Kage Baker

American writer

Kage Baker

Kage Baker in 2009

Born| Mary Kate Genevieve Baker[1]
(1952-06-10)June 10, 1952
Hollywood, California, United States
Died| January 31, 2010(2010-01-31) (aged 57)
Pismo Beach, California, United States
Occupation| Writer
Period| 1997–2010
Genre| Science fiction
Fantasy
Website
kagebaker.com (archived)

Kage Baker (June 10, 1952[2] – January 31, 2010[3]) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer.

## Biography[edit]

Baker was born and raised in Hollywood, California, and lived in Pismo Beach later in life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language.[4] Her unusual first name (pronounced like the word cage) is a combination of the names of her two grandmothers, Kate and Genevieve.[citation needed] Baker had Asperger syndrome.[5]

She is best known for her "the Company/Dr. Zeus, Inc." series of historical time travel science fiction.[6] Her first stories were published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1997, and her first novel, In the Garden of Iden, by Hodder & Stoughton in the same year. Other notable works include Mendoza in Hollywood (novel, 2000) and "The Empress of Mars" (novella, 2003), which won the Theodore Sturgeon Award[7] and was nominated for a Hugo Award.

In 2008, she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.[8]

In 2009, her short story "Caverns of Mystery" and her novel House of the Stag were both nominated for World Fantasy Awards, but neither piece won.[9]

In January 2010, it was reported that Baker was seriously ill with cancer.[10] She died from uterine cancer at approximately 1:00 a.m. on January 31, 2010, in Pismo Beach, California.[3] She was survived by five younger siblings, mostly located in southern and central California.

In 2010, Baker's The Women of Nell Gwynne's was nominated for a Hugo Award and a World Fantasy Award in the Best Novella categories.[11][12] On May 15, 2010, that work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the Best Novella category.[13]

Kage spent much of the last year of her life watching and reviewing silent films. Many of her reviews were collected posthumously into Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen (2011), edited by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew.[14] From the foreword:

> All these reviews were written during the last year of Kage’s life. I don’t think that affected her view much—sometimes she was so tired that watching films and composing reviews was all she could manage, so they got her nearly undivided attention. As the year wore on, more and more of them were composed ex tempore and dictated to me; I think there is a more conversational style in those, as we argued out the reviews. One she recited in a single long soliloquy in her hospital room; it was written that evening, as I doggedly transferred Kage’s voice from my head to paper. The last one is dated December 21, 2009. Three days later, we discovered her cancer had metastasized to her brain. A month later, she was gone.[15]

Baker left an unfinished novel, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea, which has been completed by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew based on extensive notes left by Baker, and was published in 2012.[16]

## Bibliography[edit]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2023)

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### The Company universe[edit]

Novels

* In the Garden of Iden (1997)
* Sky Coyote (1999)
* Mendoza in Hollywood (2000) (published in the UK as At the Edge of the West)
* The Graveyard Game (2001)
* The Life of the World to Come (2004)
* The Children of the Company (2005)
* The Machine's Child (2006)
* The Sons of Heaven (2007)
* The Empress of Mars (2009) (novel version)
* Not Less than Gods (2010)
* Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea (2012)

Short story collections

* Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers (2002)
* Gods and Pawns (2007)
* In the Company of Thieves (2013)

Short stories and novellas

* The Empress of Mars (2003) (novella version)
* The Angel in the Darkness (limited edition chapbook, 2003)
* Where the Golden Apples Grow (2006) (novella)
* Rude Mechanicals (2007)
* The Women of Nell Gwynne's (limited edition, 2009) (Also released as 'Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy')

### Novels[edit]

* The Hotel Under the Sand (2009) (juvenile) Tachyon Publications

The Anvil of the World

* The Anvil of the World (2003)
* The House of the Stag (2008) (Prequel to The Anvil of the World)
* The Bird of the River (2010)

### Short fiction[edit]

Collections

* Mother Ægypt and Other Stories (2004) (title story takes place in the Company universe)
* Dark Mondays (2006)
* The Best of Kage Baker (2012) (includes stories set in and out of the Company universe)

Stories[a]
Title  | Year  | First published  | Reprinted/collected  | Notes

|
|
|
|

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key  | 2008  |  |  | Novella
Pareidolia  | 2015  | Bartolomew, Kathleen & Kage Barker (March 2015). "Pareidolia". Asimov's Science Fiction. 39 (3): 22–39. |  | Novelette

### Non-fiction[edit]

* Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen, ed. Kathleen Bartholomew (2011) Tachyon Publications

———————

Notes

1. ^ Short stories unless otherwise noted.

## References[edit]

1. ^ Kage Baker at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
2. ^ Kage Baker. "Bio". Archived from the original on October 3, 2007. Retrieved September 26, 2007.
3. ^ a b "Obituary: Kage Baker," SF Site, January 31, 2010
4. ^ "Elizabethan English as a Second Language". Retrieved January 20, 2010.
5. ^ Bartholomew, Kathleen (May 10, 2019). "Hath not an Aspie hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?". Kathleen, Kage and the Company. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
6. ^ Broderick, Damien (2019). The Time Machine Hypothesis: Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction. Science and Fiction. Springer. p. 155\. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16178-1. ISBN 978-3-030-16177-4. S2CID 199280899.
7. ^ "Theodore Sturgeon Award". Archived from the original on February 4, 2010. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
8. ^ Kage Baker Papers, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection, Northern Illinois University
9. ^ "World Fantasy Awards Home Page". Archived from the original on October 27, 2012. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
10. ^ "Kage Baker Health Update". Archived from the original on January 18, 2010. Retrieved January 15, 2010.
11. ^ "The 2010 Hugo and John W. Campbell Award Nominees". AussieCon 4. April 4, 2010. Archived from the original on January 21, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
12. ^ "2009 World Fantasy Awards Nominees". Locus Online News. August 24, 2010.
13. ^ Standlee, Kevin (May 15, 2010). "Nebula Awards Results". Science Fiction Awards Watch. Archived from the original on May 25, 2010. Retrieved May 15, 2010.
14. ^ Bartholomew, Kate. "Writing". Kate Baker. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
15. ^ Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen, ed. Kathleen Bartholomew (2011)
16. ^ "Final novel by Kage Baker, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea to be released". Upcoming4.me. Archived from the original on February 19, 2013. Retrieved June 20, 2012.

## Further reading[edit]

* Eldridge, Cat (June 1, 2005). "An Interview with Kage Baker". The Green Man Review. Archived from the original on December 8, 2011. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
* Gevers, Nick (Winter 2009). "Interview: Of Mars and the Spanish Main: An Interview with Kage Baker by Nick Gevers". Subterranean Press. Archived from the original on March 11, 2012. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
* Hartwell, David (September 7, 2010). "On Kage Baker". Tor.com. Macmillan. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
* Martini, Adrienne (June 2004). "An Interview with Kage Baker". Bookslut. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
* Vandermeer, Jeff (March 2007). "An Interview with Kage Baker". Clarkesworld Magazine. Retrieved March 11, 2012.

## External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Kage Baker.

* Archived official website
* Kathleen, Kage & the Company, blog about Kage by her sister Kate
* Kage Baker entry at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
* Kage Baker at Free Speculative Fiction Online
* Kage Baker at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
* Kage Baker silent film reviews at Tor.com

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