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Jeanne Robinson died peacefully on May 30, 2010, at her home in British Columbia, after a long struggle with biliary tract cancer. Born Jeanne Rubbicco in Boston on March 30, 1948, she was well known and admired in both science fiction and dance circles.
Dance came first: she began dancing at the age of five, studied at several major dance schools, and founded and for several years led Nova Dance Theatre, the first modern dance company in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was there that she met and married, in 1975, Spider Robinson, the highly regarded science fiction writer and frequent Analog contributor. Together they wrote “Stardance,” which appeared here in March 1977 and won both Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella. They later expanded the novella to a full-scale novel with the same title, and followed it with two sequels, Starseed and Starmind. She almost had the chance to experience zero-gee dance in reality under NASA’s Civilians in Space Program, unfortunately ended by the Challenger explosion.
Her direct contributions to Analog were relatively few, but disproportionately large and memorable. Seldom has a story received such enthusiastic reader response as “Stardance,” and she was not just a dance consultant, but a full partner in its creation. Her indirect contributions were no less important and even wider-ranging. Even though her name appeared in the bylines only for the “Stardance” stories, Spider considered her an indispensable influence on all his work.
She will be very much missed by everyone who knew her, and we extend our deepest sympathy to Spider and to their daughter, Terri Luanna da Silva, son-in-law Heron da Silva, and granddaughter Marisa; and to Jeanne’s mother, Dorothy Rubbicco, and sisters Kathy Rubbicco, Laura O’Neil, Mary Rodericks, and Dori Legge.
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