One of the highlights of the Gollancz party was the presence of Josephine Saxton. She’s over 80 now, and still very sprightly and intelligent. She had a number of books published in the 70s and 80s, and was a leading light of feminist science fiction at the time. Six of those books are available via the SF Gateway project (see Amazon), including Queen of the States which was a Clarke Award nominee in 1987.
I don’t know much about Saxton’s work myself, though I now have 6 books I can buy and read. However, I discovered last night that Roz Kaveney was her editor for some of the books. Roz dear, if you are reading this, could you please add some detail so as to encourage people to sample some of Josephine’s work? I shall have a word with Mr. Clute about the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.
Josephine is a painter and writer whose work is just, well, weird, in its combination of surrealism, occultism, feminism and a sort of bloody-minded Midlands Englishness, and quite wonderful. I only got to do one book with her, myself – the short-story collection ‘The Power of Time’ – though had the Chatto list not been a victim of my bad relationship with my Managing Editor, I would probably have done more.
She is a true original.
Well she did tell me that you were the best editor she ever had, so I think she would have welcomed it. 🙂
Cheryl, I’m just flat-out jealous!
According to the SF Encyclopedia Josephine was born in 1935, which would make her a sprightly 75 or 76. Glad you enjoyed meeting her.
Hmm, yes. Thank you, and also apologies to Josephine.
Though I think this does rather prove my point in that Josephine is a very smart person whereas I, despite being somewhat younger, am incapable of doing basic maths. 🙁
Anyway, thank you very much for introducing me to her, and I hope I shall encourage a few people to buy her books.