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Kate Wilhelm
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 Kate Wilhelm is one of the most distinguished writers in sf from the 1960s (when her mature work
began to appear) to the present. Her public stance, along with her husband Damon Knight, has been always
for higher standards in the writing of science fiction. Both through the Milford Writing Workshops for
experienced professionals and through years of teaching at the Clarion Workshops for would-be professional sf
writers, she has become one of the leading personalities of the sf field. Her many stories and novels,
often praised for their characterization and stylistic excellence, include more hard sf than is generally
recognized, especially since she became one of the writers in the 1960s and early 1970s whose book titles
(The Downstairs Room, 1968; Abyss, 1971;
Margaret and I, 1971) insistently emphasized their contents as "speculative fiction." She is one of
the relatively few sf writers who have consistently attempted (and often succeeded) in incorporating science
fiction into the non-genre forms of the contemporary short story and novel, of which she has a sure commend.
"The Planners" (1968) is one of her finest works, a winner of the Nebula Award for best story. It
marks new directions for decades to come in the portrayal and characterization of the scientist in sf. From one
perspective, it harks back to the scientists in Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" and Robert
Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and of course, in J. G. Ballard: the literary investigations of the
morality and psychology of scientists; from another it is a landmark in the subcategory of sf dealing with
biological experiments in animal and human intelligence, from H. G. Wells'
The Island of Dr. Moreau to Gordon R. Dickson's "Dolphin's Way," Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon," Vernor Vinge's "Bookworm, Run," and
Pat Murphy's "Rachel in Love," among many others. Wilhelm reverses traditional moral polarities through
canny management of point of view to give us a scientist who is perhaps mad, perhaps evil, and yet sympathetic.
Robert A. Heinlein was reportedly an admirer of her unusual accomplishment. She succeeds in subtly
linking two seeming opposites, the post-Gothic (as in Aldiss and Ballard) and hard sf.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.