Kage Baker

Kage Baker (June 10, 1952 – January 31, 2010 ) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer.

Biography Baker was born and raised in Hollywood, California, and lived in Pismo Beach later in life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language. Baker had Asperger syndrome.

She is best known for her "the Company/Dr. Zeus, Inc." series of historical time travel science fiction. Her first stories were published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1997, and her first novel, In the Garden of Iden, by Hodder & Stoughton in the same year. Other notable works include Mendoza in Hollywood (novel, 2000) and "The Empress of Mars" (novella, 2003), which won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and was nominated for a Hugo Award.

In 2008, she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.

In 2009, her short story "Caverns of Mystery" and her novel House of the Stag were both nominated for World Fantasy Awards; neither piece won.

In January 2010, it was reported that Baker was seriously ill with cancer. She died from uterine cancer on January 31, 2010, in Pismo Beach, California. On May 15, 2010, that work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the Best Novella category.

Kage spent much of the last year of her life watching and reviewing silent films. Many of her reviews were collected posthumously into Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen (2011), edited by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew. From the foreword:

Baker left an unfinished novel, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea, which was completed by her sister Kathleen Bartholomew based on extensive notes left by Baker, and was published in 2012.