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American-Irish science fiction and fantasy author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diane Duane (born May 18, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author, long based in Ireland. Her works include the Young Wizards young adult fantasy series and the Rihannsu Star Trek novels.
Diane Duane | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 18, 1952 New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author |
| Genre | Science fiction, fantasy, animation |
| Spouse | |
| Website | |
| dianeduane | |
Born in New York City, she grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island. After school, she studied nursing and practiced as a psychiatric nurse for two years until 1976, when she moved to California and worked as an assistant to David Gerrold. Her first novel was published by Dell Books in 1979; Gerrold wrote an "overture" to that novel, stating he'd rather be making overtures than introductions to Duane.[1] She subsequently worked as a freelance writer. In 1981, she moved to Pennsylvania.
She married Northern Irish author Peter Morwood in 1987; they later moved to the United Kingdom and then to Ireland, where they reside in Grangecon, County Wicklow.[2][3][4]
A short story within the same universe, "Uptown Local", has also been published as part of Jane Yolen's Dragons and Dreams anthology, and a podcast of Duane reading it is freely available from her website. It also appears in the twentieth anniversary edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard.
In February 2011, Duane announced she would be releasing new versions of the first 4 books in the series,[5] updating the technology used in the books, fixing some timeline issues within the series, and overall making the series more appealing to contemporary young adult readers. The first of the series would be available in June 2011, initially in ebook format,[6] with the next three books to follow in the succeeding months and all these to have new ISBNs,[7] with the publisher switching to the revised editions with new covers around the time the next book in the series is released.
The series, in the same setting as the Young Wizards novels, focuses on cat-wizards, who maintain the worldgates that wizards use for travel between the sheaf of canonical universes.
In December 2005, Duane proposed to her fans that they fund a third novel in the series, The Big Meow.[8] After funding the project via whole-book subscriptions, per-chapter threshold pledges,[9] merchandising,[10][11] "put something in the kitty" donations,[12] and $2,900 in challenge grants,[13][14][15][16] Duane wrote, over a span of two and a half years, seven of the book's 13 chapters. No new chapters were published between July 2008 and February 2011, but on February 2, 2011, Duane announced the project's completion[17] and posted the remaining chapters for subscribers between then and the 15th.[18]
Books about adult wizards set in the same universe of the Young Wizards series.
The Young Wizards universe contains canonical alternate universes (So You Want to Be a Wizard and To Visit the Queen are good examples: the protagonists travel to alternate universes to solve problems there).
Also known as the Tale of the Five, this high fantasy series was paused in 1992.[when?] The books center on some of the same themes as her better-known Young Wizards series; those who wield the Blue Fire have many of the same responsibilities as the wizards and fight the same battle against entropy. In So You Want to Be a Wizard, Nita's wizardry manual is written by "Hearnssen", a reference to the protagonist of The Door Into Fire, Herewiss s'Hearn (son of Hearn), so it may be that the Middle Kingdoms are part of the same sheaf of universes as the Young Wizards setting. Adding to this, one interdimensional portal in The Door into Fire appears to open over New York City. Duane is working on the final volume.[when?] The Door into Fire and The Door into Shadow have an omnibus reprint called Tale of Five: The Sword and the Dragon. (ISBN 978-1892065513)
Several short stories are set in the Middle Kingdoms: Parting Gifts (1981) and its prequel The Span (1999) featuring Sirronde; Duane plans to write a middle novella and publish the three together as Sirronde's World.[20] Lior and the Sea (1985) is set in the world of the Middle Kingdoms, but not concerning any of the characters in the novels.
Duane also worked on Tales of the Five, a five-book series to bridge the gap between The Door into Sunset and The Door into Starlight. Books in this series so far are:
Duane has also written a number of Star Trek novels:
Duane also shares story credit on the TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before" with Michael Reaves.
The Harbinger Trilogy, published by Wizards of the Coast, is set in the Star*Drive universe. While Duane is not the only author to write for this universe, she was the first.
Duane wrote a trilogy of Spider-Man novels, The Venom Factor, for Byron-Preiss Multimedia from 1994 to 1996. The trilogy was composed of:
(written with Peter Morwood)
Co-authored with Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
Duane made available in various e-formats a previously unpublished book which was sold to at least two European publishers, but never actually brought out due to internal restructuring at one publishing house (Corgi) and the sale of another (Heyne Verlag). The novel, A Wind from the South, is the first of a projected trilogy telling the story of a young girl born in the 11th century in a remote region of the Alps. This girl slowly discovers that she is the intended physical avatar of an exiled Roman goddess, while (as she grows) she becomes caught up in the political turmoil of William Tell's time.
Duane was also responsible for prose adaptations of several scripts from The Outer Limits. She has also written numerous short stories, about equally divided between fantasy and science fiction, which have appeared in various anthologies and collections over the last twenty years. She also wrote the 1985 text adventure video game Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative.[23]
Duane drew the map in Larry Niven's The Ringworld Engineers.[24]
Duane has worked in television since the early 1980s, initially becoming involved in script work at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio (now Cartoon Network). After writing numerous scripts for such series as Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, Captain Caveman, Space Stars, Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Biskitts, and Laverne and Shirley in the Army, she moved on to work in development and serve as a staff writer at Filmation, and in 1985 was hired to story-edit the DiC animated series Dinosaucers. During this period she also wrote scripts for Sunbow Productions (Glo Friends, Transformers, and My Little Pony) and Walt Disney Productions (Duck Tales). In 1986, she co-wrote (with Michael Reaves) the script of one of the earliest episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Where No One Has Gone Before".
In the early 1990s Duane was brought on board as the head writer on the BBC Television educational series Science Challenge. Shortly thereafter she co-wrote (with her husband) scripts for Batman: The Animated Series and for Gargoyles. She also wrote the screenplay for the 1996 space adventure game Privateer 2: The Darkening, which starred Clive Owen, Christopher Walken, Jürgen Prochnow and Mathilda May. Other screen work from that period includes the screenplay for the Space Island One episode "Not In My Back Yard" (1998–1999).
In 2003, after doing nearly four years' development work with the production company Tandem Communications of Munich, Germany, Duane and Peter Morwood co-wrote the script for the German TV miniseries Die Nibelungen. The miniseries aired in Germany on the Sat.1 network in late November 2004, and a feature version (titled Sword of Xanten) screened in the UK in December 2004. A "megafeature" cut of the entire miniseries was aired on Channel Four television in the UK in December 2005. The miniseries aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US in late March 2006 under the title Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. The miniseries has also been released on DVD in the US and numerous other markets, under various titles (the previous US title was Curse of the Ring).
Duane was also a co-author of the Barbie movie Barbie: Fairytopia.[25]
An adaptation of So You Want to be a Wizard is currently in the works.[26]
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