Sharon Baker

Sharon Baker (1938–1991) was a science fiction writer, author of the Naphar trilogy.

Biography Baker was born on May 10, 1938, in San Francisco, daughter of Frank and Margaret Sklensky. She earned a BA from Mills College in 1960 and a master's degree in Libranianship from the University of Washington in 1966. Her husband, Gordon P. Baker, was a doctor. She had four sons, Seth, Eliot, Brett, and Jason.

Themes and critical response The first book of the Naphar series, Quarreling, They Met The Dragon, won second prize in the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference Novel Contest in 1982, Mary Turzillo, writing in the 1988 edition of Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual, begins her review of the second book in the series (Journey to Membliar) with, "This is not a perfect book." Some critique aside, however, the review is on the whole positive. "I wouldn't want to live on Naphar," Turzillo says, "but I recommend the vicarious pleasure of Sharon Baker's narrative about its society." Turzillo considered that the second book of the series outperformed the first, that "the themes of betrayal and loss are powerful," and that Baker's "growth as an artist suggests high promise." Turzillo compared Baker's poetic writing style to that of British sci-fi writer Tanith Lee. Writing in the New York Review of Science Fiction, Brian Stableford's longform review of the second and third installments of the Naphar series concludes its lengthy deliberations over Baker's combining of science fiction and fantasy elements with: "By virtue of importing and carefully developing the skeptical sciencefictional viewpoint within the emotionally-charged fantasy of self-development, [Baker] attains a particular blend of the two which does benefit from a kind of literary synergy."