Fenn, Jaine
Entry updated 25 September 2023. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of Jane Weddell (? - ) UK fan and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Path to the Sun" in On Spec for Winter 2001, and who came to wider attention with her first series, the Hidden Empire sequence beginning with Principles of Angels (2008) and continuing so far to Queen of Nowhere (2013). The series is set thousands of years hence, some time after a Long Night has passed, and hints of a resurgent Galactic Empire variously affect life on various planets; the sequence is notable for its range of quasi-independent settings, the world of Principles of Angels being a moderately interesting Dystopia, while the world of volume two, Consorts of Heaven (2009), provides a Planetary Romance setting for events involving Supernatural Creatures, with political control mechanisms on Medieval Futurism lines detectable beneath the surface. The Telepathic female Alien civilization (known as the Sidhe) that had brought about the interregnum so painful for Homo sapiens is increasingly in evidence as the series proceeds, with protagonists moving at points into baroque Space Opera territory, via Faster Than Light drives working through Matter Transmission to enable hops to other galaxies, and intimations of Uplift thick in the air. Various romances fail to dominate; the series remains open-ended.
Fenn's "Liberty Bird" (in Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press, anth 2016, ed Ian Whates) won a BSFA Award as best short fiction. [JC]
Jane Weddell
born London
works
series
Hidden Empire
- Principles of Angels (London: Gollancz, 2008) [Hidden Empire: hb/Nik Keevil]
- Consorts of Heaven (London: Gollancz, 2009) [Hidden Empire: hb/Nik Keevil]
- Guardians of Paradise (London: Gollancz, 2010) [Hidden Empire: hb/Nik Keevil]
- Bringer of Light (London: Gollancz, 2011) [Hidden Empire: hb/Nik Keevil]
- Downside Girls (London: Clarion Publishing/Monico, 2011) [coll: Hidden Empire: pb/]
- Queen of Nowhere (London: Gollancz, 2013) [Hidden Empire: pb/Nik Keevil]
Shadowland
- Hidden Sun (London: Angry Robot, 2018) [Shadowland: pb/Andreas Rocha]
- Broken Shadow (London: Angry Robot, 2019) [Shadowland: pb/Andreas Rocha]
collections and stories
- The Ships of Aleph (Birmingham, England: The Birmingham Science Fiction Group, 2012) [novelette: chap: pb/David Hardy]
- The Martian Job (Alconbury Weston, Cambridgeshire: NewCon Press, 2017) [in the publisher's NewCon Novellas series: hb/Jim Burns]
- Strange Attractors (Alconbury Weston, Cambridgeshire: NewCon Press, 2023) [coll: in the publisher's Polestars series: hb/Enrique Meseguer]
links
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