MAYHAR, Ardath

(1930-) US writer who began publishing poetry in the 1940s and who wrote historicals and Westerns as Frank Cannon and other non-sf/fantasy books as John Killdeer and Sarah MacWilliams. She began publishing sf/fantasy with"The Cat with the Sapphire Eyes" for Weirdbook \#8 in 1973; she integrated this tale into the second volume of her Kyrannon sequence, which comprises her first novel, How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon (1979), and The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn (1980). Like much of her work, this sequence makes use of theinstruments of SCIENCE FANTASY - specifically, magical devices and powers which are justified by recourse to "scientific" explanations, generally rooted in the past - to heighten tales whose protagonists, often adolescent girls, exhibit a goodness which is sometimes shining. In the Kyrannon books, folk of transparent decency must resist a tyrant whosedisruptive influence threatens to sour the harmony between human beings and Nature. The most sf-like of her subsequent novels are Khi to Freedom (1983), Golden Dream (1983), Exile on Vlahil (1984), which elaborately andeffectively describes life upon the eponymous planet, The World Ends in Hickory Hollow (1985), Trail of the Seahawks * (1987) with Ron Fortier, agame tie, A Place of Silver Silence (1988), a First-Contact tale for a younger audience, and Monkey Station * (1989) with Fortier (APES AND CAVEMEN). This last novel, in which monkeys are dubiously grantedINTELLIGENCE and the power of speech as the by-product of a plague, is the first of a projected series of game tie-ins. AM's work has been compared to that of Andre NORTON, with which it shares transparent story-telling and a sense of moral certainty.

   JC

   Other works: The Tyrnos fantasies, being Soul-Singer of Tyrnos (1981) and The Runes of the Lyre (1982); Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey * (1982), continuing the H. Beam PIPERseries; Warlock's Gift (1982); Lords of the Triple Moons (1983); The Saga of Grittel Sundotha (1985); Makra Choria (1987); BattleTech: The Sword and the Dagger * (1987), a game tie; The Wall (1987), horror; People of the Mesa (1992), prehistoric fantasy.