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Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann

(1947-    ) US author whose work has long properly been read as fantasy, but some of whose later novels transcend genre boundaries in interesting ways. Her early novels – like her first, Song of Sorcery (1982), which begins the Songs from the Seashell Archives sequence, tend to lightweight effects; a little later, in tales like The Drastic Dragon of Draco, Texas (1986), the first volume of the Drastic Dragon sequence, a more humane note can be detected; and in her finest single novel to date, The Healer's War (1988), which won the Nebula Award, an altogether more complex kind of storytelling unfolds. The protagonist of the book is a nurse in Viet Nam; Scarborough's descriptions of events there are of a piece with those found in the work of Bruce McAllister and Lucius Shepard; and the central premise – and in this too The Healer's War shares preoccupations with those other writers's work – is that it is possible to access a deeper reality, in this case via an amulet given her by a holy man, and to cure the maimed. The protagonist of the Nothing Sacred sequence, comprising Nothing Sacred (1991) and its sequel, Last Refuge (1992), is also a woman haunted by the distress of the world, this time a century hence, who discovers that the Prison camp in Tibet to which she is sent is in fact Shangri-La (see James Hilton; Keep), and that the Buddhist doctrine of Reincarnation is not simply a belief. Because of their detailed setting in a recognizable world, and because the supernormal elements in each book are argued as being truly integral to that recognizable world, it is hard to pigeonhole Scarborough's mature novels as either sf or fantasy, though she does not engage in Equipoisal challenges to her readers perceptions. The Petaybee Universe tales, all with Anne McCaffrey and beginning with Powers That Be (1994) are, on the other hand, romantic sf in the McCaffrey mode. [JC]

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

born Kansas City, Missouri: 23 March 1947

works (selected)

series

Songs from the Seashell Archives

Drastic Dragon

Nothing Sacred

Songkiller Saga

Petaybee

Petaybee: Twins of Petaybee

Acorna

Acorna's Children

Godmother

Cleopatra

Tales of the Barque Cats

individual titles

collections

works as editor

links

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 10:05 am on 15 January 2025.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/scarborough_elizabeth_ann>