| Richard Evans | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1964 Manchester, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Genres | science fiction |
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www.richard-evans.com |
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Richard Evans (born Manchester, United Kingdom, 1964), is author of Kosmonaut Zero.
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From 1980 to 1997, Evans was a guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter in a number of bands, appearing on the following albums:
He also performed throughout the UK as keyboardist for Playing At Trains on their 1987 tour supporting goth-rock act The Bolshoi.
Kosmonaut Zero is a science fiction story set in 1960s Soviet Union, drawing upon the contemporary myth of the lost cosmonaut as well as early NASA plans to create cyborg astronauts. In 2010, Evans visited Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow to research the book, following an award from Arts Council England. Kosmonaut Zero is due for release in November 2011 by Dead Ink Books.
During the writing period for the book, Evans contributed two articles on Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space to the Sky At Night Magazine and directed Gagarin50 [1], an art exhibition held in Manchester in 2011, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the first human spaceflight.
His earlier works were The Sorber & Fox Novels - Machine Nation, Robophobia and Exilium. The books are set in Boston, Massachusetts in a near-future, and centre on the plight of android characters, Kim Fox and Alex Sorber, covering themes of machine empathy and consciousness. One Word Radio described his work as 'more science-prescient than science fiction'. Book Munch commented that Evans 'draws us a convincing world of the not too distant future–recognisable, but rendered uncomfortable by changes in the familiar'. The stories take inspiration from cutting-edge android science and deal with ethical questions around machine emotions, scientific progress, slavery and the nature of humanity. As part of the research process for his work, he has twice visited CSAIL at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2003 and 2005 as well as the University of Osaka's Intelligent Robotics Lab in 2007. From October 2011, the Sorber & Fox novels became out-of-print, with the lead characters due to return in a new project called "Persona".
He has received several writing awards from Arts Council England and contributed robotics-related articles to UK publications, including T3 Magazine and the now-defunct UFO Magazine. The T3 Magazine article, Robosapiens, documents Richard's 2003 trip to CSAIL.
His short story Touch Sensitive (Perverted by Language, fiction inspired by The Fall) was described by The Stool Pigeon newspaper as 'moving and delicately written - one of the anthology's clear front runners'.
The Sorber & Fox Novels
Gagarin50 - April 9 - September 3, 2011 Waterside Arts Centre, Sale, Manchester