| The Highfield Mole | |
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July 2007 re-titled as Tunnels - Book 1 |
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| Author(s) | Roderick Gordon, Brian Williams |
| Original title | The Highfield Mole |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction Subterranean fiction Lost World |
| Publisher | Mathew & Son Limited |
| Publication date | 17 March 2005 |
| Pages | 344 |
| ISBN | 0954839900 |
| Followed by | Tunnels, Deeper, Freefall, Closer |
The Highfield Mole (later renamed Tunnels) is a book by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams which follows the adventures of 14-year-old Will Burrows in a tyrannical underworld to which he has travelled in an attempt to find his father, an archeologist who disappeared down a mysterious tunnel.
Contents |
The book follows fourteen-year-old Will Burrows who lives in a fictitious London borough called Highfield with his family. Will has little in common with them except for a passion for digging, which he shares with his father. When his father inexplicably disappears down a tunnel, Will decides to investigate with his loyal friend, Chester. Soon they find themselves deep underground, where they discover the Colony, a subterranean city in which people have been living since Georgian times. These people have a deep hatred of anyone from the surface, who they call Topsoilers, and they are ruled by a strange and fanatical group called the Styx.
Although the authors sent excerpts to various publishers under the title The Highfield Mole: The Circle in the Spiral, they did not pursue that avenue as they decided to self-publish the book, which they did on 17 March 2005 with a limited run of 500 hardback and 2,000 softback copies,[1] financed by the sale of Roderick Gordon's house. The book received some trade press attention before launch and the entire hardback run sold within a day. On 19 November 2005, Barry Cunningham, of Chicken House, announced that he had agreed terms to publish The Highfield Mole and a second book in the series. Cunningham, while working for Bloomsbury in London, famously signed up J. K. Rowling,[2] and this connection led to the book being branded "the next Harry Potter".[3]
In June 2007, Chicken House announced that the book would be published in the United Kingdom in July 2007, and that they had also pre-sold the publication rights in 15 languages (it has now been sold to 40 overseas publishers). The authors and Barry Cunningham also decided to retitle the book Tunnels, to reflect that it had been changed by some limited editing. The United States publication would be released on 1 January 2008. With the announcement of the publication date, and press coverage in the UK, the price of the books from the initial self-published run jumped dramatically.[4] A number of the copies are signed by the authors and 80 copies drawn from the 500-copy hardback run were numbered as part of a "Remarque" edition. These 80 numbered copies have a hand-drawn illustration by Brian Williams, an inscription by Roderick Gordon, and are signed by both authors.
The sequel, Deeper, was released in the UK on 5 May 2008 (in the United States on 3 February 2009), and a third book, Freefall, was published in the UK on 18 May 2009 (in the United States on 1 February 2010). The fourth book, called Closer, was published in the UK in May 2010. Then, on September 1st, 2011, the fifth book, Spiral, was released, and the authors confirmed that one more book would be written, concluding the series as a hexology.
There is also a "Colony Leather Bound Edition" of ten hardbacks, numbered and signed, with a hand-drawn picture by Brian Williams bound into the book. T-shirts, postcards, art prints, and bookmarks which were issued as promotional materials at the time of publication also attract interest from collectors. Also leather-bound is the single copy of the hardback titled "The Book of Catastrophes".
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