Martha Wells - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Biography

Martha Wells was born in Fort Worth, Texas

Fort Worth, Texas

Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...

in 1964 and has a B.A. in Anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

from Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...

. She has published eight fantasy novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, two Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of MGM's Stargate franchise. The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1, which was created by Wright and Jonathan Glassner and was itself...

tie-in novels, and several short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

. Her novels have been translated into eight languages.

Wells' first published novel, The Element of Fire (1993), was a finalist for that year's Compton Crook Award

Compton Crook Award

The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best first novel of the year in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc, at their annual Baltimore-area science fiction convention, Balticon, held on Memorial Day weekend in the...

, and a runner-up for the 1994 William Crawford Award. Her second novel, City of Bones (1995) received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a black diamond review from Kirkus Reviews, and was on the 1995 Locus Recommended Reading List for fantasy. Her third novel, The Death of the Necromancer (1998), was nominated for a Nebula Award

Nebula Award

The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...

. The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer are stand-alone novels which take place in the country of Ile-Rien

Ile-Rien

Ile-Rien is a fictional country which is the setting for five fantasy novels by Martha Wells[]. It is a centralized monarchy governed by the Fontainon dynasty, governing from their ornate capital of Vienne. It is also the home of the university-city of Lodun, a great center of learning, producing...

, which is also the setting for the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy: The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and The Gate of Gods (2005). Her fourth novel was a stand-alone fantasy, Wheel of the Infinite. In 2006, she released a revised edition of The Element of Fire which is also available in HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

on her website.

Her fantasy short stories include "The Potter's Daughter" in the anthology Elemental (2006), which has been selected to appear in The Year's Best Fantasy #7 (2007). This story features one of the main characters from The Element of Fire. Three prequel short stories to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy were published in Black Gate Magazine in 2007 and 2008.

Wells is known for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology

Anthropology

.

In February 2006, she published Reliquary, a novel set in the Stargate Atlantis universe. Another Stargate Atlantis novel, Entanglement, was published in spring 2007. Wells also wrote "Archaeology 101," a short story based on Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1 is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Stargate franchise. The show, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, is based on the 1994 feature film Stargate by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich...

for issue #8 (Jan/Feb 2006) of the official Stargate Magazine. (See Stargate literature

Stargate literature

Stargate literature comprises the novels and short stories in the Stargate franchise fictional universe as well as non-fiction devoted to the franchise...

)

She has recently sold two new fantasy novels to Night Shade Books

Night Shade Books

Night Shade Books is an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It was started in 1997 by Jason Williams, with Jeremy Lassen coming on board as a partner shortly after the company's founding...

. The first, The Cloud Roads (ISBN 978-1-59780-216-1), was published in March 2011,
and the sequel, The Serpent Sea, will follow in January 2012.

Published works

Stand-alone fantasy novels

City of Bones (1995, ISBN 0-312-85686-5)
Wheel of the Infinite (2000, ISBN 0-380-97335-9)

Ile-Rien stories

Listed in order of the internal chronology, not by year of publication.

"The Potter's Daughter" (2006 short story, Elemental: the Tsunami Relief Anthology ISBN 0-765-31562-9, The Year's Best Fantasy #7 ISBN 9-781-89239150-6)
The Element of Fire (1993, ISBN 312-85374-2; revised edition 2006, ISBN 0-615-13571-4)
The Death of the Necromancer (1998, ISBN 0-380-97334-0)

Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy

The Wizard Hunters (2003, ISBN 0-380-97788-5)
The Ships of Air (2004, ISBN 0-380-97789-3)
The Gate of Gods (2005, ISBN 0380-97790-7)

Stargate stories

Reliquary (2006 Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of MGM's Stargate franchise. The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1, which was created by Wright and Jonathan Glassner and was itself...

novel, ISBN 0-9547343-7-8)
Entanglement (2007 Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of MGM's Stargate franchise. The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1, which was created by Wright and Jonathan Glassner and was itself...

novel, ISBN 1-905586-03-5)
"Archaeology 101" (2006 Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1 is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Stargate franchise. The show, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, is based on the 1994 feature film Stargate by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich...

short story, Stargate Magazine)

Non-fiction

"Don't Make Me Tongue You: John Crichton and D'Argo and the Dysfunctional Buddy Relationship" (2005, Farscape Forever, ISBN 1-932100-61-X)
"Neville Longbottom: the Hero With a Thousand Faces" (2006, Mapping the World of Harry Potter, ISBN 1-932100-59-8)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.