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Armstrong, Jennifer

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1961-    ) US author, almost exclusively fiction and nonfiction for children and the Young Adult audience, almost none of this output (approximately 50 titles) being of sf interest. But the remarkable Young Adult Fire-Us sequence comprising Fire-Us, Book 1: The Kindling (2002), Fire-Us, Book 2: The Keepers of the Flame (2002) and Fire-Us, Book 3: The Kiln (2003), all titles written with Nancy Butcher (?   -    ), makes extremely competent use of sf conventions about the Near Future in its depiction of a Post-Holocaust Florida, and its strikingly realistic understanding of the children (see Children in SF) who carry the action. Their stress-induced Amnesia about the events that have left them so profoundly stranded is entirely believable, as is the shopping mall they inhabit; their fantasy-like quest to find the "President" in "Washington" – both legendary names for them – scathingly exposes the paucity of the world, especially after they are shanghaied by a fundamentalist cult (see Religion). Nor does their ultimate discovery of the nature of the Pandemic that had ended civilization provide much comfort. [JC]

Jennifer Mary Armstrong

born Waltham, Massachusetts: 19 May 1961

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Fire-Us

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