Kage Baker

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.[4] Her unusual first name (pronounced like the word cage) is a combination of the names of her two grandmothers, Kate and Genevieve. Baker had Asperger syndrome.[5]

She is best known for her "the Company/Dr. Zeus, Inc." series of historical time travel science fiction.[6] 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 (novel, 2000) and "The Empress of Mars" (novella, 2003), which won the Theodore Sturgeon Award[7] 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.[8]

In 2009, her short story "Caverns of Mystery" and her novel House of the Stag were both nominated for World Fantasy Awards, but neither piece won.[9]

In January 2010, it was reported that Baker was seriously ill with cancer.[10] She died from uterine cancer at approximately 1:00 a.m. on January 31, 2010, in Pismo Beach, California.[3] She was survived by five younger siblings, mostly located in southern and central 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.[11][12] On May 15, 2010, that work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the Best Novella category.[13]

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 (2011), edited by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew.[14] From the foreword:

All these reviews were written during the last year of Kage's life. I don't think that affected her view much—sometimes she was so tired that watching films and composing reviews was all she could manage, so they got her nearly undivided attention. As the year wore on, more and more of them were composed ex tempore and dictated to me; I think there is a more conversational style in those, as we argued out the reviews. One she recited in a single long soliloquy in her hospital room; it was written that evening, as I doggedly transferred Kage's voice from my head to paper.

The last one is dated December 21, 2009. Three days later, we discovered her cancer had metastasized to her brain. A month later, she was gone.[15]

Baker left an unfinished novel, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea, which has been completed by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew based on extensive notes left by Baker, and was published in 2012.[16]

• Eldridge, Cat (June 1, 2005). "An Interview with Kage Baker". The Green Man Review. Archived from the original on December 8, 2011. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
• Gevers, Nick (Winter 2009). "Interview: Of Mars and the Spanish Main: An Interview with Kage Baker by Nick Gevers". Subterranean Press. Archived from the original on March 11, 2012. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
• Hartwell, David (September 7, 2010). "On Kage Baker". Tor.com. Macmillan. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
• Martini, Adrienne (June 2004). "An Interview with Kage Baker". Bookslut. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
• Vandermeer, Jeff (March 2007). "An Interview with Kage Baker". Clarkesworld Magazine. Retrieved March 11, 2012.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Kage Baker.

• Archived official website
• Kathleen, Kage & the Company, blog about Kage by her sister Kate
• Kage Baker entry at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Kage Baker at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• Kage Baker at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Kage Baker silent film reviews at Tor.com