20th Century Sword & Sorcery Characters: Arcana, created by Janet Fox

Janet Fox (1940-2009) was a Kansan who wrote dozens of short stories and poems spanning five decades, beginning her career with the short story “Just for Kicks” in in the November 1966 issue of the

highly regarded small press magazine/fanzine Riverside Quarterly. A 2004 collection, Not in Kansas, appears to have been her final publication. There was a poem, “The Timeline Murders,” published posthumously in the 2021 issue of Startling Stories. She edited a fanzine, Scavenger’s Newsletter, from 1985 to 2000, and wrote the final five novels of the Scorpio series for Ace Books in the early 1990s.

She wrote two series characters. The listing below consists of the three stories that describe the career—from a relatively new spellcaster to a powerful mistress of demons—of the witch Arcana. Of particular interest is Arcana’s version of what might be called “the Conan romance phenomenon,” in that she takes up a different male companion in each story.

 

“A Witch in Time”  |  Fantastic Stories vol. 22, #6, ed. Ted White, September 1973  |  short story |  reprinted in the author's collection, A Witches Dozen, W. Paul Ganley/Wildside Press, 2003

 

“She-Bear”  |   Fantastic Stories vol. 23, #2, ed. Ted White, January 1974  |  short story  |  never reprinted

 

“Demon and Demoiselle”  |   Fantastic Stories vol. 27, #3, ed. Ted White, October 1978  |  novelette |  reprinted in the author's collection, A Witches Dozen, W. Paul Ganley/Wildside Press, 2003

Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base entry

Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry

Wikipedia entry

Memorial blog post by Todd Mason

Entry by Christopher Rowe

Special thanks to Mike Palumbo for locating the author's photo