Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and is an internationally recognized historian specializing in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book is Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide. She is currently working on a history of the American Revolution on the frontier, to be published by Yale in 2013. She has published seventeen or more SF stories since 1986, and one novel, Halfway Human (1998). She is a writer in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin. Aliens of the Heart (2007) is a collection of short fiction. Her novella Candle in a Bottle appeared in 2006, and her novella Arkfall in 2009. Gilman’s latest novel is in two volumes, Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles, and is a fantasy about culture clash and revolution in an enchantment-shrouded island nation.
“The Ice Owl” was published in F&SF. It is a dense, complex far future sf story. Gilman says it is set in the same universe as her novella Arkfall, “but it’s also the same universe as a number of other stories I’ve written. My novel Halfway Human is set in this universe, and the ice owl comes from the planet where “The Honeycrafters” takes place. I’ve started calling this universe the Twenty Planets.” Thorn’s school has been burned down by a Taliban-like political movement. She seeks out a tutor, who turns out to be a secret art dealer with a complex hidden life.