I first encountered Janet Kagan's work in her Star Trek novel "Uhura's Song" way back when it first came out (1985?). At the time, I thought it was head and shoulders above the other ST novels, especially in her world- and culture-building, but also because of her characterizations of the familiar characters.
I was particularly impressed by her fresh takes on the usual cliche's: She actually makes Kirk likable, and gives Uhura something more to do than open hailing frequencies. There's an interesting couple of alien cultures, and an OFC that is quite a Mary Sue but still enjoyable.
I guess she used the ST novel as a stepping stone into publishing her original stories. I was not surprised to discover that she was trained as an anthropologist. I loved "Hellspark". I sometimes assign that book in my linguistics classes, still.
I, too, first encountered the "Mirabile" stories in IASFM, but found the assembled book of the stories a little bit of a letdown, maybe because the structure meant it didn't hang together as well as Hellspark.
So, maybe you'd like Hellspark, too. I wish she would write more.
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More Janet Kagan
Date: 2008-02-17 02:10 am (UTC)I was particularly impressed by her fresh takes on the usual cliche's: She actually makes Kirk likable, and gives Uhura something more to do than open hailing frequencies. There's an interesting couple of alien cultures, and an OFC that is quite a Mary Sue but still enjoyable.
I guess she used the ST novel as a stepping stone into publishing her original stories. I was not surprised to discover that she was trained as an anthropologist. I loved "Hellspark". I sometimes assign that book in my linguistics classes, still.
I, too, first encountered the "Mirabile" stories in IASFM, but found the assembled book of the stories a little bit of a letdown, maybe because the structure meant it didn't hang together as well as Hellspark.
So, maybe you'd like Hellspark, too. I wish she would write more.
--R. Barr