Eleanor Arnason

Eleanor Atwood Arnason
Born	(1942-12-28) December 28, 1942 New York City, NY
Nationality	American

Eleanor Atwood Arnason (born December 28, 1942) is an American author of science fiction novels and short stories.

Arnason's earliest published story, "A Clear Day in the Motor City," appeared in New Worlds in 1973. Her work often depicts cultural change and conflict, usually from the viewpoint of characters who cannot or will not live by their own societies' rules. This anthropological focus has led many to compare her fiction to that of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Arnason won the first James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Mythopoeic Award (both for A Woman of the Iron People), the Spectrum Award (for "Dapple") and the HOMer Award (for her novelette Stellar Harvest). Stellar Harvest also was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2000. In 2003 she was nominated for two Nebula Awards, for her novella Potter of Bones and her short story "Knapsack Poems." In 2004, she was guest of honour at WisCon. She lives in Minnesota.

Background

Eleanor Arnason is the daughter of Hjorvadur Harvard Arnason, a Canadian man of Icelandic descent, who worked as an art historian and became the director of the Walker Art Center in 1951, and Elizabeth Hickcox Yard Arnason, a social worker by profession who has spent her childhood in a missionary community in western China. Her maternal grandparents were both Methodist missionaries. This methodist influence would be visible in her works, most notably in The Ring of Swords.

From 1949 to 1960, Arnason and her parents lived in Walker's "Idea House #2," a futuristic dwelling built next to the Walker Art Center. [1] She has said that her experience growing up around avant-garde artists in a futurist house, in addition to the influence of her feminist, socialist mother contributed to her preoccupation with the future, and consequently science fiction. Prior to 1949 her family moved frequently from New York City to Chicago, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, and St. Paul, Minnesota.

She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1964 with a B.A. in art history, and continued her education in graduate school at the University of Minnesota until 1967. She spent the next 7 years working as an office clerk in Brooklyn and then Detroit. Her time in these blue-collar, racially diverse areas helped to shape her understanding about class consciousness, conflict, and revolution -- notions that are reflected in her works. She moved back to the Twin Cities in 1974 and continued to work in offices, warehouses, a large art museum and more recently, a series of small nonprofits devoted to history, peace and justice and art.

Since 1994 she has shifted her literary focus from novels to short fiction. She retired in 2009 and now writes full-time.

Politics

Arnason has been known to challenge issues of war, race, gender and sexuality in her works. City Pages labelled Arnason as a political radical One of the reasons she chose to become a science-fiction author were the socialist and feminist politics of her mother.

The McCarthy period had a profound impact on her work, as she recognized that "young children expected to die in a nuclear holocaust."

Arnason was politically active in the 1960's. She went to the Cilvil Rights March with her mother in 1963 and generally surrounded herself with members of the Young People's Socialist League during her time at College in Philadelphia. She also worked in a campaign office for a third party African-American candidate running for city council in New York. She also collected and transported supplies for striking miners coal miners in Kentcuky. Since the 1960's she became a local and national official in the National Writers Union and engaged in Democratic Farmer Labor Party precinct politics.

When discussing The Ring of Swords, Arnason stated "I wanted to create a society in which homosexual love was normal and heterosexual love was abnormal, sort of as a thought experiment. And because contemporary Americans have very rigid ideas of what is normal."

Published Works

Novels

• The Sword Smith (1978)
• To the Resurrection Station (1986)
• Daughter of the Bear King (1987)

Woman of the Iron People

• Part 1 In the Light of Sigma Draconis (1991)
• Part 2 Changing Women (1991)
• A Woman of the Iron People (1991)

