Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: touched

Moment of Silence: Janet Kagan

I found out today that Janet Kagan passed away.

She wrote two of the best SF books I've ever read, out a pool of thousands: Mirabile is a collection of short stories set on a colony planet where plants and animals can "chain up" to other species, and Hellspark is sociological xenolinguistics about proving the sentience of an alien species that communicates by ruffling feathers. And if you ever hear me in a xenolinguistics panel, you're likely to realize that I know the state secret.


Heavenspark:
An Elegy for Janet Kagan



Chain-linker,
you thought about the mistakes
we could make before we even had
the tools to make them …

chain-linker,
gone where the red pansies go,
chained up to angelspace and beyond,
coiling cosmic strings into coherent helices.

Hellspark,
you showed us the edge of words
and how to build the bridges we’ll need
to fare yet further …

hellspark,
star-struck and glowing
in the darkness of matter,
freed now, unfettered, unfolding,
and soaring upward into blinding light …

heavenspark.
Tags: moment of silence, poem, science fiction
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  • 4 comments
fayanora

fayanora

March 2 2008, 06:56:09 UTC 13 years ago

Mirabile is a collection of short stories set on a colony planet where plants and animals can "chain up" to other species, and Hellspark is sociological xenolinguistics about proving the sentience of an alien species that communicates by ruffling feathers.

Adding to my list of things to read!
lizamanynames

lizamanynames

March 2 2008, 23:14:42 UTC 13 years ago

Oh no.

This woman informed so much of my adolescence. "Uhura's Song" is one of the books that I find quintessential to who I am.
ysabetwordsmith

ysabetwordsmith

March 3 2008, 05:50:00 UTC 13 years ago

Sooth. I read and re-read that book so many times. When I was in junior high and high school, I had a "short shelf" on my bed that held my most favorite books -- maybe two dozen. That was one. It was among the earlier examples of found of aliens that seemed genuinely alien to me, which I really enjoyed. I remember how the Eiuoans considered using their prehensile tails to be vulgar, but the Sivaoans didn't -- that's exactly the kind of cultural difference that makes for awkwardness and interest in traveling.
tuftears

tuftears

March 3 2008, 23:33:27 UTC 13 years ago

Oh dear. :/ I loved her books, especially Hellspark.