What, Leslie
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1955- ) US author who has also written as by Leslie Joyce; her novel under that name, the nonfantastic Nice Girls Do (2001), is a romance set amid the dangers of World War Two. Her second novel, Olympic Games (short version May 1996 Asimov's as "The Goddess is Alive, And, Well, Living in New York City"; 2004), a fantasy set mostly in New York, plays adroitly with a mildly complicated plot involving Greek gods, who still inhabit the planet, and who engage in Sex according to their wont.
What's short fiction tends, after the fashion of modern Fantastika, to transgress genre boundaries, often to Satirical effect. Sf stories include the sophisticatedly faux-noir "The Cost of Doing Business" (February 1999 Amazing), about a street-wise woman who hires out as a victim (see Women in SF), which won a Nebula Award for best novelette; and "How I Got Away" (in The Mammoth Book of On the Road, anth 2002, edited by M Christian and Maxim Jakubowski), which spoofs the founding of a new Religion. She is an author whose alert ironical take on her various worlds, which include the Near Future, makes her a figure of considerable interest. [JC]
Leslie Joyce What
born Los Angeles, California: 1955
works
- Nice Girls Do (Foggy Windows Books, 2001) [pb/]
- Olympic Games (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2004) [short version first appeared May 1996 Asimov's as "The Goddess is Alive, And, Well, Living in New York City": pb/Michael Dashow]
- The Goddess Is Alive, And, Well, Living in New York City (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2004) [story: chap: original version issued with the limited edition of the above: pb/]
collections
- The Sweet and Sour Tongue (Gillette, New Jersey: Wildside Press, 2000) [coll: pb/]
- Crazy Love Stories (LaGrande, Oregon: Wordcraft of Oregon, 2008) [coll: pb/Jessica Plattner]
links
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