Tanith Lee (1947–2015) was an iconic British writer of speculative fiction who wrote in nearly every genre during a prolific and distinguished career that produced almost one hundred novels, several hundred short stories, and work in other media (including two episodes of the BBC television series Blake’s 7). Lee grew up the daughter of professional dancers, who often discussed favorite books with her and encouraged her to read work by Saki and Theodore Sturgeon, among others. She began to write before the age of ten.
Lee’s short fiction has been reprinted by many anthologists and appeared in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines. In particular, Lee became associated with Weird Tales, which published her work continuously from the 1980s until her death. She became the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel (1980), was twice nominated for the Nebula Award, was nominated eleven times for the World Fantasy Award (winning twice), and received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2013 and the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
As she moved beyond her early works for children, Lee proved to be an inventive and fertile writer, producing novels and stories that differ vastly in tone and subject matter and are dauntingly comprehensive. There seemed to be no subject, from robots to cosmogony, that failed to serve her primary impulses as a storyteller. For this reason, it is hard to place her oeuvre within the larger context of the history of science fiction, except to say that her interests often lay within the gothic, surreal, and psychological. Although Lee was heterosexual, much of her fame was attributed to her award-winning fiction featuring gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters. An early series, Tales from the Flat Earth (inspired by the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde), was celebrated for introducing gender-fluid characters long before this became more common in the past few years.
“Crying in the Rain” (1989) is typical, classic Lee—a dark and brooding setting with all-too-human characters, and the implications of the setup carried to conclusion with devastating consequences.