3 in Southland Win MacArthur Grants : Fellowships: The women--a science fiction writer, a filmmaker and a musicologist--get foundation’s ‘genius awards.’

They didn’t ask for the honor or the money, and that makes their prize all the sweeter.

A Pasadena-born science fiction writer, a former teen-age runaway turned filmmaker and a UCLA musicologist were among five California women who were named geniuses Monday--rich geniuses.

They are among this year’s 24 recipients of MacArthur Foundation fellowships, often called “genius awards,” recognizing individuals who have made original contributions to fields ranging from theater to neuroscience.

The winners receive cash grants of $150,000 to $375,000 over five years, to be spent any way they choose.

The MacArthur Foundation is a Chicago-based philanthropy founded by insurance magnate John D. MacArthur. With its $3 billion in assets, it seeks solutions to critical problems throughout the world by investing in creative people and their ideas.

Each year, the foundation makes grants in eight major fields. For the winners, the awards generally come as a surprise. They are nominated by the foundation’s 100-member selection panel--whose identities are a closely guarded secret. That list is reviewed by a committee of 12, and final selections are made by the foundation’s directors.

This year’s winners represent fields as diverse as disaster relief and children’s literature.

The award could not have come at a better time for Allison Anders, a 40-year-old Silver Lake resident who surmounted great personal difficulties to become an independent filmmaker.

Anders ran away from an abusive father as a teen-ager in Kentucky, was gang-raped and suffered a nervous breakdown that landed her in a mental hospital when she was 15. She is the single mother of three children, ranging in age from 21 to a just-adopted 5-year-old, and supported her family on welfare until five years ago. She worked as a waitress and a childbirth instructor while putting herself through UCLA film school.

She had been in the midst of another personal struggle--wondering whether to continue in filmmaking--when the call from the MacArthur Foundation came last week.

The woman from the foundation could not have spoken more directly to her crisis.

“She said the award was basically to encourage me to keep doing what I was doing,” Anders recalled. “It was really kind of a miracle. I do regard it as that.”

Her $255,000 award will enable her to work on projects dear to her heart but not particularly commercial, such as a film about midwives. Her previous two films have dealt with Latina gang members in Echo Park (“Mi Vida Loca,” 1994), and the story of three troubled women (“Gas, Food, Lodging,” 1992). The latter film won a New York Film Critics Circle award for best new director.

The prize also means freedom for Pasadena novelist Octavia Butler.

Butler, who has won the nation’s two top prizes for science fiction writers, has authored 10 science fiction novels, some of them pounded out on an ancient typewriter in her tiny Pasadena house.

One of a small group of black novelists to achieve distinction in the science fiction genre, Butler has dealt with unusual themes, such as slavery and time travel in her 1979 book “Kindred” and the environment and metaphysics in her most recent work, “Parable of the Sower.”

The foundation said it found her work noteworthy because of its combination of African and African American spiritualism, mysticism and mythology.

When she learned of her $295,000 windfall last week, Butler said she was so stunned that she did not ask any questions--not even when she would receive the money.

But, like many of the recipients, she said the award would enable her to pursue her craft without material worries at least for a few years.

“It means a chance to write my novels without worrying about how I’m going to earn a living,” said Butler, 48, who began writing when she was 10 and “grew up” in Pasadena’s libraries because her mother was too poor to buy her books. The other California winners are Sandy Close, 52, executive editor of Pacific News Service in San Francisco; Pamela Matson, 41, a UC Berkeley environmental science professor, and Susan McClary, 48, a UCLA music professor.

It was the second year in a row that a UCLA professor has won the coveted award. Last year, the foundation honored Rogers Brubaker, an assistant sociology professor, for his studies of the effects of Eastern European nationalism on new immigrant populations. This year McClary was honored for her contribution to the field of musicology and music history. She is best known as the author of the 1991 book “Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and Sexuality,” which stirred controversy in a field that traditionally had not examined the cultural contexts of musical forms.

McClure said she will use her $295,000 grant to take a long-overdue sabbatical and concentrate on finishing her next book, a work on how social currents in the 17th Century gave rise to the sonata, the concerto and other common musical genres.

She also plans to replace her “clunky” upright piano with a concert grand.

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The Winners The 24 MacArthur Foundation grants announced Monday and their amounts:

CALIFORNIANS * Allison Anders: 40, Los Angeles, film director and screenwriter, $255,000. Anders has written and directed two films that tell the stories of underrepresented segments of society. They were “Gas, Food, Lodging” (1992) and “Mi Vida Loca” (1994).

* Octavia Butler: 48, Pasadena, independent writer $295,000. Butler has written 10 science fiction novels, including “Kindred Spirits” and “Parable of the Sower” and earned two of her profession’s top awards.

* Sandy Close: 52, San Francisco, executive editor, Pacific News Service, $315,000. Close has produced groundbreaking journalism on a shoestring budget for more than 20 years, and has nurtured many writers with unconventional views.

* Pamela Matson: 41, Stanford, environmental science professor, UC Berkeley, $260,000. Matson specializes in studying the interactions between the biosphere and the atmosphere and pioneered research on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

* Susan McClary: 48, Los Angeles, music professor, UCLA, $295,000. McClary explores the relationship between human experience and music and is the author of a controversial 1991 book, “Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and Sexuality.”

OTHERS * Jed Buchwald, 46, Cambridge, Mass., professor of history, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $285,000.

* Sandra Cisneros, 40, San Antonio, independent writer, $255,000.

* Frederick Cuny, 50, Dallas, chairman of Intertect Relief and Reconstruction Corp., $305,000.

* Sharon Emerson, 49, Salt Lake City, research professor at the University of Utah, $300,000.

* Richard Foreman, 58, New York City, director and playwright, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, $345,000.

* Alma Guillermoprieto, 46, New York City, independent writer, $285,000.

* Virginia Hamilton, 59, Yellow Springs, Ohio, children’s writer, $350,000.

* Donald Hopkins, 53, Chicago, consultant, Global 2000 Program, $320,000.

* Susan Kieffer, 52, West Vancouver, Canada, geological sciences professor, University of British Columbia, $315,000.

* Elizabeth Le Compte, 51, New York City, director of the Wooster Group, $310,000.

* Patricia Limerick, 44, Boulder, Colo., history professor, University of Colorado, $275,000.

* Michael Marletta, 44, Ann Arbor, Mich., chemistry professor, University of Michigan, $275,000.

* Meredith Monk, 52, New York City, director of The House, $315,000.

* Rosalind Petchesky, 52, New York City, political science professor, Hunter College, $315,000.

* Joel Rogers, 43, Madison, Wis., law professor, University of Wisconsin, $270,000.

* Cindy Sherman, 41, New York City, artist-photographer, $260,000.

* Bryan Stevenson, 35, Montgomery, Ala., executive director of Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center, $230,000.

* Nicholas Strausfeld, 52, Tucson, geology professor, University of Arizona, $315,000.

* Richard White, 48, Seattle, history professor, University of Washington, $295,000.

SOURCE: Reuters