EISENSTEIN, Phyllis (Leah Kleinstein)

(1946-)

   US writer, whose first sf was "The Trouble with the Past" (1971), written in collaboration with her husband, Alex EISENSTEIN, in New Dimensions 1 (anth 1971) ed Robert SILVERBERG. She and her husband have written other stories together, and he is influential also on work signed only by PE. Her first novel, Born to Exile (1971-4 FSF; fixup 1978), is a deft, romantic, episodic fantasy about a witch minstrel who can teleport. There followed perhaps her best work, Sorcerer's Son (1979), also fantasy, an oedipal quest involving magical apprenticeship. Her next two books were sf romances, Shadow of Earth (1979) and In the Hands of Glory (1981). The former is a racy ALTERNATE-WORLD story in which the heroine has to cope with the male chauvinism of a US Midwest belonging to a world in which the Spanish Armada won. PE's praiseworthy narrative facility in this productive period may have left her other capacities as a writer somewhat unstretched. She slowed down, for a time publishing only short fiction and in no great quantity, then returned seven years later with two fantasy sequels: The Crystal Palace (1988), sequel to Sorcerer's Son, and In the Red Lord's Reach (1989), sequel to Born to Exile. Both were marked by a change of pace to something almost languid, more reflective and metaphoric than before, with some gain and some loss.

   PN

   See also: MAGIC.