Short Stories

• "A Clear Day in the Motor City" (1973)
• "The Warlord of Saturn's Moons" (1974)
• "Ace 167" (1974)
• "The House by the Sea" (1975)
• "The Face on the Barroom Floor" (1976) with Ruth Berman
• "Going Down" (1977)
• "A Ceremony of Discontent" (1981)
• "The Ivory Comb" (1982)
• "Glam's Story" (1987)
• "Among the Featherless Bipeds" (1988)
• "A Brief History of the Order of St. Cyprian the Athlete" (1992)
• "The Dog's Story" (1996)
• "The Venetian Method" (1998)
• "Feeding the Mother: A Hwarhath Religious Anecdote" (1998)
• "The Grammarian's Five Daughters" (1999), available online
• "Origin Story" (2000)
• "Moby Quilt" (2001)
• "The Lost Mother: A Story Told by the Divers" (2002)
• "Knapsack Poems" (2002)
• "The Potter of Bones" (2002), available online
• "Big Black mama and Tentacle Man" (2003)
• "Big Ugly Mama and the Zk" (2003)
• "Big Green Mama Falls in Love" (2006) in Eidolon I (ed. Jonathan Strahan, Jeremy G. Byrne)
• "The Diner" (2008)
• "Patrick and Mr. Bear: A True Story" (2010)
• "Mammoths of the Great Plains" (2010)
• "My Husband Steinn" (2011)
• "The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times" (2012)
• "Big Red Mama in Time and Morris, Minnesota" (2013)
• "Big Brown Mama and Brer Rabbit" (2013)
• "Kormak the Lucky" (2013)

Hwarhath stories

• Ring of Swords (1993)
• "The Hound of Merin" (1993)
• "The Semen Thief" (1994)
• "The Lovers" (1994)
• "The Small Black Box of Morality" (1996)
• "The Gauze Banner" (1998)
• "Dapple: A Hwarhath Historical Romance" (1999)
• "The Actors" (1999)
• "The Garden: A Hwarhath Science Fictional Romance" (2004)
• "Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery" (2012) available online

Lydia Duluth stories

• "Stellar Harvest" (1999)
• "The Cloud Man" (2000)
• "Lifeline" (2001)
• Tomb of the Fathers (2010)

Collections

• Ordinary People (2005)
• Mammoths of the Great Plains (2010)
• Big mama Stories (2013)

Anthologies

• Time Gum and Other Poems from the Minicon Poetry Readings (1988), with Terry A. Garey

Poems

• "Poem (untitled)" (1976)
• "The Land of Ordinary People" (1985)
• "On the Border" (1986)
• "On Writing" (1986)
• "There Was an Old Lady..." (1987)
• "Clean House Poem" (1988)
• "Mars Poem" (1988)
• "Poem Written After I Read an Article Which Argued That Birds Are Descended From Dinosaurs" (1988)
• "Dragon Poem" (1989)
• "Amnita and the Giant Stinginess" (1990)
• "The Glutton: A Goxhat Accounting Chant" (2001)
• "Song from the Kalevala" (2003)
• "Colline's Coat" (2003)
• "On Seeing Bellini's Opera The Capulets and Montagues..." (2003)

External links

• Eleanor Arnason at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Eleanor Arnason's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• Eleanor Arnason fan page
• Eleanor Arnason's blog
• Me and Science Fiction: Hope for the Future, essay by Arnason at Strange Horizons

References

Bibliography

"Arnason, Eleanor". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Aug 8, 2013. Web. Oct 27, 2013. < http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/arnason_eleanor>

Arnason, Eleanor. "Mammoths of the Great Plains" PM Press. Seattle, WA. 2010. Print.

Arnason, Eleanor. "Writing Science-Fiction During the Third World War" Extrapolation 46.1 (2005): 10-16. Print.

Attebery, Brian. "Ring of Swords: A Reappreciation" New York Review of Science Fiction 16.8, (2004): 8-10. Print.

"Eleanor Arnason - Summary Bibliography" Internet Speculative Fiction Database. 24 April 2006. Web. Oct 27, 2013. <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?313>

Lenander, David. "An Eleanor Arnason Page" The Rivendell Group. Sept 2007. Web. Oct 27, 2013. <http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/Eleanor%20%26%20trog.html>

Lenander, David. Interview with Eleanor Aranason. TV Bookshelf. Oct 2003. Web. Oct 27, 2013. <http://tvbookshelf.ws/Arnason.mov>

Lien, Denny. A Chronological Eleanor Arnason Bibliography. The Rivendell Group. Mar 2004. Web. Oct 27, 2013. <http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/ArnansonBibliographyByLien.html>

Lindow, Sandra J. "Eleanor Arnason" Women in Science Fiction: Overview, Greenswood Publishing, (2009). 12-13. Print.

Morehouse, Lyda. "Interview: Eleanor Arnason" Strange Horizons Mar 29, 2004. Web. Oct 27, 2013 <http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040329/arnason.shtml>

"Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Authors: Eleanor Arnason" Worlds Without End. 2011. Web. Oct 27, 2013. <https://www.worldswithoutend.com/author.asp?ID=425>