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Duane, Diane E

Entry updated 16 December 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1952-    ) US author, most respected for her work in Fantasy. She is married to fantasy author Peter Morwood (1956-    ), with whom she has collaborated on several books. She began writing fantasies with the Tale of the Five sequence – The Door into Fire (1979) and The Door into Shadow (1984), both assembled as Tale of Five: The Sword and the Dragon (omni 2002), and later extended with The Door into Sunset (1992).

A considerably longer fantasy series is Young Wizards/Nita & Kit, beginning with So You Want to Be a Wizard (1983), comprising ten main-sequence volumes plus several ancillaries [see Checklist below]. This effectively blends Young Adult fantasy with sf tropes in a manner at first distantly reminiscent of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (1962): the opening volume visits an Alternate-World New York where organic life has been largely displaced by sentient Technofantasy machines including predatory helicopters and taxicabs; the second, Deep Wizardry (1985) involves intelligent whales and dolphins Under the Sea; the third, High Wizardry (1990), deploys Computers and Stargates to take the struggle against the traditional adversary "the Lone Power" (inventor of death and tireless champion of Entropy) into deep space and eventually another galaxy, where ingenious use is made of AI-directed Uplift. Later instalments include A Wizard of Mars (2010), which playfully reconciles Mars as known to science with the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Young Wizards: Lifeboats (2015), dealing with the logistics of planetary evacuation prior to the Disaster of an impending extinction event whose cause – a disintegrating moon – is described with some scientific rigour. Casual visits via Teleportation to the Moon and other off-Earth locations inside and outside the Solar System are frequent in this series, as are personal Force Fields, Invisibility and Time Travel via "timeslide"; training aids include a practice-universe Dimension which is an infinite plane (see Flat Earth) with programmable properties.

As opposed to her fantasy and Science Fantasy work, which has always been written in her own right, Duane's work of "pure" sf interest consists primarily of a wide range of Ties, most prominently her contributions to various Star Trek worlds, beginning with Star Trek: The Wounded Sky (1983), in the original Star Trek sequence; the Star Trek: Rihannsu sequence, beginning with My Enemy, My Ally (1984); and some titles for Star Trek: The Next Generation, beginning with Star Trek, the Next Generation: Dark Mirror (1993). Other Ties include Space Cops titles, beginning with Space Cops: Mindblast (1991) with Peter Morwood, seaQuest DSV: The Novel (1993; vt seaQuest DSV 1993) with Peter Morwood, based on the pilot for the seaQuest television series, Spider-Man titles, beginning with Spider-Man: The Venom Factor (1994) and the Harbinger Trilogy in the Star*Drive Role Playing Game universe (see Alternity). In her non-tie singleton, the Near Future Omnitopia Dawn (2010), a Game owner and operator is faced with complex Virtual Reality intrigues when his plans to expand his Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game are co-opted by pirates.

In 2014 Duane received the Grandmaster Scribe Award for career achievement in media Ties. [JC/DRL]

see also: Worldcon.

Diane Elizabeth Duane

born New York: 18 May 1952

works

series

Star Trek

Star Trek: Rihannsu

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Space Cops

seaQuest DSV

  • seaQuest DSV: The Novel (New York: Ace Books, 1993) with Peter Morwood [tie: novelizing the film: seaQuest DSV: pb/]
    • seaQuest DSV (London: Millennium, 1993) with Peter Morwood [tie: vt of the above: novelizing the film: seaQuest DSV: hb/]

Spider-Man

X-Com

X-Men

Star*Drive/Harbinger Trilogy

Tom Clancy's Net Force Explorers

These works are all Ties to the Tom Clancy concept.

individual titles

fantasy (selected)

series

Tale of the Five

Young Wizards/Nita & Kit

Young Wizards/Feline Wizards

  • The Book of Night with Moon (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997) [Young Wizards/Feline Wizards: hb/Mick Posen]
  • On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998) [Young Wizards/Feline Wizards: hb/Mick Posen]
    • To Visit the Queen (New York: Warner/Aspect, 1999) [vt of the above: Young Wizards/Feline Wizards: hb/Bob Goldstrom]
  • The Big Meow (County Wicklow, Ireland: Errantry Press, 2011) [ebook: Young Wizards/Feline Wizards: na/Diane Duane]

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