Author of the Month: Pat Murphy
September’s Author of the Month is the multi-award-winning author of Fantasy Masterwork The Falling Woman, Pat Murphy!
Pat Murphy has won the Nebula, World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards in a glittering career that spans almost four decades, and has proved impossible to pin down to easily-labelled subgenres. This is normally the point, in our Author of the Month post, at which we would wax lyrical about the author’s career highlights attempt to give a bit of interesting background. But this time . . . well, we almost feel redundant, to be honest. At the end of last year, the redoubtable Kev McVeigh wrote a fascinating and insightful piece about Pat Murphy and her work that, frankly, we simply can’t compete with. Look:
Pat Murphy says her favourite bird is the mockingbird because ‘it never sings the same song twice.’ So far the same can be said of Murphy herself. Some writers find a genre seam and mine it successfully (and some exhaust it sooner than they realise) but Pat Murphy has spent her career questing around the edges of genres often probing in multiple directions at once. It’s an approach made explicit in the title of her first collection Points Of Departure, but most obvious in her strange, brilliant novel Adventures In Time & Space With Max Merriwell. Along the way she has picked up a string of Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Philip K Dick Award nominations. Despite this variation, there are consistent aspects to her fiction that reward her fans richly.
We would advise, for a fuller understanding of Pat Murphy’s writing, as well as a handy guide on where might be the best place to start, that you go and check out Kev’s piece. After you’ve read it, we’re sure you’ll be inspired to go and try some of Pat’s books – which you can purchase this month at a discounted price!
You can find Pat Murphy’s work via her Author Page at the SF Gateway website and read about her in her entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
Please note that we only have influence over UK pricing. This promotion may be taken up by our colleagues in other markets, but that is at the discretion of the local distributor.
