SCOTT, Melissa

(1960-)

   US writer who began publishing sf with her first novel, The Game Beyond (1984), a SPACE OPERA of some resonance which uses analogies with the Roman Empire - familiar since the early Foundation stories (1951-3) of Isaac ASIMOV-with considerable skill. In 1986 she won the JOHN W. CAMPBELLAWARD for Best New Writer, at least in part for Five-Twelths of Heaven (1986), \#1 in her Silence Leigh sequence, which continues with Silence in Solitude (1986) and The Empress of Earth (1987), all 3 assembled as The Roads of Heaven (omni 1988). As with her first novel, these adventures of aspiring space-pilot Silence Leigh capably marshal echoes of Earth-in this case alchemy and astrological symbols - to enrich space-opera routines, including several close calls with various enemies, a patch of slavery and an ongoing quarrel with an inimical Empire. The main weakness lies in MS's attempts to impose FEMINIST arguments upon a traditionally conceived venue without seeming to think their implications through in that context; the main strengths, perhaps, lie in the power of the main characters' longing to find old Earth and in the ironies attendant upon their eventual success. The Kindly Ones (1987), whose title and plot evoke Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy (458BC), specifically its third play, Eumenides, in aninterstellar setting, competently depicts a cruelly rigid society in a Solar System of some interest. Dreamships (1992) sets an AI on aFASTER-THAN-LIGHT ship, and very competently examines the nature of a sentience slaved to travel the stars and, in the sequel, Burning Bright (1993), to undergo taxing experience on an alien planet. Trouble and herFriends (1994), though it breaks no new ground, does very competently traverse CYBERPUNK territory, and the eponymous Trouble is an attractive protagonist.

   JC

   Other works: A Choice of Destinies (1986); The Armor of Light (1988) with Lisa A. Barnett; Mighty Good Road (1990).