“No
matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not
be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.” –
Elizabeth Moon
Born on this date
in 1945, Moon has written science fiction, fantasy, newspaper columns and
opinion pieces – all after serving a stellar career in the U.S. Marine
Corps. Her most notable work is the
Nebula Award-winning novel The Speed of Dark.
A native of McAllen, TX, Moon wrote
her first piece (about her dog) at age 6 and decided then and there that she
would someday be an author. After her
time in the Corps, she began writing a weekly newspaper column and had her
first Sci-Fi piece published in Analog magazine
when she was in her late 30s. That led
to regular pieces in Analog and
ultimately her first novel, The Sheepfarmer’s
Daughter, winner of the prestigious Compton Crook Award.
While most of her work has military science
fiction themes, she has had everything from biology to politics to a space
opera as her focus. The Speed of
Dark is a near-future story told from the viewpoint of an autistic computer
programmer, inspired by her own autistic son Michael.
“You
can . . . make explicit certain social problems which . . . would be prejudged
or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses
against it,” she said. “Fantasy allows
you to get past defenses.” 
“My personal feeling
about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real
world, to our everyday world.”
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