Harris, Clare Winger
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1891-1968) US author, daughter of F S Winger. Though Francis Stevens had published widely in magazines like Argosy and as early as July 1923 in Weird Tales, Harris seems to have been the first woman to initiate her publishing career in the specialized 1920s sf Pulp magazines in America, beginning with "A Runaway World" for Weird Tales in July 1926 as by Mrs F C Harris. The Fate of the Poseidonia (June 1927 Amazing; 2011 ebook), in which Martians (see Mars) attempt to steal Earth's water, won third prize in an Amazing contest; unusually for the time, it features a female lead. Harris also experimented with a female point of view in "The Fifth Dimension" (December 1928 Amazing), and her stories generally feature strong women, most notably Sylvia, aeroplane pilot and mechanic in "The Ape Cycle" (Spring 1930 Science Wonder Quarterly), in which apes bred as servants rebel (see Apes as Human). As in this tale, her work often dealt with beings on the borders of humanity (see also Cyborgs). When she assembled her work in Away from Here and Now: Stories in Pseudo-Science (coll 1947), she was forced to use a vanity press. She has been reprinted with some frequency since, with The Artificial Man and Other Stories (coll 2019) assembling a wider range of her work, and she has been focused upon as an early Feminist in the field.
Harris's only novel, Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece (1923), is nonfantastic. [JD/JC]
Clare Winger Harris
born Freeport, Illinois: 18 January 1891
died Pasadena, California: circa 28 October 1968 [date body found]
works
- Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece (Boston, Massachusetts: The Stratford Company, 1923) [hb/]
collections and stories
- Away from Here and Now: Stories in Pseudo-Science (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Dorrance, 1947) [coll: hb/JM]
- The Fate of the Poseidonia (no place given: eStar Books, 2011) [story: ebook: first appeared June 1927 Amazing: na/]
- The Artificial Man and Other Stories (Cleveland, Ohio: Belt Publishing, 2019) [coll: in the publisher's Belt Revivals series: pb/David Wilson]
links
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