Sheila Finch

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Sheila Finch (* 1935 in Fulham , England ) is a British-American science fiction and fantasy author. She was best known for her collection of short stories, the Guild of Xenolinguists .

biography

She attended several elementary schools in her birthplace.

“Because most of the schools were closed for the duration of World War II, she didn't get a lot of normal education before her tenth birthday - which was probably a blessing in disguise as she got to spend a lot of time reading books beyond her grade level. "

“Because most schools were closed during the Second World War, she received little education until she was 10 years old. This turned out to be luck in misfortune - she started reading books that were beyond her educational level. "

She enrolled at Bishop Otter College in Chichester , West Sussex . During a vacation in Switzerland in 1955, she met her future husband, Clare Rayner. The two married in 1957 and subsequently immigrated to the USA . When she first lived in Bloomington , Indiana , she received an MA in Medieval Literature and Linguistics from Indiana University .

Finch began to tell her stories at a young age, or to write them down, knowing that she would one day publish them. She wrote for the literary magazines of her high school and college . Long before her first story A long way home was published in Asimov's SF Magazine in 1982, she was sending her stories to publishers and magazines.

Finch was a college professor at El Camino Junior College in Torrance , California for 30 years until 2004 . She taught English and creative writing. She is a member of the SFWA and was Vice President and Chair of the Arbitration Committee for five years. She continues to write science fiction and occasionally articles on science fiction. In 1977 she was a founding member of the Asilomar Writers Consortium. She currently lives in California.

Xenolinguists

In her 1986 book Triad she coined the term xenolinguist for the first time. It describes a profession that specializes in learning and speaking languages from aliens . The term gained widespread acceptance in science fiction and it was used to describe the character of Uhura in Star Trek in 2009 .

Based on this idea, Finch wrote a number of short stories and short stories over the next few years and published them summarized in the collection The Guild of Xenolinguists in 2007 . This guild was founded on Earth in the 22nd century after first contact with aliens from the Orion Belt . It was created through the initiative of linguists , neurolinguists , ethnographers and computer scientists. Then they were responsible for training xenolinguists. Afterwards, they were responsible for establishing initial contact with extraterrestrial life forms and recording the languages. In the next few centuries they made their services available for expanding trade and colonizing alien planets.

Awards

Works

Novels

  • Infinity's Web , 1985
  • Triad , 1986
  • The Garden of the Shaped , 1987
  • Shaper's Legacy , 1988
  • Shaping the Dawn , 1989
  • Tiger in the Sky , 1999
  • Reading the Bones , 2005
  • Birds , 2005
  • Villa Far From Rome , 2016

Story collections

  • The Guild of Xenolinguists , 2007

Non-fiction

  • Myths, Metaphors, and Science Fiction , 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bibliography on isfdb: Sheila Finch (en) .
  2. ↑ Quote about Sheila Finch (en) .
  3. ^ Sheila Finch at Indiana University (en) .
  4. ↑ Interview with Sheila Finch (en) .
  5. ↑ webmaster@fantasticfiction.com - http://www.fantasticfiction.com:+ Sheila Finch .
  6. ↑ webmaster@fantasticfiction.com - http://www.fantasticfiction.com:+ Sheila Finch .
  7. ↑ Juliette Wade: TalkToYoUniverse: Sheila Finch at TTYU! . July 19, 2009.
  8. ^ Science fiction terms .
  9. ↑ Xenolinguistics. You have no idea what that means | .
  10. ↑ Star Trek Script - Dialog Book by JJAbrams .
  11. ^ Sheila Finch Bibliography . Archived from the original on January 19, 2017.
  12. ^ Winner of the Compton Crook Award 1986; See Compton Crook Award winners . Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Retrieved June 6, 2019.
  13. ↑ Finch, Sheila: A very small dispensation . In: Asimov's Science Fiction . 37, No. 10-11, Oct-Nov 2013, pp 74-81.
personal data
SURNAME Finch, Sheila
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Finch, Sheila Rosemary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulham