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Quarreling, They Met the Dragon

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Sharon Baker was one of the most gifted writers ever to grace the genre of science fiction. She endows her characters with more human truth, her worlds with more intricate detail than most authors would be mentally--and emotionally--capable of. As her youngest son, I remember hearing the rythmic clicking of her keyboard in the wee hours of the night, only to be broken up by the occasional burst of triumphant laughter when her characters succeeded; or mournful sobs when one met his or her final fate. In order to create with integrity a world (Membliar) of beautiful slaves, vast technology, phanatical religion, and brutal war, Sharon would interview inmates at the King County jail in Seattle to endow her characters with the hardened edges that their innocent cores (modeled after myself and my three older brothers) did not possess. She would spend months interviewing scholars such as John Kramer at UW to validate her hard science, talking to physicians to refine her ideas on the metamorphic powers of the body, and sit down with my brothers and I to learn how we would behave in certain situations. The heroes and heroines of all three stories are horribly mistreated slaves running from oppressive masters and blood thirsty religious cults in hope of discovering love and salvation. They gain a stack of experiences along the way to their figurative and literal destinations, all the while the reader marveling at the characters growing depth and demensions. Her tale is one of love and loss; of life and death; of wrongdoing and redemption; good and evil. Had she lived but a while longer, Sharon Baker would have been a household name in the fold of Science Fiction lovers and writers. The truly great science fiction and fantasy writers--such as Tolkein, Dick, Huxley, McCaffrey--were great in that their story transcended the spectacle of action in order to present the reader with a powerful vision of who we are, where we've been and where we are going. The trilogy of Membliar (Quarrellng They Met the Dragon, Journey to Membliar, and Burning Tears of Sassaruumi is more than a fantastic story--it is a profound insight into the terrible, intricate beauty of life.