Quicknation    C.J. Cherryh

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(born September 1, 1942) is the slightly modified working name of United States science fiction and fantasy author b, the sister of artist David A. Cherry. She has written more than 60 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award winning novels i.

Cherryh (pronounced "Cherry") appended a silent "h" to her real name because her first editor (Donald A. Wollheim) felt that "Cherry" sounded too much like a romance writer. Her initals of C.J. were used to disguise the fact that she was female (at the time almost all science fiction authors were male). Her middle name is pronounced Ja-niece, with the accent on the second syllable (and not the more common pronunciation of Jan-us). span

Cherryh was born in St. Louis, Missouri and began writing stories at the age of ten when she became frustrated with the cancellation of her favorite TV show, "Flash Gordon", and subsequent limited access to science fiction. In 1964 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin from the University of Oklahoma (Phi Beta Kappa), with academic specialisations in archaeology, mythology and the history of engineering. In 1965 she received a Master of Arts degree in classics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. After university, she taught Latin, classics, and ancient history in the Oklahoma public school system for 11 years, until 1976.

While teaching, Cherryh wrote and submitted many manus for publication, but without success. Her breakthrough came in 1976 when Donald A. Wollheim at DAW Books purchased her manu. This novel, her very first, won her approbation and the John W. Campbell award in 1977 for Best New Writer of the Year. Two years later she won the Best Short Story Hugo for i in 1989.

Cherryh never followed the traditional route to professional writing, which is to first publish short stories in magazines and then progress to novels. In fact she did not consider writing short stories until after she had several novels published. She has remained primarily a novelist.

Cherryh's books have been translated into the following languages: Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish.

A former resident of Oklahoma, Cherryh now lives near Spokane, Washington with science fiction, not only is the story told through the point of view of the current viewpoint character, but the only things that get narrated are what the viewpoint character notices or thinks about. So, for instance, if a starship captain arrives at a space station, the narration won't mention what the space station looks like or how it operates, even though these things might be of interest to the reader, because these are details that the captain is already well familiar with, so she doesn't notice them or think about them. This writing is sometimes like directly reading the mind of the viewpoint character, in which cases it strongly resembles stream of consciousness.

Cherryh's works depict fictional worlds with great realism supported by her strong background in languages, history, archaeology, and psychology. Her world-building skills, comparable to J. R. R. Tolkien's, allow her to create uniquely believable alien cultures, species, and perspectives, and to make the reader reconsider basic assumptions about human nature. Much of Cherryh's alien world is conveyed by implication rather than explication, but very little deive narration is needed because her work is so elegantly simple in its complexity.

Gender is an important theme in several of her novels, but she is, to some, more subtle about it than Marion Zimmer Bradley or Jean M. Auel. For example, over the course of her most overtly feminist series, men's liberation takes place. Her characters, both male and female, have many strengths and weaknesses; it is what makes them human, whether they are human or not. The classic hand-wringing, scantily-clad, passive female protagonist is nowhere to be found. For that matter, it is difficult to find an indecisive character anywhere in her fiction: Cherryh's creations know what is important to them, why it's important, and what they will or won't sacrifice for it. Even when they have conflicting loyalties, they don't do things for random, shallow, or inexplicable reasons, but for reasons well-rooted in their personalities, physiologies, and cultures, and consistent with their preceding decisions.

Appearing throughout Cherryh's work is a central question: "In what ways do people interact with that which is different?" Sometimes this takes shape in human-human interactions, sometimes in human-alien interactions, and not infrequently in interactions between aliens and two disparate groups of humans. Perhaps the easiest place to pick this out is the i series, in which the main character plays the role of translator between several societies. Cherryh shows the ways in which groups of humans can understand each other more clearly than humans might understand aliens—and at the same time, how planet-bound humans and planet-bound aliens might have a closer understanding of each other than spacer humans have with either. This line of questioning threads through both Cherryh's science fiction and her fantasy works, though exactly what is being compared with whom varies dramatically from work to work.

Cherryh's fiction appeals strongly to sometimes marginalized science fiction readers partly because of a prominent recurring theme in most of her novels: an outsider finding his place. The outsider may be human or alien, male or female, the protagonist or a supporting character. He may be different from everyone else for cultural, biological, psychological, or magical reasons. Whether his struggle to find somewhere to belong is the primary plot or a background drama, the moment at which the puzzle piece clicks into place can be part of a powerful and exuberant ending.

(2004, ISBN 0809510707; ISBN 0809510715), edited by Edward Carmien, compiles a dozen essays by academic and professional voices discussing the literary life and career of Cherryh. A bibliography is included.

This is a science fiction future history series, in which the development of nations and cultures occurs over a long time-scale. Major characters in one work may be refered to or appear briefly in another. The development of the fictional history is a major aspect of this series. Some of the works in this series are considered space opera by many critics and readers.

("There was a paperbound publication that split the novel into three parts, but this has ended: the current and, by my wishes, all future publications, will have Cyteen as one unified book." http: