Phyllis Gotlieb, 1926-2009
SF writer Phyllis Gotlieb, 83, died July 14, 2009.
Born Phyllis Fay Bloom on May 25, 1926 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Gotlieb was sometimes called the founder of Canadian science fiction, and in the ’60s and ’70s she was the only prominent English-language Canadian SF writer. She was a founding member of SF Canada, and her many honors include an Aurora Award for lifetime achievement (1982).
Her first SF story was “A Grain of Manhood” in Fantastic in 1959, and she published short fiction widely into this century. Some of her stories are gathered in Son of the Morning and Other Stories (1983) and Blue Apes (1995). She edited Tesseracts2 (1987), an anthology of Canadian SF, with Douglas Barbour.
Gotlieb’s first novel Sunburst appeared in 1964; one of Canada’s most important SF prizes is called the Sunburst Award in her honor. Other works include her Sven Dhalgren books: O Master Caliban! (1976) and Heart of Red Iron (1989); her Starcats series: Nebula-nominated novella “Son of the Morning” (1972) and novels including Aurora Award winner A Judgment of Dragons (1980), Emperor, Swords, Pentacles (1982), and Tiptree and Aurora finalist The Kingdom of the Cats; the Flesh and Gold series: Flesh and Gold (1998), Violent Stars (1999); Mindworlds (2002); and standalone feminist fantasy Birthstones (2007).
A complete obituary will appear in the August issue.
