| The Dresden Files | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Jim Butcher |
| Cover artist | Lee MacLeod, Christian McGrath |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Detective Contemporary fantasy Urban Fantasy |
| Publisher | Roc Books Dabel Brothers (comics and graphic novels 2007–2009) Dynamite Entertainment (comics and graphic novels 2009–present) |
| Publication date | April 2000–present |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) Serial (comics and graphic novels) Audiobook (CD & MP3) |
The Dresden Files is a series of contemporary fantasy/mystery novels written by Jim Butcher. He provides a first person narrative of each story from the point of view of the main character, private investigator and wizard Harry Dresden, as he recounts investigations into supernatural disturbances in modern-day Chicago. Butcher's original proposed title for the first novel was "Semiautomagic", which sums up the series' balance of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction.[1] In an interview, he mentioned that the best short description of the series was "Dirty Harry Potter".
In 2007, a television series based on the novels aired for one season on the American Sci-Fi Channel.[2]
Contents |
In the world of The Dresden Files, magic is real, along with vampires, demons, spirits, faeries, werewolves, and other mythical monsters. Harry Dresden works to protect the general public, who are ignorant of magic and the dark forces conspiring against them. This makes it difficult for Harry to get by as a working wizard and private eye. The Chicago PD's Special Investigation unit, when led by Karrin Murphy, regularly employs Dresden as a consultant to help solve cases of a supernatural nature.
In The Dresden Files universe, each species (humans, faeries, vampires, etc.) has its own political and societal rules, and organizations. The human wizards depend on the White Council, while faeries may belong to either the Summer or Winter courts, or they are Wyldfae, a group of faeries beholden to no court. Vampires may belong to a number of courts, be it the White Court (emotional/psychic predators), the Red Court (able to assume a "flesh mask", drink blood to feed), or the Black Court (not able to assume a "flesh mask", cannot go out into sunlight, drink blood to feed).
Jim Butcher decided to become a professional author at the age of nineteen. Subsequently he wrote three novels within the fantasy genre and one which he has classified as paranormal—books which the author has described as being "terrible".[3] In 1996 he enrolled in a writing class where he was encouraged to write a novel similar to the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton, rather than the more traditional high fantasy that had been his focus in the past, as Butcher had previously stated that he enjoyed the Anita Blake series.[4] Despite initial resistance, he wrote the first book that semester, closely following the instructions of his teacher, author Deborah Chester.[1]
When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.
— Jim Butcher, in 'A Conversation With Jim Butcher', 2004 [5]
The result was Semiautomagic, later to be retitled as Storm Front. His writing teacher declared it to be publishable, and Butcher started hunting around to do just that.[4]
Butcher failed to secure a publisher for two to three years. During this period he completed the second novel, Fool Moon, and had made significant progress on the third, Grave Peril. Deciding to focus on agents and editors who had already published similar novels, Butcher targeted Ricia Mainhardt, the agent representing Laurell Hamilton, and submitted a copy of his manuscript.[5] It was not accepted.[3] Finally, Jim Butcher met Laurell Hamilton at a convention, and was invited to lunch along with her agent (Mainhardt) and a second agent, Jennifer Jackson. Ricia Mainhardt agreed to represent him, and six months later The Dresden Files was sold to ROC, an imprint of Penguin Books.[3]
The first volume, Storm Front, was released in 2000 in paperback; the next two novels in the series, Fool Moon and Grave Peril, were released shortly thereafter, in January and September 2001, also in paperback. Subsequent novels in the series have been published annually since then, with the most recent novel, Ghost Story, published July 2011. Omnibus editions have been released by the Science Fiction Book Club, with each of the four volumes reprinting two or three of the novels in the sequence.
The series' first six novels were originally only published as paperbacks, but in 2007 ROC changed its strategy and began to publish hardcover reprints of books one to six. Volume six, Blood Rites, was released in July 2007. From book seven onwards, each new book was directly published as hardcover and paperback both.
