Barbara Hambly


Barbara Hambly is an American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction.
She is the author of the bestselling Benjamin January mystery series featuring a free man of color, a musician and physician, in New Orleans in the antebellum years. Other historical fiction by Hambly includes novels about Mary Todd Lincoln and Abigail Adams.
Her science fiction novels occur within an explicit multiverse, as well as within previously existing settings.

Early life and education

Hambly was born in San Diego, California and grew up in Montclair, California. Her parents, Everett Edward Hambly Jr. and Florence Elizabeth Hambly, are from Fall River, Massachusetts; and Scranton, Pennsylvania. She has an older sister, Mary Ann Sanders, and a younger brother, Everett Edward Hambly, III. In her early teens, after reading J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, she affixed images of dragons to her bedroom door. She became interested in costumery from an early age, and has been a long-time participant in Society for Creative Anachronism activities. In the mid-1960s, the Hambly family spent a year in Australia.
Hambly has a Master's in Medieval History from the University of California, Riverside. She completed her degree in 1975 and spent a year in Bordeaux as part of her studies.

Career

She chose work that allowed her time to write; all of her novels contain a biography paragraph with a litany of jobs: high school teacher, model, waitress, technical editor, all-night liquor store clerk, and Shotokan karate instructor. Her first published novel was The Time of the Dark.
Hambly served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1994 to 1996. Her works have been nominated for many awards in the fantasy and horror fiction categories, winning a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel Those Who Hunt the Night and the Lord Ruthven Award for fiction for its sequel, Traveling with the Dead.
From 2006 to 2023, Hambly taught at Los Angeles Pierce College as an adjunct assistant professor in the history and humanities department. The Barbara Hambly Papers are archived at University of California, Riverside.

Marriage and personal life

Hambly was married for some years to George Alec Effinger, a science fiction writer. He died in 2002. She lives in Los Angeles. Hambly speaks freely of suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which was undiagnosed for some time.

Themes within fantasy

Hambly's work has several themes. She has a penchant for unusual characters within the fantasy genre, such as the menopausal witch and reluctant scholar-lord in the Winterlands trilogy, or the philologist secret service agent in the vampire novels.
Her writing is filled with rich descriptions and characters whose actions bear consequences for both their lives and relationships, suffusing her series with a sense of loss and regret. Hambly's characters suffer the pain of frustrated aspirations to a degree that is uncommon in most fantasy novels.
Though using many standard clichés and plot devices of the fantasy genre, her works explore the ethical implications of the consequences of these devices, and what their effect is for the characters, were they real people. In avoiding the "...easy consolatory self-identification of genre fantasy" and refusing to let her work be guided more explicitly by conventions and the desires of her audience, Hambly may have missed out on more remunerative success and acclaim.
Although magic exists in many of her settings, it is not used as an easy solution but follows rules and takes energy from the wizards. In the Darwath, Windrose, and Sun-Cross stories, unusual settings are justified as alternate universes.
Hambly heavily researches her settings, either in person or through books, frequently drawing upon her degree in medieval history for background and depth.

Benjamin January mysteries

This historical mystery series begins with A Free Man of Color and features Benjamin January, a brilliant, classically educated, free colored surgeon and musician living in New Orleans during the antebellum years of the 1830s. At the time, New Orleans had a large and prosperous population of free people of color. Born a slave, as his mother was enslaved, January was freed as a young child by his mother's lover, under the plaçage system. Provided with an excellent education, he gained fluency in several classical and modern languages, and was thoroughly versed in the whole of classical Western learning and arts. He studied medicine in Paris, where he trained as a surgeon. He returned to Louisiana to escape the memory of his late wife, a woman from North Africa. As a free black in Louisiana, he cannot find work as a surgeon. He earns a modest living by his exceptional talent as a musician.
  1. A Free Man of Color
  2. Fever Season
  3. Graveyard Dust
  4. Sold Down the River
  5. Die upon a Kiss
  6. Wet Grave
  7. Days of the Dead
  8. Dead Water
  9. Dead and Buried
  10. The Shirt on His Back
  11. Ran Away
  12. Good Man Friday
  13. Crimson Angel
  14. Drinking Gourd
  15. Murder in July
  16. Cold Bayou
  17. Lady of Perdition
  18. House of the Patriarch
  19. Death and Hard Cider
  20. The Nubian's Curse
  21. ''Murder in the Trembling Lands''

