Tanith Lee

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Name: Tanith Lee
Also Known As: Esther Garber
Occupation: professional author
Medium: fantasy novels, short stories, screenplays; children's books, Young Adult
Works: Birthgrave series, Claidi series, Unicorn series, Piratica, Blood Opera Sequence, Kill the Dead
Official Website(s): tanith-lee.com, Tanith Lee page on Wikpedia
Fan Website(s): Daughter of the Night: An Annotated Tanith Lee Bibliography, Tanith Lee section on fanfiction.net
On Fanlore: Related pages

Tanith Lee (19 September 1947 – 24 May 2015) was a British author primarily of fantasy novels, with over 70 works published since starting her career in the 1970s. She wrote two episodes of the BBC TV series Blake's 7.

author Tanith Lee and the characters foregrounded in her two Blake's 7 episodes, 'Sarcophagus' and 'Sand'" -- the artist is Tim Pieraccini, from Liberator Popular Front Newsletter #13 (April 1983).

She was the first woman to win the Best Novel award in the British Fantasy Awards, for her [Flat Earth] book Death's Master.

Attitudes Toward Fanworks

At some point in the 1980s or 1990s, a zine editor reports Tanith Lee's negative response to Ghyste Mortua, a Blake's 7 zine she was putting together:

Based on Tanith Lee's Kill the Dead novel, which Blake's 7 actor Paul Darrow declared was based on the characters of Avon and Vila, ... [when Donald A. Wolheim] mentioned the zine to Ms. Lee, she was appalled. She was very concerned at that moment in time that any hint that her novel - which was currently out of print - might be construed as stepping on BBC copyright. The zine died a sudden and definitive death.[1]

For more on this, see Ghyste Mortua.

See Blake's 7 Avatars in Pro Books for information on Kill the Dead and other pro writers who have used Blake's 7 avatars in their own books.

By the 2000s, Lee appeared more positive towards fandom and fanworks. She was a guest at the fan run con Redemption 2003,[2] and politely declined an invitation to contribute to a projected sequel to the Blake's 7 zine TTBA but did not appear to frown upon its existence.

She died of breast cancer May 24, 2015.

References

  1. ^ My Life In Fandom by Deb Walsh, accessed 2012-6-3
  2. ^ yonmei: Redemption 2003: part three (accessed 20 November 2012)