Orbit Books purchased the series for UK publication, and released the first novel, Storm Front in September 2005—five years after the initial US release. They then proceeded to publish two books per month. In November 2007, Orbit Books announced that they had purchased the rights to Changes, the twelfth novel, as well as the thirteenth Dresden novel, Ghost Story.[6]
The first 12 volumes of The Dresden Files have been released as audio books narrated by James Marsters. The cover art for the series was created by Chris McGrath. Per a release on Jim Butcher's website on June 27, 2011, he reported that, "due to personal reasons", James Marsters would be unable to voice "Ghost Story"; instead, the narration was performed by John Glover.
| No. | Title | Hardcover Release Date | Hardcover ISBN | Paperback Release Date | Paperback ISBN | Audio Release Date | Audio CD ISBN | MP3 CD ISBN | Audio Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Storm Front | 2000 November 6 | 0-4514-6197-5 | 2000 April 1 | 0-4514-5781-1 | 2002 July | 0-9657-2550-2 | 0-9657-2556-1 | 8h 1m |
| 2 | Fool Moon | 2008 July 1 | 0-4514-6202-5 | 2001 January 1 | 0-4514-5812-5 | 2003 April 30 | 0-9657-2552-9 | 0-9657-2558-8 | 10h 6m |
| 3 | Grave Peril | 2008 November 4 | 0-4514-6234-3 | 2001 September 1 | 0-4514-5844-3 | 2005 July 30 | 0-9657-2555-3 | 0-9657-2559-6 | 11h 59m |
| 4 | Summer Knight | 2009 July 7 | 0-4514-6275-0 | 2002 September 3 | 0-4514-5892-3 | 2007 March 31 | 0-9790-7492-4 | 0-9790-7493-2 | 11h 12m |
| 5 | Death Masks | 2009 November 3 | 0-4514-6294-7 | 2003 August 5 | 0-4514-5940-7 | 2009 October 29 | 0-1431-4519-3 | — | 11h 21m |
| 6 | Blood Rites | 2010 July 5 | 0-4514-6335-8 | 2004 August 2 | 0-4514-5987-3 | 2010 April 15 | 0-1424-2806-X | — | 13h 11m |
| 7 | Dead Beat | 2005 May 3 | 0-4514-6027-8 | 2006 May 2 | 0-4514-6091-X | 2010 April 15 | 0-1424-2807-8 | — | 15h 14m |
| 8 | Proven Guilty | 2006 May 2 | 0-4514-6085-5 | 2007 February 6 | 0-4514-6103-7 | 2009 April 30 | 0-1431-4473-1 | — | 16h 16m |
| 9 | White Night | 2007 April 3 | 0-4514-614-01 | 2008 February 5 | 0-4514-6155-X | 2009 April 30 | 0-1431-4474-X | — | 14h 13m |
| 10 | Small Favor | 2008 April 1 | 0-4514-6189-4 | 2009 May 3 | 0-4514-6200-9 | 2008 April 1 | 0-1431-4339-5 | — | 13h 50m |
| 11 | Turn Coat | 2009 April 7 | 0-4514-6256-4 | 2010 March 3 | 0-4514-6281-5 | 2009 April 30 | 0-1431-4472-3 | — | 14h 40m |
| 12 | Changes | 2010 April 6 | 0-4514-6317-3 | 2011 March 11 | 0-4514-6347-1 | 2010 April 15 | 0-1431-4534-7 | — | 15h 28m |
| 13 | Ghost Story | 2011 July 26 | 0-4514-6379-X | — | — | 2011 August 4 | 0-1424-2906-6 | — | 17h 52m |
| 14 | Cold Days | TBA | TBA | — | — | TBA | TBA | — |
| No. | Title | Release Date | Book ISBN | Audio CD ISBN | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Wizard for Hire | 2005 March | 0-7394-5193-6 | — | Storm Front, Fool Moon & Grave Peril |
| 4 & 5 | Wizard by Trade | 2006 March | 0-7394-6581-3 | — | Summer Knight & Death Masks |
| 6 & 7 | Wizard at Large | 2006 October | 0-7394-7658-0 | — | Blood Rites & Dead Beat |
| 8 & 9 | Wizard Under Fire | 2007 May | 0-7394-8344-7 | — | Proven Guilty & White Night |
| - | Side Jobs | 2010 October 26 | 0-4514-6365-X | 0-1424-2826-4 | ten short stories |
All the books are published by ROC, an imprint of Penguin Books. The Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) is reissuing the series in hardcover omnibus editions. So far, all of the audio books of The Dresden Files have been read by actor James Marsters, with the exception of Ghost Story, which was read by John Glover. The first four are produced by Buzzy Multimedia Publishing. The fifth audio book Death Masks is produced by Penguin Audio. The audio books for the remaining books of the Dresden Files were released in 2010 from Buzzy Multimedia with James Marsters reading. Proven Guilty and White Night were released in April 2009 alongside Turn Coat. Death Masks was released November 2009, and Blood Rites and Dead Beat were released April 2010.[7] The next book in the series will be titled Cold Days[8], and the release date has been tentatively set for June 1.[9]
Butcher is currently planning for approximately twenty books in the "case files" of the series, to be capped by a further "big apocalyptic trilogy".
