(1936-2010) US nurse and writer who began publishing sf with a poem, "Atomic Reaction" for The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SF in 1963 as by Ron Webb, and whose first story, "The Girl with the 100 Proof Eyes" (1964 FSF), also as by Ron Webb, appeared a year later in the same journal. She began to produce fiction regularly only from the end of the 1970s, after about a decade in nursing, experience which figured in the nongenre RN (1981) and in her new tale, "Hitch on the Bull Run" (1979 ASIMOV'S). The latter is the first of the humorous Terra Tarkington stories whose heroine, a member of the Interstellar Nurses Corps, engages in medical and other escapades throughout the Galaxy: these are assembled as The Adventures of Terra Tarkington (fixup 1985).
Webb was perhaps better known for the Earth Song sequence – Earthchild (fixup 1982), Earth Song (1983) and Ram Song (1984) – in which the introduction of an IMMORTALITY process generates social upheaval, at first because the process must be initiated before the end of puberty, but in the long run because those who become immortal lose any capacity to create works of ART. The protagonist of the sequence, a musician involuntarily subjected to the process, helps create, over a 100-century period, a world whose inhabitants can choose between the ability to make art and the chance to live forever.
Her subsequent novels – Pestis 18 (1987) and The Halflife (1989) – are medical TECHNOTHRILLERS, the first dealing with a deadly virus, the second with a government experiment in personality manipulation that goes wrong (> IDENTITY). After a further story – "The Door" (in Final Shadows, anth 1991, ed Charles L GRANT) – she then became inactive as a publishing author. [JC]
born Tampa, Florida: 29 February 1936
died Blairsville, Georgia: 29 April 2010