on nanotechnology "imaginatively explores the scientific perils and promises lying at our very doorstep."

Goonan's novel The Bones of Time examines cloning, time travel, and the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty. Competing private interests are trying to send manned spaceships to Mars, but Lynn Oshima, heiress to one of the space exploration companies, is just as interested in saving the clones of Hawaii's last royal family and perhaps even resurrecting the long-dead King Kamehameha and his daughter, Princess Kaiulani. A Publishers Weekly reviewer suggested that Goonan's ability to create memorable characters while still exploring difficult scientific and mathematical concepts "will revive even the jaded SF reader's sense of wonder." Carl Hays in Booklist called The Bones of Time "a big, important book." In the Washington Post Book World, Tim Sullivan described the novel as "a complex and engrossing narrative" and praised Goonan for her "deliberately paced, character-oriented science fiction."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1994, Carl Hays, review of Queen City Jazz, p. 244; February 15, 1996, Carl Hays, review of The Bones of Time, p. 995; January 1, 2000, Roberta Johnson, review of Crescent City Rhapsody, p. 888; April 15, 2002, Roberta Johnson, review of Light Music, p. 1386.

New York Times Book Review, November 13, 1994, Gerald Jonas, review of Queen City Jazz, p. 62; March 10, 1996, Gerald Jonas, review of The Bones of Time, p. 19; February 27, 2000, Gerald Jonas, review of Crescent City Rhapsody, p. 26; July 28, 2002, Gerald Jonas, review of Light Music, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly, October 10, 1994, review of Queen City Jazz, p. 65; January 22, 1996, review of The Bones of Time, p. 62; November 24, 1997, review of Mississippi Blues, p. 56; January 17, 2000, review of Crescent City Rhapsody, p. 48; April 22, 2002, review of Light Music, p. 55.

Washington Post Book World, May 26, 1996, Tim Sullivan, review of The Bones of Time, p. 6.