At the Tyson's Corner Book Signing on August 1, 2011, Butcher hinted that the titles of the apocalyptic trilogy would be "Stars and Stones", "Hell's Bells", and "Empty Night", referring to curse words used by Harry and the White Court vampires, respectively.
"Backup: A Story of the Dresden Files" is a novelette set in the "Dresdenverse", but narrated by vampire Thomas Raith. In the novelette, Harry is in danger and is unaware of it, and Thomas runs interference for Harry, trying to protect Harry without his realizing it. The novelette was published on October 31, 2008 by Subterranean Press.[10] It was also published in the collection of short stories, Side Jobs.
Butcher has also released all of his Dresden Files short stories except for "Curses", "AAAA Wizardry" and "Even Hand" in a single anthology, Side Jobs.[13] He has promised that all of his shorter works will someday be available in a collected format.
The Dresden Files was adapted to television in 2007 by the Sci-Fi Channel, and was canceled after one season. The stated reason was that the Dresden Files was the "biggest screen failure" of all time, despite being rated third in its time slot and outrating every episode of the popular Battlestar Galactica with its bottle episode, "Things That Go Bump".
In October 2007, Jim Butcher announced on his website that Dabel Brothers would be producing a Dresden Files graphic novel series:
"Working together with Dabel Brothers Productions, the Dresden Files are going to be translated into a graphic novel format. The current plan is to lay out the Dresden Files storyline at the rate of one of the novels every twelve to sixteen monthly issues, with occasional side-trips and independent stories thrown in. (Ever wonder what happened in Branson the month before Storm Front? How about what somebody saw in the lake in Minnesota between Storm Front and Fool Moon? Maybe I’ll get to tell those stories now! How cool is that?)
"I will be assisting with the writing of the comics, and am also involved in the design and approval of the characters, art, tone, and so on. This is an actual hand-in-hand project in which I have full creative input and influence, and I’m friggin’ giddy about it. I mean, come on! Comic books!"
The four-issue mini-series called Welcome to the Jungle, ran as a prequel to Storm Front from early to mid 2008. A compilation of that run was released as a hardcover graphic novel in October 2008. Storm Front was announced as the next adaptation, by the same creative team.[14] The first issue was released in November 2008. Welcome to the Jungle was nominated for the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.
Midway through the production of Storm Front, the title changed hands[15] from Dabel Brothers to Dynamite Entertainment, causing a long gap between issues #5 and #6. Artist Ardian Syaf left the project to work for DC, and Brett Booth was brought in to finish the graphic novel. Issue #6 was slated for May 2010.[16]
| No. | Title | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Welcome to the Jungle (prequel to Storm Front) | October 2008 |
| 2 | Storm Front, Volume 1: The Gathering Storm | June 2009 |
| 3 | Storm Front, Volume 2: Maelstrom | February 2011 |
| 4 | Fool Moon, Volume 1 | November 2011 |
Jim Butcher has spoken openly about a pen and paper roleplaying game released in 2010 based on the Dresden Files universe. The game has been produced by Evil Hat Productions.[17][18]
In January 2008, the project went into an early alpha phase of testing,[19] and was in various beta testing phases throughout 2009. Pre-orders were opened up on April 4, 2010, and include immediate access to the pre-print PDF, dubbed the "Early Bird" version.[20] Evil Hat released the game between June 23–27, 2010, to coincide with Origins 2010.[21] The RPG consists of two books, Volume One: Your Story, the core rule book, and Volume Two: Our World, a text describing the game universe. The game, which uses a modified version of the FATE system, emphasizes narrative structure over simulation of magical physics. It allows players to play a wide variety of characters, ranging from an ordinary humans such as Karrin Murphy or Gentleman Johnny Marcone to magic users like Harry Dresden or Molly Carpenter to powerful supernatural creatures along the lines of Thomas Raith, all in the same game, with all the players able to make a contribution.
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