Philip Purser-Hallard
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- For the television critic see Philip Purser.
Philip Purser-Hallard (born 1971 as Philip Hallard) is an author and scholar whose interests in science fiction and religion have been expressed both in fiction and non-fiction.
Purser-Hallard received his doctorate in English literature at Oxford University, during which time he was President and Society Poet of the Douglas Adams Society, and a founder member of a student comedy troupe called Cruel and Unusual Punishment. His DPhil thesis, entitled 'The Relationship Between Creator and Creature in Science Fiction', examines how British and American science fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries examine the relationship between humanity and a putative creating deity through stories about the creation of sentient individuals by scientists, working from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through to recent authors like Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and Dan Simmons. He also has interests in eschatological science fiction, as seen in his first novel, Of the City of the Saved....
Purser-Hallard has given three talks at the liberal Christian Greenbelt festival, all on the intersections of science fiction and religious themes: "Science Fiction as the Bible" and "The Bible as Science Fiction" (2004), and "The Spirituality of Doctor Who" (2005). He writes a regular column on science fiction and faith for Surefish, the ISP and webzine arm of Christian Aid.
Most of his published fiction to date has been set in shared universes with origins in Doctor Who licensed fiction.
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[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Books
- Peculiar Lives (Telos Publishing 2005), a novella in the Time Hunter series.
- Of the City of the Saved... (Mad Norwegian Press 2004), a novel in the Faction Paradox series.
[edit] Short fiction
- A novella (one of three, the others being by Mags L Halliday and Kelly Hale) in The Vampire Curse (Big Finish Productions, forthcoming in 2008), an anthology in the Bernice Summerfield range.
- Nursery Politics, a novella (alongside others by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum) in Nobody's Children (Big Finish Productions 2007), a Bernice Summerfield anthology.
- Future Relations (co-written with Nick Wallace) and five pieces under the umbrella title Perspectives in Collected Works (Big Finish Productions 2006, edited by Wallace), a Bernice Summerfield anthology.
- The Ruins of Time in Short Trips: Time Signature (Big Finish Productions 2006, edited by Simon Guerrier), a Doctor Who anthology .
- The Long Midwinter in Short Trips: The History of Christmas (Big Finish Productions 2005, edited by Guerrier), a Doctor Who anthology .
- Minions of the Moon in Wildthyme on Top (Big Finish Productions 2005, edited by Paul Magrs).
- Sex Secrets of the Robot Replicants in A Life Worth Living (Big Finish Productions 2004, edited by Guerrier), a Bernice Summerfield anthology.
- Scapegoat in Emerge (Subway 2003, edited by Jane Campion and Jude Simpson), an anthology of poetry, prose and drama.
- Various entries in The Book of the War (Mad Norwegian Press 2002, edited by Lawrence Miles), an anthology in encyclopedia form belonging to the Faction Paradox series.
[edit] Criticism
- "Cybernetic godhead": the relationship between creator and creative in the science fiction of William Gibson, in the journal ManuScript (1999).
- The Drugs Did Work, an article on Philip K. Dick, in The Guardian (12 August 2006).
[edit] Surefish columns
- It's been unreal
- Santa Claus conquers the Martians
- Getting needlessly messianic
- Through an Orbital Mirror, Darkly
- The Shape of Kingdoms to Come
- Back to reality
- I baptised an alien!
- Follow the Master
- Apocalypse Now?
- Feeling Listless?
- Turning a prophet
- The Church Expectant
- Worstworld
- What If ...
- Heroes all
- Bad robot
- Time for a change
- Requiem for the Undead
