WEBB, Sharon (Lynn)

(1936-)

   US nurse and writer who began publishing sf with a poem, "Atomic Reaction" for FSF in 1963 as by Ron Webb, and whose first story, "The Girl with the 100 Proof Eyes", also as by Ron Webb, appeared a year later in the same journal. She began to produce fiction regularly only at the beginning of the 1980s, after about a decade in nursing, which figured in her comeback story,"Hitch on the Bull Run" (1979), the first of the Terra Tarkington tales about a nurse engaged in escapades throughout the Galaxy,assembled as The Adventures of Terra Tarkington (fixup 1985). SW is perhaps better known for the Earth Song sequence-Earthchild (fixup 1982), Earth Song (1983) and Ram Song (1984) - in which the introduction of anIMMORTALITY process generates social upheaval, at first because the process must be initiated before the end of puberty, but in the long run because those who become immortal lose any capacity to create works of art. The protagonist of the sequence, a musician involuntarily subjected to the process, helps create, over a 100-century period, a world whose inhabitants can choose between the ability to make art and the chance to live forever. SW's subsequent novels - Pestis 18 (1987) and The Halflife (1989) - are medical horror thrillers, the first dealing with a deadlyvirus, the second with a government experiment in personality manipulation that goes wrong.

   JC