Pamela Zoline

Pamela Zoline (or Pamela Lifton-Zoline; born 1941) is an American science fiction writer and painter.

Background
Zoline was born in Chicago, Illinois, but lived in the United Kingdom, especially London, for the first two decades of her life. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London.

Writing
Zoline is admired for her experimental approach to both the form of the short story and the genre of science fiction, especially for using the language of science to interrogate the scientific world view. Among science fiction fans, she is best known for her short story "The Heat Death of the Universe", published in 1967 in New Worlds. Called a "classic" of the genre by contemporary scholars,  it has been frequently reprinted since its original publication.

"Heat Death" is structured in a loosely encyclopedic style, with 54 numbered paragraphs narrated in a deliberately matter-of-fact third-person voice. It centers on a day in the life of middle-class housewife Sarah Boyle as she goes about preparing her children's breakfast and organizing a birthday party. Boyle's domestic sphere is presented as a possibly closed system analogous to the universe itself, and Boyle as subject to the ravages of literal and metaphorical entropy. As the narrative veers back and forth among scientific explanations, descriptions of household events, and philosophical speculation, the cumulative effect is of a mind and a culture on the verge of collapse.

Zoline went on to publish further stories in magazines including The New SF, Likely Stories, and Interzone. She has also written a children's book (Annika and the Wolves), libretti for two operas (Harry Houdini and the False and True Occult, The Forbidden Experiment), and original science fiction radio plays for the Telluride Science Fiction Project. Along with science fiction writer John Sladek, she was an editor of and contributor to two issues of Ronald Reagan: The Magazine of Poetry (1968).

Personal life
Zoline and her husband, John Lifton-Zoline (also known as John Lifton), have lived in Telluride, Colorado since the late 1970s. In 1984 she co-founded the Telluride Institute with Lifton and others.

Works

 * The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories, 1988 (short story collection).
 * Annika and the Wolves. Coffee House Press, 1985.
 * Sheep. Likely Stories: A Collection of Untraditional Fiction. Treacle press, 1981.
 * Instructions for Exiting This Building in Case of Fire. Interzone #12  1985
 *  Busy About Tree Life.  The Women's press, 1988.
 *  Aulde Fleet.  Polder: A Festschrift for John Clute and Judith Clute. Old Earth Press, 2006