Lisa Mason (born 1953) is an American writer of science fiction. She lives in Sausalito, California with the artist Tom Robinson and their cats. She is a vegetarian, and has worked as a lawyer. Most of her novels take place in the vicinity of San Francisco, California, either in the future, or in the past through Time Travel, some of them may be recognised as Cyberpunk. Robinson often designs art for her novels. She has been recently revising and re-releasing her older and shorter works for electronic devices.
Novels
- Arachne (1990)
- Summer of Love (1994) - revised as Summer of Love, a Time Travel (2011)
- Cyberweb (1995)
- The Golden Nineties (1995) - revised as The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (2012)
- Pangaea I: Imperium without End (1999)
- Pangaea II: Imperium Aflame (2000)
- Tesla: A Worthy of His Time, A Screenplay (2011)
- The Garden of Abracadabra (2012)
Short fiction
- Arachne (Omni, 1987)
- Future Law (1987)
- Deus Ex Machina (1988)
- Guardian (1988)
- The Onionmancer (1989)
- Tomorrow's Child (1989)
- Hummers (1991)
- Stripper (1991)
- Destination (1992)
- Daughter of the Tao (1995)
- Every Mystery Unexplained (1995)
- Felicitas (1995)
- Transformation and the Postmodern Identity Crisis (Fantastic Alice 1995)
- The Sixty-Third Anniversary of Hysteria (1995)
- The Hanged Man (1996)
- U F uh-O, A Sci Fi Comedy (2011)
Essays/Articles
- Journey of the Heart (1991)
- Read This (The New York review of Science Fiction, 1994)
Awards
- Philip K. Dick Award - Best Novel nominee 1994 : Summer of Love
Tropes applying to her work include:
- Adaptation Name Change: When revising Summer of Love for Kindle, Susan Stein became Susan Bell, and other character names were changed as well.
- Affectionate Pickpocket: In The Golden Nineties, one of the main characters meets a woman on the ferry into San Francisco, who claims to be seasick and asks if she can lean on him. After the boat docks, she disappears along with his wallet.
- Alternate Timeline: In The Golden Nineties.
- Cyberpunk: Arachne and Cyberweb.
- Fantastic Caste System: In the Pangaea novels, the Imperium is built on a complex network of "purities," where one's status is determined by one's pure and subpure.
- Fun with Acronyms: Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications or LISA.
- Future Slang: Compared with 60s Hippie Slang in Summer of Love.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: In "Transformation and the Postmodern Identity Crisis", Alice is continually saying things that come across as insensitive to one or another of the assembled Wonderland denizens. "Oh, excuse me" is practically her catch phrase.
- Population Control: The future in Summer of Love has a lottery for who can and cannot have children, but includes the concept of "skip-children", where frustrated parents can put their combined DNA in a bank to be born decades or centuries later, to be raised by a descendant.
- Science Marches On: Somewhat. Very lucky to have worked Spider motifs into Arachne, before the World Wide Web caught on.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Both the Time Travel novels.
- Time Travel Escape: Part of the backstory of the founder of Time Travel. She goes back to save a homeless woman she hit with her car when she was a kid.
- Used Future: Her Cyberpunk novels.
- Uterine Replicator: In Pangaea, children are conceived through artificial insemination and grown to viability in these.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: "Muse" in The Golden Nineties, a voice AI which is implanted in the protagonist's head when she goes back in time, to keep her on her mission.
