Pfeffer, Susan Beth
Entry updated 30 June 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1948-2025) US author for children and the Young Adult market, prolifically from 1970, perhaps best known for the nonfantastic The Year Without Michael (1987). Of sf interest are two series. The VCR Time Travel sequence comprises Rewind to Yesterday (1988) and Future Forward (1989), whose young protagonists engage in generally lighthearted Time Travel, as enabled by their mysterious VCR [VideoCassette Recorder], which takes them both backward and forward. Very much more in tune with her emotionally taxing nonfantastic work, the far more demanding Life As We Knew It sequence, comprising Life As We Knew It (2006), The Dead and the Gone (2008) and This World We Live In (2010), is set in a Post-Holocaust world devastated by a great Disaster: the Moon, knocked out of orbit by a Comet, has generated profound Climate Change with tsunamis, new volcanoes, rising seas, and the onset of an unending winter. As is typical with Pfeffer's works, realistically conflicted relationships dramatize the sequence, whose moments of genuine grimness, as winter locks in and food and living room run short both in the semi-rural world of the first volume, and the straitened New York of the second, are lightened only partially by a conclusion bearing hints of survival. [JC]
Susan Beth Pfeffer
born New York: 17 February 1948
died Monroe, New York: 23 June 2025
works
series
VCR Time Travel
- Rewind to Yesterday (New York: Delacorte Press, 1988) [VCR Time Travel: illus/hb/Andrew Glass]
- Future Forward (New York: Delacorte Press, 1989) [VCR Time Travel: illus/hb/Andrew Glass]
Sarah Kate
- Sarah Kate, Superkid (New York: Henry Holt, 1994) [chap: Sarah Kate: hb/Suzanne Hankins]
- Sarah Kate Saves the World (New York: Henry Holt, 1999) [chap: Sarah Kate: hb/Tony Deluna]
Life As We Knew It
- Life As We Knew It (New York: Harcourt Children's Books, 2006) [Life As We Knew It: hb/]
- The Dead and the Gone (New York: Harcourt Children's Books, 2008) [Life As We Knew It: hb/]
- This World We Live In (New York: Harcourt Children's Books, 2010) [Life As We Knew It: hb/]
- The Shade of the Moon (New York: Harcourt Children's Books, 2013) [Life As We Knew It: hb/]
collections
- Ghostly Tales (New York: Delacorte Press, 2000) [hb/]
links
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