LEWITT, S.N.

   Working name of US writer Shariann Lewitt (1954-); the N. stands for "Nothing". She began publishing sf with "St Joey the Action" in Perpetual Light (anth 1982) ed Alan Ryan. After First and Final Rites (1984), a fantasy novel published as by Shariann Lewitt, she released the first of the military SPACE OPERAS with which she soon became identified: White Wing (1985) with Susan M. SHWARTZ, writing together as Gordon Kendall.Angel at Apogee (1987), her first book as SNL and perhaps her best, features a complicated (at times congested) PLANETARY-ROMANCE plot in which much fighting co-exists with the author's punk sensibility; it tells the story of a female pilot who must come to terms with the two submerged races which revolt against her father's hegemony over the planet in question. Other novels which similarly stretch the conventions of military sf include Cyberstealth (1989) - and its sequel Dancing Vac (1991) - and Blind Justice (1991). Her ties in the U.S.S.A. SHARED-WORLD enterprise, U.S.S.A. Book 2 * (1987) and Book 4 * (1987), are of less interest, but Cybernetic Jungle (1992), set in a near-future CYBERPUNK Brazil, is a complex (although perhaps not entirely original) tale, and Songs of Chaos (1993) provides something of the same mix, though this tale of a "normal"human in a population otherwise modified through GENETIC ENGINEERING moves eventually into interstellar space.

   JC