Line #29 Creator/CJCherryh


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cherryc1_6445.gif]]
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3	->''"Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words — if [[Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs Burroughs]] initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then [[Creator/AndreNorton Norton]] has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night — do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match?"''
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5	Carolyn Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), better known by her pen name C.J. Cherryh, is a fairly prolific American SpeculativeFiction author. She was a Classics teacher before working full-time as a writer, with a degree in Latin and a Masters in Classics. Unsurprisingly given the humanities background, her works tend more towards examining the social implications of things. She has written a fair amount of fantasy, but she's best known for her science fiction, having won two [[UsefulNotes/HugoAward Hugos]] for novels and one for a short story. Most of the science fiction elements in her stories tend to be of the hard variety, with FasterThanLightTravel generally being the only major deviation from currently understood physics, but, her works fall more in line with social science fiction.
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7	Her real name is actually "C.J. Cherry," with no "H" on the end. [[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/h.html This was added by her first publisher]], who felt that "C.J. Cherry" did not [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign look exotic enough]] to grace the cover of a science fiction book.
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9	She has [[http://www.cherryh.com/ her own extensive website]]. In 2014 she married Creator/JaneFalcher, her long-time partner who's a fellow fantasy/sci fi writer.
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11	!! Works
12	* The ''Alliance/Union'' 'verse, which contains many sub-series, some only lightly connected:
13	** ''Cyteen'' / ''Regenesis'', the story of the young clone of Ariane Emory, one of the founders of Union.
14	** The ''Chanur Novels'', in which the viewpoint characters are alien [[CatFolk lion-like creatures]].
15	** The ''Morgaine Cycle'', essentially fantasy novels but with a tenuous tie-in to the ''Alliance/Union'' chronology.
16	** The ''Faded Sun'' trilogy, aka ''The Mri Wars'', centered around a desert-based alien warrior race.
17	** ''Hunter of Worlds'', science fiction about an alien man named Aiela who is taken as a servant by a powerful member of the predatory iduve race and technologically mind-linked to two other people (one of them human) for the purpose of resolving an iduve political conflict.
18	* The ''Foreigner'' 'verse, dealing with the troubles of Bren Cameron, liaison between a [[LostColony stranded human populace]] and a world of aliens with [[RubberForeheadAliens deceptively humanoid appearance]] and very [[InhumanEmotion nonhuman psychology]].
19	* ''The Paladin'' -- LowFantasy martial-arts story set in essentially medieval China, in which pig-girl Taizu turns up on exiled swordsmaster Saukendar's doorstep to learn the skills she needs for revenge.
20	* The ''Rider/Finisterre'' novels, a planet-set adventure with a number of WildWest elements. Cowboys on alien horses.
21	* The ''Fortress'' series, HighFantasy centered on the friendship between Tristen, a reborn ancient king and Cefwyn, the current ruler of his lands.
22	* Russian series, a magical ghost story set in a Slavic (vs generic European) setting
23	* ''The Dreaming Tree'', HighFantasy with elves.
24	* ''Lois & Clarke: A Superman Novel'', a licensed novel based on the TV series, ''Series/LoisAndClark''.
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26	!! Works by C. J. Cherryh with their own pages include:
27	[[index]]
28	* ''Literature/AllianceUnion'' 'verse
29	** ''Literature/ChanurNovels''
30	** ''Literature/{{Cyteen}}'' (and ''Regenesis'')
31	** ''Literature/MorgaineCycle''
32	** ''Literature/TheFadedSun'' trilogy
33	** ''Literature/HunterOfWorlds''
34	* ''Literature/{{Foreigner\|1994}}'' 'verse
35	* ''Literature/FortressSeries''
36	* ''Literature/ThePaladin''
37	[[/index]]
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39	!! Other works by C. J. Cherryh display examples of:
40	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In the ''Rusalka'' fantasy trilogy, a wizard's wishes will come true -- all of them. Somehow. Not always in a way that's good for the wizard. Wishing a stone to fly won't make it levitate -- it'll cause ''something'' to come along and fling that stone through the air. "Wish a stone to fly -- and then beware the whirlwind."
