Soukup, Martha
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) US author whose work, beginning with "Dress Rehearsal" for Universe 16 (anth 1986) edited by Terry Carr, has been restricted to short stories, and who has published several stories whose surface clarity conceals taxingly insistent examinations of readerly assumptions. Soukup won a Nebula Award for Best Story for "A Defense of the Social Contracts" (September 1993 Science Fiction Age), a Satire where everyone is required to state their sexual/family preferences in clear; but cheating soon occurs: and we are back to where we are now. Gender and Feminist issues are treated in a dry fantastical manner that gives her stories – she has written nothing longer – a sense of permanence. Some of her work is assembled in Rosemary's Brain and Other Tales of Weird Wonder (coll 1992 chap) and, more amply, in The Arbitrary Placement of Walls (coll 1997). After about 1998 Soukup fell silent as a fiction author, though she has published some nonfiction. [JC]
Martha Clare Soukup
born Aurora, Illinois: 20 July 1959
works
- Rosemary's Brain and Other Tales of Weird Wonder (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, 1992) [coll: chap: hb/]
- The Arbitrary Placement of Walls (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Dreamhaven, 1997) [coll: hb/Rick Berry]
links
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