SCARBOROUGH, Elizabeth Ann

(1947-)

   US writer whose work has long been read as fantasy, but some of whose later novels transcend genre boundaries in interesting ways. Her early novels-like her first, Song of Sorcery (1982) (see Other Works for the Argonia sequence)-tend to lightweight effects; a little later, in tales like The Drastic Dragon of Draco, Texas (1986), a more humane note can be detected; and in her finest single novel to date, The Healer's War (1988), which won the NEBULA Award, an altogether more complex kind ofstorytelling unfolds. The protagonist of the book is a nurse in Viet Nam; EAS's descriptions of events there are of a piece with those found in thework of Bruce MCALLISTER and Lucius SHEPARD; and the central premise-and in this too The Healer's War shares preoccupations with those other writers's work-is that it is possible to access a deeper reality, in this case via an amulet given her by a holy man, and to cure the maimed. The protagonist of Nothing Sacred (1991) and its sequel, Last Refuge (1992), is also a woman haunted by the distress of the world, this time a century hence, who discovers that the prison camp in Tibet to which she is sent is in fact Shangri-La, and that the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation is not simply a belief. Because of their detailed setting in a recognizeable world, and because the supernormal elements in each book are argued as being truly integral to that recognizeable world, it is hard to pigeonhole EAS's mature novels as either sf or fantasy. The Powers That Be (1994)with Anne aps mccaffrey is, on the other hand, romantic sf in the McCaffrey mode.

   JC

   Other works: the Argonia sequence, comprising Song of Sorcery (see above) and The Unicorn Creed (1983), both assembled as Songs from the Seashell Archives \#1 (omni 1987), plus Bronwyn's Bane (1983) and The Christening Quest (1985), both assembled as Songs from the SeashellArchives \#2 (omni 1988); The Harem of Aman Akbar; or, The Djinn Decanted (1984); The Goldcamp Vampire; or, The Sanguinary Sourdough (1987); the Songkiller Saga sequence comprising Phantom Banjo (1991), Picking the Ballad's Bones (1991) and Strum Again? (1992); The Godmother (1994).