EMSHWILLER, Carol (Fries)

(1921-)

   US writer who began to publish sf with "This Thing Called Love" for Future in 1955. She was married from 1949 to Ed EMSHWILLER, with whom she occasionally collaborated; but from the beginning of her career the razor-sharp exactness of her language and the subversive power of the themes she expressed with such dangerous precision have marked her as a unique voice. Though she published much of her early work in FSF, and later in Damon KNIGHT's ORBIT and similar anthologies, she has never been identified as a GENRE-SF writer. Her language is too much in the foreground for that; and the unrelenting clarity with which she deconstructs the narrative and thematic conventions central to the genre (FABULATION) has disqualified almost all of her stories from being read simply as tales. In her hands, sf conventions become models of our deep estrangement from ourselves (especially women; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION) and from the world. Early stories can be found in Joy in Our Cause (coll 1974). Verging on the Pertinent (coll 1989) assembles corrosively elegant non-genre work. THE START OF THE END OF IT ALL (coll 1990 UK; rev 1991 US) collects stories as close to sf or fantasy as she is likely to compose. CE's first novel, Carmen Dog (1988 UK), is a FEMINIST fable which draws obvious but very deftly pointed lessons from the transformation of women into dogs and dogs into women.

   JC

   Other works: Venus Rising (1992 chap).