Author Kage Baker died 31 January 2010, after a battle with cancer (see this article and this update). Born 10 June 1952, in Hollywood, California, her first publications came in 1997, both in Asimov’s Science Fiction, and in the form of her first novel in “The Company” series, In the Garden of Iden. In 2004, her novella “The Empress of Mars” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Her personal web site, kagebaker.com, is not available at press time, but her Wikipedia entry has her full bibliography.
Baker’s death was announced in a letter from her sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, which we reprint here:
She died at 1:15 this morning. She had begun to have difficulty breathing early this evening; I gave her atropine and morphine for the breathing problems and the pain, but by about 8PM she slipped into unconsciousness. The last thing she requested was to have her pillows adjusted—she said she was more comfortable, and after that she said nothing else. She became unresponsive very shortly thereafter, and by her own request, no heroic efforts were made.
Her sister Anne and nieces Kate and Emma were up this weekend, and watched with me for most of the evening. At about 1AM her breathing got louder and lighter and more urgent, though her pupils were not responsive to light; there was a rush of bile from her mouth, and then she passed away very quietly in our arms.
Kage’s body will go to MedCure, a body donation program working on training surgery students. They will cremate it and return the ashes to me in about 3 weeks. Her ashes will then be scattered half from Catalina Island and half from Plaskett Creek beach near Big Sur.
[Edited 1 February: Marty Halpern has a wonderful, in-depth tribute to Baker posted here.]