Kage Baker


Kage Baker was an American science fiction and fantasy writer.

Biography

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. Her unusual first name is a combination of the names of her two grandmothers, Kate and Genevieve. Baker had Asperger syndrome.
She is best known for her "the Company/Dr. Zeus, Inc." series of historical time travel science fiction. 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 and "The Empress of Mars", which won the Theodore Sturgeon Award 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.
In 2009, her short story "Caverns of Mystery" and her novel House of the Stag were both nominated for World Fantasy Awards; neither piece won.
In January 2010, it was reported that Baker was seriously ill with cancer. She died from uterine cancer on January 31, 2010, in Pismo Beach, 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. On May 15, 2010, that work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the Best Novella category.
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, edited by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew. From the foreword:
Baker left an unfinished novel, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea, which was completed by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew based on extensive notes left by Baker, and was published in 2012.

The Company universe

;Novels
;Short story collections
  • Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers
  • Gods and Pawns
  • In the Company of Thieves
;Short stories and novellas
;The Anvil of the World
  • The Anvil of the World
  • The House of the Stag
  • ''The Bird of the River''

    Short fiction

;Collections
  • Mother Ægypt and Other Stories
  • Dark Mondays
  • The Best of Kage Baker
;Stories
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key2008Novella
Pareidolia2015Novelette

Non-fiction

  • Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen, ed. Kathleen Bartholomew Tachyon Publications