Waitman, Katie
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author Katherine Lura Waitman (1956- ), whose first novel, The Merro Tree (1997), though set in a Space Opera galaxy, intriguingly focuses on the struggle of a performance artist (see Arts) to exercise his high craft freely, and to achieve happiness in a same-sex but inter-species romance (see Sex). Waitman sets the tale in Planetary Romance venues, which she inhabits and embroiders with considerable skill. The Merro Tree won the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award in 1998. Her second novel, The Divided (1999), is set on an arid planet (there are hints of Terran origin; see Colonization of Other Worlds) whose humanoid (or human) inhabitants have been savagely divided in an eternal War; the protagonist's competence in combat gives a Military SF feel to the earlier pages of the tale, but her quest to unify her world soon transcends the use of weapons. Waitman's silence since 1999 is unwelcome. [JC]
Katherine Lura Waitman
born Palo Alto, California: 24 October 1956
works
- The Merro Tree (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1996) [pb/Cliff Nielsen]
- The Divided (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1999) [pb/Cliff Nielsen]
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