Melissa Scott (1960–) is an American author of Speculative Fiction—primarily but not exclusively Science Fiction. She won the John W. Campbell Award for best new SF writer in 1986. Her work is known for its casual and unobtrusive use of LGBTQ characters. She is probably best known for her near-future cyberpunk novel Trouble And Her Friends, and her far-future novel Shadow Man, both of which won the Lambda Literary Award for best Gay & Lesbian Speculative Fiction.
She has written over thirty novels, three of which were co-authored with her partner Lisa A. Barnett, before Barnett's untimely death from cancer in 2006. In addition to her original works, she has written a pair of Star Trek novels, and several set in the Stargate-verse.
Selected works:
- The Silence Leigh trilogy
- Five-Twelfths of Heaven (1985)
- Silence in Solitude (1986)
- The Empress of Earth (1987)
- The Kindly Ones (1987)
- The Armor of Light (1988, with Lisa A. Barnett)
- The Dream Series:
- Dreamships (1992)
- Dreaming Metal (1997)
- Trouble and her Friends (1994)
- Proud Helios (1995, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel)
- The Astreiant series:
- Point of Hopes (1995, with Lisa A. Barnett)
- Point of Dreams (2001, with Lisa A. Barnett)
- Point of Knives (2012)
- Fairs' Point (2014)
- Night Sky Mine (1997)
- The Garden (1997, Star Trek: Voyager novel)
- The Jazz (2000)
- Homecoming (2010, with Jo Graham, Stargate Atlantis novel)
- Allegiance (2011, with Amy Griswold, Stargate Atlantis novel)
- Moebius Squared (2012, with Jo Graham, Stargate SG-1 novel)
- The Order of the Air series (with Jo Graham):
- Lost Things (2012)
- Steel Blues (2013)
- Silver Bullet (2014)
- Wind Raker (2015)
Tropes in her works:
- The All-Concealing "I": In The Kindly Ones, the chapters from Trey Maturin's point of view are the only ones written in first person. It's never revealed whether Trey is male or female.
- Big Beautiful Woman: In Point of Hopes, merchant Iniz Allyns is described as being "as large as any two women, and four times as lovely."
- Bizarre Alien Sexes: In Shadow Man, humans in the future have seen a dramatic rise in intersex conditions (due to drugs necessary for space travel) leading to five recognized sexes: male, mem, herm, fem, female (clearly influenced by an article by Anne Fausto-Sterling [1]
) and nine sexual orientations. - Hermaphrodite: Shadow Man involved humanity becoming a five-sexed race as a side-effect of adaptation to faster-than-light space travel. Of course, not everyone accepted it.
- Magitek: The Silence Leigh trilogy has starships powered by alchemy and guided by astrology.
- Mental World: The Silence Leigh trilogy (aka Roads of Heaven) has one character doing telepathic therapeutic work inside another's mind.
