Today, as I write this, it is June 10. That makes it the birthday of Kage Baker (1952-2010). She had a short career. Her first story was published in 1997.
It’s been said that some people’s careers are so short because they are so bright. That was certianly the case with Kage Baker. Most of her work is set in a future called the Company future. The main part of the series involved immortal time-traveling cyborgs.
Can it get much better than that? Maybe, but there are many contenders. The series involves cyborgs working in the shadows of history. Things believed lost for years, manuscripts, paintings, artifacts, stuff like that, are suddenly found. Because a cyborg agent hid the item. They can do this because the item has vanished from the historical record. They don’t try to change the past.
The series has amultiple characters that interact throughout novels, movellas, and short stories. There is an overaching storyline. The cyborgs know that something is going to happen several hundred years from our present, but they don’t know what. The finale of the series is sthe big reveal.
She was beginning to write in other series than the Company and in spin-offs in the Company future after she brought the Company series to its conclusion. (I was disappointed with the finale.)
Kage Baker is one of my favorites. I had the pleasure of meeting her at Armadillocon 25 a few years before her death from a brain tumor.
Her work has mostly fallen out of print but should be available in electronic editions and on the secondary market. Kage Baker had a unique voice, and I’ve not read anyone like her before or since. She is one of the writers whose work I tend to buy when I come across even though I have most of her books in the original hardcovers. Reading copies are always welcome.