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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-author"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Finch, Sheila </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=finch_sheila'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=finch_sheila'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=finch_sheila'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Checklist" onclick="window.location.hash='chklst'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Alpha" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=finch_sheila&abc'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Chron" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=finch_sheila'" ></span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=finch_sheila');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=Finch-ForkPoints.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/Finch-ForkPoints.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>(1935-    ) UK-born author, in the USA from 1957, naturalized in 1965, who began publishing sf with "The Confession of Melakos" for <i>Sou-wester</i> in 1977; some of her early stories appeared as by Sheila Finch-Rayner. Her first novel, <i>Infinity's Web</i> (<b>1985</b>), complicatedly describes the lives of five versions of one protagonist who live in various <a href="/entry/alternate_worlds">Alternate Worlds</a>, and who gradually gain a sense of the mutual web they inhabit. Though far more devoted to generic pleasures than Joanna <a href="/entry/russ_joanna">Russ</a> in <i>The Female Man</i> (<b>1975</b>), the structure of which tale is superficially similar, the novel still generates a clear and telling <a href="/entry/feminism">Feminist</a> perspective. For some time Finch remained, unfairly, best known for the <b>Shaper Exile</b> sequence – <i>The Garden of the Shaped</i> (<b>1987</b>), <i>Shaper's Legacy</i> (<b>1989</b>) and <i>Shaping the Dawn</i> (<b>1989</b>) – as her presentation of the three separate genetic versions of human stock that dominate the sequence fit uneasily into the underlying <a href="/entry/planetary_romance">Planetary Romance</a> format of the published work. The second volume of the sequence is more toughly argued, but the third is again affected by the embracing plot arabesques common to this subgenre, a form to which she never contributed subsequent tales.</p> <p>Finch's second series – the <b>Lingster/Xenolinguist Guild</b> sequence – comprising her second novel, <i>Triad</i> (<b>1986</b>), <i>Reading the Bones</i> (fixup <b>2003</b>), and <i>The Guild of Xenolinguists</i> (coll of linked stories <b>2007</b>) – very much more successfully modulates between the depiction of personal destinies and the sf puzzles facing Lingsters, a Earth-based corps of trained field xenologists employed on various planets to attempt to cope with both autonomous and colonized <a href="/entry/aliens">Alien</a> races (see <a href="/entry/colonization_of_other_worlds">Colonization of Other Worlds</a>). Permeated by a deep and long-held interest in <a href="/entry/linguistics">Linguistics</a>, <i>Triad</i> brings together a woman-run Earth government, a female mission to a planet where several <a href="/entry/aliens">Alien</a> races seem to congregate, and pirates; Finch may have been the first to use the term "xenolinguist", which she introduces in this volume. <i>Reading the Bones</i> ties together a slightly expanded "Reading the Bones" (January 1998 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>) – the magazine version won a novella <a href="/entry/nebula">Nebula</a> – with a new novella and other material into a well-balanced whole and <i>The Guild of Xenolinguists</i> resorts this and other stories into a looser saga. Set much further into the future, "The Evening and the Morning" (March-April 2011 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>) fits the sequence as a whole into a <a href="/entry/future_histories">Future History</a> with roots, as usual, in the deep past: the ancient never-discovered Sagittans – apparently a <a href="/entry/forerunners">Forerunner</a> species who engaged in <a href="/entry/uplift">Uplift</a> activities and have now transcended the flesh (see <a href="/entry/transcendence">Transcendence</a>) – have apparently committed genocide against the human race on Earth, as the Xenolinguist Guild had come too close to penetrating their secrets. A last team of xenolinguists lands on the <a href="/entry/ruined_earth">Ruined Earth</a> with an <a href="/entry/ai">AI</a> who manifests in <a href="/entry/avatars">Avatar</a> form, discovers what can be discovered, and passes on the burden of civilization to uplifted corvids.</p> <p><i>Birds</i> (March/April 1997 <a href="/entry/tomorrow_speculative_fiction">Tomorrow</a> as "The Falcon and the Falconer"; exp <b>2004</b>) is a <a href="/entry/near_future">Near Future</a> mystery involving the death of a NASA astronaut. <i>Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken</i> (coll <b>2022</b>) assembles a wide range of tales, several of them recent. [JC]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/genetic_engineering">Genetic Engineering</a>.</p> <h3 id="chklst">Sheila Rosemary Finch</h3> <p><b>born</b> London: 29 October 1935</p> <p><b>works</b></p> <p><input type="button" value="Alphabetical" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=finch_sheila&abc'"> <input type="button" value="Chronological" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=finch_sheila'"></p> <p><b>series</b></p> <p><b>Shaper Exile</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Garden+of+the+Shaped&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Garden of the Shaped</a></em> (New York: Bantam Books, <b>1987</b>) [<b>Shaper Exile</b>: pb/Christopher Hopkins]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Shaper+Legacy&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Shaper's Legacy</a></em> (New York: Bantam Books, <b>1989</b>) [<b>Shaper Exile</b>: pb/Paul <a href="/entry/youll_paul">Youll</a> and Steve <a href="/entry/youll_stephen">Youll</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Shaping+the+Dawn&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Shaping the Dawn</a></em> (New York: Bantam Books, <b>1989</b>) [<b>Shaper Exile</b>: pb/Paul <a href="/entry/youll_paul">Youll</a> and Steve <a href="/entry/youll_stephen">Youll</a>]</li> </ul> <p><b>Lingster/Xenolinguist Guild</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Triad&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Triad</a></em> (New York: Bantam Books, <b>1986</b>) [<b>Lingster/Xenolinguist Guild</b>: pb/Jim <a href="/entry/burns_jim">Burns</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Reading+the+Bones&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Reading the Bones</a></em> (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, <b>2003</b>) [coll of linked stories: <b>Lingster/Xenolinguist Guild</b>: pb/Michael Dashow]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Guild+of+Xenolinguists&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Guild of Xenolinguists</a></em> (Urbana, Illinois: Golden Gryphon Press, <b>2007</b>) [coll of linked stories: <b>Lingster/Xenolinguist Guild</b>: hb/Bob <a href="/entry/eggleton_bob">Eggleton</a>]</li> </ul> <p><b>individual titles</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Infinity+Web&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Infinity's Web</a></em> (New York: Bantam Books, <b>1985</b>) [pb/Stephen Peringer]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=David+Brin+Out+of+Time+2+Tiger+in+the+Sky&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">David Brin's Out of Time 2: Tiger in the Sky</a></em> (New York: Avon Books, <b>1999</b>) [tie: <b>David Brin's Out of Time</b>: pb/Peter Bollinger and Cliff <a href="/entry/nielsen_cliff">Nielsen</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Birds&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Birds</a></em> (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, <b>2004</b>) [first section appeared March/April 1997 <a href="/entry/tomorrow_speculative_fiction">Tomorrow</a> as "The Falcon and the Falconer": pb/Karl Romer]</li> </ul> <p><b>collections</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Forkpoints+Stories+of+Decisions+Made+and+Roads&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken</a></em> (Seattle, Washington: Aqueduct Press, <b>2022</b>) [coll: pb/Kenn Brown]</li> </ul> <p><b>nonfiction</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Myths+Metaphors+and+Science+Fiction+Ancient&field-author=Finch+Sheila" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Myths, Metaphors, and Science Fiction: Ancient Roots of the Literature of the Future</a></em> (Seattle, Washington: Aqueduct Press, <b>2014</b>) [nonfiction: coll: in the publisher's <b>Conversation Pieces</b> series: pb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?468">Internet Speculative Fiction Database</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=finch_sheila">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/finch_sheila' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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