Richard Morgan (author)

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Richard K. Morgan
Richard Morgan in Zagreb, 2008
Born	1965
Nationality	British
Genres	hardboiled, postcyberpunk

Influences William Gibson

Official website http://www.richardkmorgan.com

Richard K. Morgan (b. 1965) is a British science fiction author.

Morgan studied history at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduation he started teaching English in order to travel the world. After fourteen years and a post at Strathclyde University, his first novel was published and he became a full-time writer.

The common theme to Morgan's books is that they take place in a dystopia. His attitude is summed up by the following statement: "Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a willful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses." ^[1]

1 Literary career
2 Bibliography
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Literary career

In 2002 Morgan's first novel Altered Carbon was published, combining elements of cyberpunk and hardboiled detective fiction and featuring the anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs. The film rights for the book sold for a reported figure of $1,000,000 to film producer Joel Silver, enabling Morgan to become a full-time writer. In 2003 the U.S. edition received the Philip K. Dick Award.

In 2003 Broken Angels was published, the sequel to Altered Carbon, again featuring Takeshi Kovacs and blending science fiction and war fiction in a similar way to his cross-genre début.

Market Forces, Morgan's first non-Kovacs novel, is set in the not too distant future. It was originally written as a short story, then as a screenplay (both unpublished). After the success of his first two works, it was released as a novel and has also been optioned as a film.

Morgan's third, and he has stated final, Kovacs novel Woken Furies was released in the UK in March 2005 and in the U.S. in September 2005.

Morgan wrote two six issue miniseries for Marvel Comics under the Marvel Knights imprint. His first story, Black Widow: Homecoming published monthly in 2004 was followed by a second, Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her published monthly in 2005; both are now available in collected editions. According to Morgan's official website the series was "an artefact of limited appeal" and is unlikely to be continued, although he has other comic projects in development.

Black Man (known in the USA as 'Thirteen') was released in May 2007 in the UK and June 2007 in the USA. According to the author, the book is about the constraints of physicality and the fact that you are locked into who you are and there's not a whole lot you can do about that. These are things he couldn't deal with in the Kovacs universe, because for Kovacs and people like him mortality is avoidable: you just skip into a new body.^[2] The novel subsequently won the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award.

Morgan's next project is a fantasy trilogy, the first volume of which has the title A Land Fit for Heroes (The Steel Remains in the UK^[3]) and is due to be published in August 2008.