Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Sydney J. Van Scyoc was an American science fiction writer, born in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, on July 27, 1939, and later based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She began publishing with the short story "Shatter the Wall" in Galaxy in 1962, then built a career across the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with both short fiction and novels.

Her first novel, Saltflower (1971), was followed by books including Assignment Nor'Dyren, Starmother, Cloudcry, Sunwaifs, Drowntide, Feather Stroke, and Deepwater Dreams. She is also well known for the Sunstone Scrolls trilogy—Darkchild, Bluesong, and Starsilk—and for stories that often centered on coming of age, human evolution, and encounters with unfamiliar cultures.

In the 1990s she stepped away from fiction to design and sell jewelry, then returned to publishing with new stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 2004 and 2005. She died on June 17, 2023, at age 83, leaving behind a body of work remembered for its imagination, empathy, and distinctive take on planetary science fiction.