Melissa Scott, winner of the John W. Campbell Award, twice winner of the Lambda Award for best novel, and author of the cyberpunk classic Trouble and Her Friends, returns with a hip novel of the media-dominated future, when the internet is filled with Jazz: intentional misinformation and bewildering disinformation that are both an artform and a business. Tin Lizzy, a respected Jazz artist with a checkered past, is a theatrical Web site designer who does backgrounds for Jazz productions. When a nifty new script shows up on the web, Lizzy is surprised to learn it came from a teenage boy named Keyz. It turns out Keyz used his parents' access codes to borrow a Hollywood studio's editing program- the true, hidden source of the studio's success. Now the studio head wants to lock him in jail and throw away the key. So Lizzy rescues him and takes him on the road, across the altered landscape of twenty-first century USA, trying to stay one step ahead of the police ... and the vengeance of a megalomaniac CEO. The Jazz is a road chase novel of the future, filled with shady characters, close calls, and colorful neat ideas.
Author
Scott studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, and earned her PhD. in comparative history. She published her first novel in 1984, and has since written some two dozen science fiction and fantasy works, including three co-authored with her partner, Lisa A. Barnett. Scott's work is known for the elaborate and well-constructed settings. While many of her protagonists are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, this is perfectly integrated into the rest of the story and is rarely a major focus of the story. Shadow Man, alone among Scott's works, focuses explicitly on issues of sexuality and gender. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1986, and has won several Lambda Literary Awards. In addition to writing, Scott also teaches writing, offering classes via her website and publishing a writing guide. Scott lived with her partner, author Lisa A. Barnett, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for 27 years, until the latter's death of breast cancer on May 2, 2006.
