Perry, Elaine
Entry updated 30 June 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) US author of a Near Future sf novel, Another Present Era (1990), set in an Entropic New York just as the lights go out, leaving the female protagonist alone (see Horror in SF) in an abandoned skyscraper as the rising waters, generated by global warming (see Climate Change), begin to engulf her beloved Manhattan; her portrayal of the great City has plausibly been thought to evoke Samuel R Delany's Dhalgren (1974), though in a language whose experimental turns are less baroque. The protagonist of the tale, who might identify as white, defiantly applies to herself the "one drop of Black blood" rule, so "essential" in a racist country (see Race in SF). Perry, one of the relatively few Black female authors of sf active in 1990 (along with Octavia E Butler), has published only the one novel. [JC]
Elaine Perry
born Lima, Ohio: 1959
works
- Another Present Era (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1990) [hb/from Hugh Ferriss, The Metropolis of Tomorrow (graph 1929)]
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