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Pseudonym of US author Bryn Neuenschwander (? - ), who began to write work of genre interest with "Calling into Silence" as Neuenschwander, which won the 2002 Asimov's Undergraduate Award, given by Asimov's in conjunction with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Most of her subsequent work has been fantasy, beginning with the Doppelganger sequence beginning with Doppelganger (2006; vt Warrior 2008), which explores with some deftness a perhaps implausible premise: all witches are born with Doppelganger twins, who must die in order to empower the survivor. The solution, a union of twins into a superior creature, is not unexpected. The Onyx Court sequence beginning with Midnight Never Come (2008) is Urban Fantasy of a traditional sort, the City in question – London during the rule of the first Elizabeth, and for a century or so after – being imagined as a vast Edifice-like entity (for Edifice, Faerie and Urban Fantasy see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below), with a counter-queen ruling a land of Faerie deep Underground as the scientific enlightenment above threatens this precarious comity. Of more direct sf interest is the Lady Trent sequence beginning with A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (2013), in which traditional fantasy-like dragon lore (see Supernatural Creatures) is Equipoisally fitted into a pattern of sf explanation that combines extrapolative Biology and Anthropology; the setting, an imaginary world, is described with topographical exactitude.
Brennan's "A War of Words" (September 2024 Strange Horizons) received the Hugo for best poem in 2025. [JC]
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Doppelganger
Onyx Court
Lady Trent
Varekai
Driftwood
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 01:40 am on 11 April 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/brennan_marie>