Today is February 29. Leap day, in other words. Something that occurs once every four years, like presidential elections in the US only without two years of television ads leading up to it and two years of politicians trying to position themselves for the next one once it’s over.

Also a lot more fun.

So today, I thought I would look at birthdays that only occur once every four years.

Sharon Webb (1936-2010) is probably not a name familiar to many people these days. She published a handful of stories, mostly at the end of the seventies and early eighties, although there was one story, “The Girl With the 100 Proof Eyes”, in 1964 as by Paul Webb. She didn’t have anything published after 1991. Her Terra Talkioington series was published in book form as The Adventures of Terra Tarkington in 1985.  These stories were published (in a slightly different form) in Asimov’s int he early 1980s and all had the words “Bull Run” in the titles. I remember seeing these stories in a stack of Asimov’s someone gave me. I don’t recall if I read them or not. I was only in my early teens at the time, and memory fades.

Patricia A. McKillip (1948-2022) was (and still is) one of my favorite fantasy authors. She burst onto the scene in the 1970s with The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and quickly followed it up with The Riddlemaster Trilogy. She rarely wrote sequels or series. In the 1990s, she published a series of novels with Ace Books that were hardcover originals. These books had beautiful, wrap-around dustjackets and were smaller than standard hardcovers. Some of her best work was published in these volumes.

Her fantasy tended to focus on ordinary people, even if they were highborn nobility. She showed them with all their flaws. That, and her beautiful prose style, made her books so much better than most of what was being published at the time as well as what has been published since.  Most of her work was at novel length, but she did publish at least two collections of short fiction.

Tim Powers (1952) isn’t dead, and that’s how we like it. I hope he stays that way for a very long time. He’s one of the more original fantasists working today. I’ve met Powers a couple of times and really enjoyed what little time I got to spend with him. I’ve only read bits and pieces of his work. He’s someone I want to read more of. My understanding is that he isn’t light reading. I’ve got some of his more recent work . I hope I can find time to fit it in.

His novel Stranger Tides was used as the basis of one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He’ds good friends and sometime collaborator with James P. Blaylock, another very original fantasist, one I havne’t had the chance to meet yet.

Those are three writers who have birthdays on February 29. As you can imagine, there aren’t many who do since the 29th only happens once every four years.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple who died on February 29. I am, after all, in the death industry in one of my day jobs. I’ll limit myself to two here.

The most prominent of these is E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson (1867-1940). Benson was one of three brothers who wrote ghost stories. Arthur Christopher (A. C.) and Robert Hugh (R. H.) were their names. He was by far the most prolific. Whereas his brother combined output of ghost stories was only a handful of volumes, E. F. wrote many more. Just how many more is something of an exercise for bibliogrpahers (which I am not) since some collections have been published after the Benson brothers’s death that combine previous collections with new titles and different contents. E. F. Benson is by far the most prominennt of the three, like I said, but all three are worth reading.  He is one of my favorite writers of the traditional English ghost story.

The last person I’m featuring today also died on February 29. That writer is Janet Kagan (1946-2008). I’m not posting a photo because I haven”t found one I’m cure is correct. The photo at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database is someone else with the same name, I’m fairly sure. Kagan wrote two novels in the 1980s, one of them Uhura’s Song, as Star Trek novel.  The other novel was Hellspark. I’ve not read it, but I have read the collection Mirabile. The stories in it were first published in Asimov’s in the early 1980s. It’s been years since I read it, but I really enjoyed it. It’s one I’d like to reread one of these days.

Kagan had a number of short stories published in Asimov’s and Analog that haven’t been reprinted. Fortunately, I have nearly a complete run of those magazines for that time period. I’ve not unpacked them yet from the move because of issues with getting bookcases, but when I do, I intend to dip into them regularly. An issue with Kagan on the table of contents will move to the top of the TBR stack.

So in conclusion, here are quick looks at five writers, three who were  born on February 29 and two who died on this day. Maybe I’ll do another post like this again.

In another four years, of course.