McDonald, Sandra
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1966- ) US military officer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Opening Night" for Electric Velocipede in 2002, and much of whose often transgressive, Equipoisal short fiction has been assembled as Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories (coll 2010). Her Jodenny Scott/Terry Myell sequence – comprising The Outback Stars (2007), The Stars Down Under (2008) and The Stars Blue Yonder (2009), with further volumes seemingly intended – begins as a moderately conventional Military SF adventure, with warships able to travel to various planets through the use of a Transportation device whose origins are mysterious. But this device may be an artefact bestowed upon modern humanity by the dawn gods of the Australian Aborigines; the female protagonist, a logistics officer, becomes pregnant, but the putative father flickers in and out of existence, or so it seems; the second volume introduces a matter transmitter (see Matter Transmission) whose origin is also obscure, while at the same time a malevolent Alien civilization causes immense difficulties. The third volume begins to explain much of the complexity of the first two tales in terms of Time Loops, Amnesia, Parallel Worlds, and other devices typical of the kind of Space Opera now dominant (but rarely utilized by authors of stories based on military action). Further volumes of McDonald's series may establish her as one of the central authors of the New Space Opera. [JC]
Sandra A McDonald
born Revere, Massachusetts: 12 October 1966
works
series
Stars
- The Outback Stars (New York: Tor, 2007) [Stars: hb/Donato Giancola]
- The Stars Down Under (New York: Tor, 2008) [Stars: hb/Donato Giancola]
- The Stars Blue Yonder (New York: Tor, 2009) [Stars: hb/Donato Giancola]
individual titles
- Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories (Maple Shade, New Jersey: Lethe Press, 2010) [coll: pb/Niki Smith]
links
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