    Short stories

  • "Libre"
  • "There Shall Your Heart Be Also"
  • "A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven"

    Historical fiction

  • Search the Seven Hills
  • The Emancipator's Wife
  • Patriot Hearts
  • ''Homeland: A Novel''

    Abigail Adams Mysteries (written as Barbara Hamilton)

  1. The Ninth Daughter
  2. A Marked Man
  3. ''Sup with the Devil ''

    Sherlock Holmes short story pastiches

  4. "The Adventure of the Antiquarian’s Niece"
  5. "The Dollmaker of Marigold Walk"
  6. "The Lost Boy"
  7. "The Adventure of the Sinister Chinaman"

    Anne Steelyard: The Garden of Emptiness

  8. An Honorary Man
  9. The Gate of Dreams and Starlight
  10. ''A Thousand Waters''

    Darwath

  11. The Time of the Dark
  12. The Walls of Air
  13. The Armies of Daylight
  14. Mother of Winter
  15. Icefalcon's Quest
  16. "Pretty Polly"
  17. "Elsewhere"
  18. "The Dreamers of Black Rock"

    Sun Wolf and Starhawk

  19. The Ladies of Mandrigyn
  20. The Witches of Wenshar
  21. The Unschooled Wizard
  22. The Dark Hand of Magic
  23. "A Night with the Girls"
  24. "Fairest in ihe Land"
  25. "Nanya of the Butterflies"
  26. "Hazard"
  27. "Gwenael"

    Winterlands

  28. Dragonsbane
  29. Dragonshadow
  30. Knight of the Demon Queen
  31. Dragonstar
  32. Princess
  33. Shadowbaby
  34. Damselblossom
  35. Hag in the Water
  36. ''Cat's Paw''

    The Windrose Chronicles

  37. The Silent Tower
  38. The Silicon Mage
  39. Darkmage
  40. Dog Wizard
  41. Stranger at the Wedding —not the same main characters, but set in the same universe
  42. "Firemaggot"
  43. "Corridor"
  44. "Plus-One"
  45. "Personal Paradise"
  46. "Zénobie"
  47. "...Pretty Maids All in a Row"
  48. "Karate Masters vs the Invaders from Outer Space"
  49. "Just Like Real People"
  50. "Temporary Quarters"

    Star Trek Universe

  51. Ishmael
  52. Ghost-Walker
  53. ''Crossroad''

    James Asher, Vampire novels

  54. Those Who Hunt the Night, AKA Immortal Blood
  55. Traveling with the Dead
  56. Blood Maidens
  57. Magistrates of Hell
  58. The Kindred of Darkness
  59. Darkness on His Bones
  60. Pale Guardian
  61. Prisoner of Midnight
The short story "Gravemould and Ectoplasm" is a sequel to Prisoner of Midnight.
The short story "Sunrise on Running Water" is set in the world of the James Asher novels but does not feature Asher himself.

Beauty and the Beast

  1. Beauty and the Beast novelization
  2. ''Song of Orpheus''

    Sun-Cross

  3. The Rainbow Abyss
  4. ''The Magicians of Night''

    Star Wars universe

  • Children of the Jedi
  • "Nightlily: The Lovers' Tale"
  • "Taster's Choice: The Tale of Jabba's Chef"
  • "Murder in Slushtime"
  • ''Planet of Twilight''

    Raven Sisters

  • Sisters of the Raven
  • ''Circle of the Moon''

    Silver Screen historical mystery series

  • Scandal in Babylon. Not exactly a sequel to Bride of the Rat God, which was a supernatural fantasy. Hambly decided that the same characters, with the same names and mostly the same backstories, would work well in a mystery, eventually a series, without supernatural elements.
  • One Extra Corpse
  • ''Saving Susy Sweetchild''

    Standalone works

  • Bride of the Rat God and Castle of Horror
  • Magic Time
  • Renfield: Slave of Dracula
  • "Someone Else's Shadow"
  • ''The Iron Princess''

    Television credits

  • Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
  • M.A.S.K.
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power
  • The Centurions
  • ''Starcom: The U.S. Space Force''