Author Sheri S. Tepper, Dead at 87

Note: this article was also published on SciFi4Me.com.

Best known for her feminist science fiction, usually with an environmental bent, author Sheri S. Tepper has passed away at the age of 87, according to a post on Locus Online.

Born near Littleton, Col., Tepper first started publishing poetry and children’s stories in the early 1960s. She first came onto the sci fi scene in 1983, with the True Game books. Her book Beauty (which I own – a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale through a modern feminist and environmental lens) won the 1992 Locus award for Best Fantasy, and she was also a recipient of the World Fantasy Life Achievement award in 2015. Many of her other novels were also nominated for major awards, including the Hugo. Tepper also wrote horror under the name E.E. Horlak, and mysteries under the names A.J. Orde and B.J. Oliphant.

In an interview with Strange Horizons, Tepper said of fairy tales, “Fairy tales and myths almost always come out right. The bad things are beaten, the good things are elevated. Even ordinary stories about children are often fairy tales, because it is rare for them to end in tragedy. Children cling to fairy tales and myths as they cling to a loved parent because they represent security. Everything will be okay. Really. It really will.”

Tepper worked with the Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood from 1962 to 1986, and managed a guest ranch in Sante Fe, NM, for a number of years. She married Gene Tepper in the late 1960s, and had two children from a previous marriage.