Karen Anderson

Karen Kruse Anderson is the widow and sometime co-author of Poul Anderson and mother-in-law of writer Greg Bear. She is noted as the first person to use the term filk music in print. She also wrote the first published science fiction haiku (or scifaiku), "Six Haiku" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1962). She also probably coined the term sophont to describe the general class of sapient beings. As a student of philology she, in 1950, along with three friends, founded a Sherlock Holmes society, naming it the "Red Circle Society." She was, around this time, a friend of Hugh Everett III, whose theories about parallel universes Poul Anderson later became an enthusiast. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1982 novel Friday in part to Karen. In the 1980s she was an active writing collaborator with her husband, co-authoring several books.