- MOFFETT, Judith
- (1942-)US writer and academic, a professor with the University of Pennsylvania since 1979. She was first active as a poet, publishing 2 collections - Keeping Time (coll 1976) and Whinny Moor Crossing (coll 1984) - before turning to sf with an ape-as-human tale (APES ANDCAVEMEN), "Surviving", for FSF in 1986, later assembled with "Not without Honor" (1989) as Two that Came True (coll 1991). With her first novel, Pennterra (1987), she came into immediate prominence, partly because of the rousing sexual explicitness of some scenes between humans and the pheromone-emitting Hrossa, a mysterious group-mind species named - oddly, given C.S. LEWIS's prurient distaste for sexual material - after the Martians who feature in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (1938). Having escaped aterminally polluted Earth, a party of Quakers has landed on the planet Pennterra and been permitted restricted residence on condition that theydo not breed indiscriminately, claim further territory or use invasive technologies. All goes well until a second human expedition arrives with no intention of changing any of the behaviour which has ruined humanity's first home. The Hrossa warn them that Pennterra herself will punish them for any disobedience, and the novel - taking on the hues of a grave and didactic PLANETARY ROMANCE-moves inexorably to the comeuppance. JM's second novel, THE RAGGED WORLD: A NOVEL OF THE HEFN ON EARTH (fixup 1991), adroitly transforms a series of stories-including "Tiny Tango" (1989), about AIDS - into a remarkably effective fable of DISASTER and redemption, the latter at the hands of a deus ex machina cabal of aliens; the sequel was Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream (1992). These novels come close to aesthetic overkill, but do not succumb: the first generally avoids the chill of piety, and the sequence overall eschews the coy. By choosing controversial subjects and then treating them to generic solutions, JM shows a mature sense of balance and an active engagement with the sf genre; she is a risk-taker of very considerable interest.JC
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.
