Cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan was born 1954 in Schenectady, New York, United States. She grew up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She attended the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, Massachusetts) on a scholarship, majoring in theater, and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1975.
She became a full-time writer in 1987. She has won a World Fantasy Award and the 1988 Locus Award [for her short story Angel, included in Patterns], and she has several times been a finalist for the Hugo Award as well as the Nebula. Her first novel, Mindplayers, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. Patterns, her short fiction collection, won the 1990 Locus Award for best short-story collection, and was nominated for the Bram Stoker and the Thorpe Menn Awards.
Pat Cadigan's short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Omni and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and in many anthologies. Her work has been translated into French, German, Polish, Japanese and Czech.
Cadigan's work has shown wide variety, ranging through dark fantasy and horror to quirky and original science fiction. Her style is often marked by a tough-minded vigor and icy undercurrents of black humor -- an Eighties sensibility that can only be called punk. Her "Pathosfinder series" (including such stories as Nearly Departed) was remarkable for its eerily visionary air. Cadigan's multifaceted talent includes a strong gift for definitive hard-core cyberpunk.