41	* BondCreatures: The night horses in the ''Finisterre'' series are a horse-shaped carnivorous telepathic alien species. The horses bond with humans since they enjoy the complexity of the human mind, and ham, and humans bond with the horses so they'll help protect the humans from the world's other telepathic carnivores, which like to pull {{Jedi Mind Trick}}s in order to eat the humans.
42	* BoyMeetsGhoul: In the Russian trilogy:
43	** In ''Rusalka'', Pyetr and Eveshka fall in love. Eveshka is a rusalka, the ghost of a drowned woman that devours human life to remain in the world. [[spoiler:She is brought back from the dead at the end of the book]].
44	** In ''Yvgenie'', Pyetr's daughter Ilyanna is caught in a love triangle between Kavi, a ghost she grew up knowing, and Yvgenie, a boy she rescues from drowning. [[spoiler:In the end she gets both of them due to Kavi possessing Yvgenie to save his life, and then due to complicated magical circumstances becoming unable to leave him. They manage well enough and are both so smitten with her that everyone comes out happy in the end]].
45	* TheChainsOfCommanding: ''Legions of Hell'' has a passage portraying Hatshepsut as a case of this. She sent out explorers, listened to their reports when they returned, and all the while she wanted to '''be''' an explorer, not just hear what they had to say.
46	-->''And if she were not Hatshepsut the pharaoh, she might blurt out, simply, with tears: ''I want to go'', the way she had ached when her explorers had come back to her and told of great waterfalls and strange tribes and unknown coasts and vast seas. ''I want to go'', because she had ruled two thirds of the known world and had no freedom ever to see those things, she could only send others...''
47	* CultColony: The planet in the ''Finisterre'' series was colonized by a group of fundamentalist Christians.
48	* HorseOfADifferentColor: The ''Finisterre'' series has creatures called nighthorses that could be easily mistaken for horses, except that they are telepathic foul-tempered carnivores whose group behavior is based on being pack hunters. In contrast to herbivorous horses' tendency to form groups for protection, nighthorses formed groups for attacks. The implications of this are shown in the stories in such a way that it becomes quite plain that nighthorses are not just differently colored horses.
49	* HumanitysWake: In the short story "Pots", a race of aliens comes across a space probe with the Pioneer plaque on board, after mankind is long gone from the Earth. They attempt to find the remaining descendants of humanity, while spreading a romantic legend about the first space travelers across the galaxy. They remake their whole social structure, with hibernation and clones for top leaders and scientists, for this purpose. When a group of archeologists finally finds something on the third planet of a small, yellow star [[spoiler:it turns out humankind destroyed itself shortly after setting foot on the Moon]].
50	%%* LastOfTheirKind: Arafel, in ''The Tree of Swords and Jewels''.
51	* OurDragonsAreDifferent: In ''The Tree of Swords and Jewels'' the plot is driven, although for a long time it's not clear, by Nathair Stheach, imprisoned under the roots of the titular tree, whom Arafel stayed to guard against. He's been driving the conflict, manipulating the Drow, and breathing distrust and poison in everyone's ears, to set him free.
52	* OurElvesAreDifferent: "Scapegoat" (a Hugo nominee) uses "elves" in-universe as slang for the aliens.
53	%%** Her novelette "Pots" was published in Janet Morris's anthology "Afterwar"... and was submitted after Morris complained that she was getting a lot of (unwanted) post-apoc stories about elves. Morris took the story anyway -- probably because these elves had spaceships, AI moonrovers, and rayguns.%%The real-life commentary is interesting and all, but how is the trope used here?
54	* RuleOfThree: Invoked often in the Dreaming Tree, where to know a name and call it three times is to call or bind the one it belongs to. Arafel gives the children the name of a water horse, who aides them during the final battle.
55	* SaltSolution: In the Russian trilogy, salt is one of the ingredients of a ward against a vodyanoi.
56	* WatchThePaintJob: ''Legions of Hell'' has a scene in which Kleopatra and Hatshepsut borrow Marcus Antonius's red Ferrari -- and then run into a hostile situation which gets the car pretty badly damaged. When they meet Marcus again, with a Praetorian legion behind him and the need to take serious action quickly, he still takes a moment for, "Gods, Klea, what have you done to my car?"

Context Creator / CJCherryh