Hugh Cook (science fiction author)

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For the Canadian novelist, see Hugh Cook (Canadian novelist).

Hugh Cook (b. 1956) is a cult author whose works blend fantasy and science fiction. He is best-known for his epic series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook was born in Essex, England in 1956. After spending his early childhood in England he moved to Ocean Island (now Banaba Island in Kiribati). His experiences of English castles and of life on an equatorial island later influenced his writing[1].

He moved to, and was educated in New Zealand. His first novel, Plague Summer was published when he was 24 in 1980.

Between 1986 and 1992 he wrote the ten-novel series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. Disappointing sales prevented the publication of further volumes (up to 60 were planned).

In 1997 he moved to Japan, and now lives in Yokohama with his wife and daughter and teaches English.

He now publishes mainly online, through his site, Zen Virus. His online works include poetry, short stories, "flash fiction", and several novels.

In 2005 he underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in the form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He wrote a medical memoir, Cancer Patient, telling of this experience.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series

Main article: Chronicles of an Age of Darkness

The series broadly tells the story of the events leading to the end of a dark age. The idea for the series began with an ambitious outline for a series of twenty novels. This would have been followed by two equally long series, The Chronicles of an Age of Wrath, and The Chronicles of an Age of Heroes. This sixty-volume scheme ended with the publication of the tenth volume because of disappointing sales. [5]

[edit] Other novels

  • Plague Summer
  • The Shift
This describes a postnuclear world where orange intelligent reptilian extraterrestrials known as the Spang have conquered the Earth through the use of a device called the Shift, which controls movement through space and time and can alter history. They are in league with Iridian Troy, the most powerful human on Earth, who has an overprotective attitude towards his daughter. He is opposed by his guilt-ridden over-intellectual employee Gabriel Arkhangel and his daughter's lover Clive Sendarka, whom he pursues using all the resources available to the human race. Humans are regularly exported to a slave colony known as Deep Six, which is far out in interstellar space.
  • Oceans of Light series
    • West of Heaven
    • East of Hell
    • North of Paradise
A fantasy trilogy that Cook finished in the 1990s, set in Chalakanesia.

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Chronicles of an Age of Darkness stories

[edit] Oolong Morblock stories

[edit] Chalakanesia stories

[edit] External links

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