KILLOUGH, (Karen) Lee

(1942-)

   US writer and Chief Technologist at the Department of Radiology, Kansas State University Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. She began publishing sf with "Caveat Emptor" for ASF in 1970, and since then has published about 30 stories, perhaps most notably the tales assembled as Aventine (coll of linked stories 1982), set in an artist's colony in adecadent future whose resemblance to that depicted in J.G. BALLARD's Vermilion Sands (1971 US) led some critics to brand it as merelyderivative, though others accepted it as a homage. Her first novel, A Voice out of Ramah (1979) - set on a planet where 90 per cent of males areritually slaughtered at puberty - is typical of much of her work in its plumping for unexceptionable presentations of various issues (FEMINISM in this case) while at the same time tending to stumble over the generic working-out of those presentations. The Doppelganger Gambit (1979) and its sequels, Spider Play (1986) and Dragon's Teeth (1990), are police procedurals starring Janna Brill and Mama Maxwell and set in a USA that must be wary of COMPUTERS; and Blood Hunt (1987) and its sequel Bloodlinks (1988) are police-procedural fantasies dealing with a cop's confrontationof the fact that he has become a vampire. In both series there is a recurring sense that unexamined plots have tended to dominate proceedings. LK's singletons are various. The Monitor, the Miners, and the Shree (1980)amiably deals with the issue of human exploitation of alien planets. Deadly Silents (1981) again involves the police, though this time onanother world. The Leopard's Daughter (1987) is a vibrant fantasy set in Africa.

   JC

   Other work: Liberty's World (1985).

   See also: ARTS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.