Caraker, Mary
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1929- ) US author of whom relatively little is known; she is of Finnish descent and began to publish sf when she was nearing 50, with "The Vampires who Loved Beowulf" in Analog for January 1983, a story which makes up part of her first novel, Seven Worlds (fixup 1986), whose protagonist, a tough female Space Exploratory Forces agent named Morgan Faraday, is entrusted with the task of improving Communications between humans and other species. Its Young Adult sequel, The Snows of Jaspre (1989), places the same protagonist into a political and ecological crisis on the eponymous planet. Water Song (1987) and The Faces of Ceti (1991), singletons, likewise examine planets in crisis: the first a world, whose surface is almost all water, which faces an Ecological crisis; the second, a planet in dire need of food. I Remember, I Remember ... (1991 chap), a novella, recounts the sensations of a woman who awakens on a "coldship" without any memory of how she entered Suspended Animation. Caraker has not been active in the sf field since around the mid 1990s, concentrating since on works based on the Kalevala (1835; exp 1849) by Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884). [JC]
Mary Lumijarvi Caraker
born Astoria, Oregon: 19 September 1929
works
series
Seven Worlds
- Seven Worlds (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1986) [Seven Worlds: pb/John Harris]
- The Snows of Jaspre (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1989) [Seven Worlds: hb/Bob Eggleton]
individual titles
- Water Song (New York: Popular Library Questar, 1987) [pb/Joe DeVito]
- The Faces of Ceti (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1991) [hb/Bob Eggleton]
- I Remember, I Remember ... (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1991) [story: chap: pb/Alan Giana]
- Women of the Kalevala: Stories Based on the Great Finnish Epic (St Cloud, Minnesota: North Star Press of St Cloud, 1996) [coll: pb/]
- Elina, Mistress of Laukko (St Cloud, Minnesota: North Star Press of St Cloud, 1997) [pb/]
- Tales of the Lumipaikka (St Cloud, Minnesota: North Star Press of St Cloud, 2000) [coll: pb/]
links
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