Randall, Marta

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Editor.

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(1948- ) Mexican-born editor and author, in US from infancy, who has taught in several sf writing workshops and served inScience Fiction Writers of America as vice-president 1981-1982 and president 1982-1984. She began publishing sf with "Smack Run" inNew Worlds 5 (anth1973 ed MichaelMoorcock) as Marta Bergstresser, her then married name, used only on this one occasion. Her stories since then have not been frequent, but are almost always of high quality, tightly and densely written, even epigrammatic at points, and generally impart elements ofFeminist discourse, with unbemused clarity of effect, to genre material. The intense force of a tale like "Lapidary Nights" (inUniverse 17, anth1987, ed TerryCarr) derives at least in part – though no "didactic" argument occupies the foreground – from its thorough assimilation of a feminist agenda. Her short work has been assembled asCollected Stories (coll2007).

Randalls's first and perhaps most successful novel,Islands (1976; rev1980), movingly depicts the life of a mortal woman in an age whenImmortality is medically achievable for all but a few, including the protagonist. To cope with her world she plunges into the study of archaeology, and makes a discovery which enables her to transcend her corporeal life. InA City in the North (1976) anAlien species self-destructs in a morally dubious response to the colonizing presence on their planet of the human race (seeColonization of Other Worlds;Imperialism). TheKennerin/Newhome sequence –Journey (1978) andDangerous Games (1980) – also treats its enabling premise with some ambivalence, for the Kennerin family's decision to create aUtopia on the planet they have purchased has complex consequences, some of them relating toEcology; the series overall can be understood as a family saga, with perhaps some conscious echoes of the Western.The Sword of Winter (1983), like some of her later short fiction, is fantasy, though withPlanetary-Romance features; andThose Who Favor Fire (1984) is a near-futureDystopia set in anDisaster-prone California much like today's.

With RobertSilverberg, Randall edited two volumes of theNew Dimensions sequence,New Dimensions 11 (anth1980) andNew Dimensions 12 (anth1981), which was then terminated; and was responsible solo forThe Nebula Awards 19 (anth1984). In the later 1980s she became less active as a writer, concentrating at least in part on the construction of "interactive time-travel games" (seeGame-Worlds) for the California State Department of Mental Health, but her fiction, when it appeared, remained vividly alive; her final book to date is a mystery,Growing Light (1993) as by Martha Conley. [JC]

see also:Islands.

Marta Randall

born Mexico City, Mexico: 26 April 1948

works

series

Kennerin/Newhome

Journey (New York: Pocket Books,1978) [Kennerin/Newhome: pb/]
Dangerous Games (New York: Pocket Books,1980) [Kennerin/Newhome: pb/]

individual titles

Islands (New York: Pyramid Books,1976) [pb/VincentDi Fate]
- Islands (New York: Pocket Books,1980) [rev of the above: pb/]
A City in the North (New York: Warner Books,1976) [pb/VincentDi Fate]
The Sword of Winter (New York: Timescape Books,1983) [hb/RowenaMorrill]
Those Who Favor Fire (New York: Pocket Books,1984) [pb/]
Growing Light (New York: St Martin's Press,1993) as by Martha Conley [hb/John Patrick]

collections

Collected Stories (Raleigh, North Carolina: Lulu.com,2007) [coll: pb/Marta Randall]

works as editor

series

New Dimensions

New Dimensions 11 (New York: Pocket Books,1980) with RobertSilverberg [anth:New Dimensions: pb/RichardPowers]
New Dimensions 12 (New York: Pocket Books,1981) with RobertSilverberg [anth:New Dimensions: pb/RichardPowers]

individual titles