Christopher Priest (novelist)

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Christopher Priest
Born (1943-07-14) 14 July 1943
Cheadle, United Kingdom
Occupation Writer
Nationality British
Ethnicity English
Period 1966 – present
Genres Fantasy, horror, science fiction, slipstream
Notable work(s) Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige, The Separation, The Islanders
Notable award(s) See below
www.christopher-priest.co.uk

Christopher Priest (born 14 July 1943 in Cheadle, Greater Manchester) is a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige and The Separation.

Priest has been strongly influenced by the science fiction of H. G. Wells and in 2006 was appointed Vice-President of the international H. G. Wells Society.

Works

One of his early novels, The Affirmation, concerns a traumatized man who apparently flips into a delusional world in which he experiences a lengthy voyage to an archipelago of exotic islands. This setting featured in many of Priest's short stories, which raises the question of whether the Dream Archipelago is actually a fantasy. The state of mind depicted in this novel is similar to that of the delusional fantasy-prone psychoanalytic patient ("Kirk Allen") in Robert Lindner's The Fifty-Minute Hour, or Jack London's tortured prisoner in The Star Rover.

Priest also dealt with delusional alternate realities in A Dream of Wessex in which a group of experimenters for a British government project are brain-wired to a hypnosis machine and jointly participate in an imaginary but as-real-as-real future in a vacation island off the coast of a Sovietized Britain.

His most recent novels are The Islanders (2011), set in the Dream Archipelago, and The Adjacent (2013), a multi-strand narrative with recurring characters.

Tie-in work

Priest wrote the tie-in novel to accompany the 1999 David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ, which contains themes of the novels A Dream of Wessex and The Extremes.

Priest was approached to write stories for the 18th and 19th seasons of Doctor Who. The first, "Sealed Orders", was a political thriller based on Gallifrey; it was eventually abandoned due to script problems and replaced with "Warriors' Gate". The second, "The Enemy Within", was also eventually abandoned due to script problems and what Priest perceived as insulting treatment after he was asked to modify the script to include the death of Adric. It was replaced by "Earthshock". This falling-out soured the attitude of the production office to the use of established literary authors[citation needed], and no more were commissioned until Neil Gaiman authored the episode "The Doctor's Wife" in 2011.

A film of his novel The Prestige was released on 20 October 2006. It was directed by Christopher Nolan and starred Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. Despite differences between the novel and screenplay, Nolan was reportedly[citation needed] so concerned the denouement be kept a surprise that he blocked plans for a lucrative US tie-in edition of the book.

Work under pseudonyms

  • Priest uses the pseudonyms John Luther Novak and Colin Wedgelock, usually for movie novelizations. As well as the eXistenZ novelization (which undermined the pseudonym by including Priest's biography on the pre-title page), he has novelised the movies Mona Lisa (as John Luther Novak) and Short Circuit (as Colin Wedgelock).
  • Priest has co-operated with fellow British science fiction author David Langford on various enterprises under the Ansible brand.

Awards and honours

Priest has won the BSFA award for the best novel four times: in 1974 for Inverted World;[1] in 1998 for The Extremes;[2] in 2002 for The Separation[3]and in 2011 for The Islanders.[4]

He has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the World Fantasy Award (for The Prestige[5]).

He won the BSFA award for short fiction in 1979 for the short story "Palely Loitering";[6] and has been nominated for Hugo Awards in the categories of Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Non-Fiction Book (this last for The Book on the Edge of Forever (also known as Last Deadloss Visions), an exploration of the unpublished Last Dangerous Visions anthology). The Space Machine won the International SF prize in the 1977 Ditmar Awards . Priest's 1979 essay "The Making of the Lesbian Horse" (published as a Novacon chapbook) takes a humorous look at the roots of his acclaimed novel Inverted World. He was guest of honour at Novacon 9 in 1979 and Novacon 30 in 2000, and at the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in 2005.

In 1983 Priest was named one of the 20 Granta Best of Young British Novelists. In 1988 he won the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for The Glamour as Best Foreign Fiction Book.

Between 7 November and 7 December 2007, the Chelsea College of Art and Design had an exhibition in its gallery Chelsea Space inspired by Priest's novel The Affirmation. It followed "themes of personal history and memory (which) through the lens of a more antagonistic and critical form of interpretation, aims to point towards an overtly positive viewpoint on contemporary art practice over any traditional melancholy fixation."[citation needed]

Personal life

Priest lives in Hastings. He was married to writer Lisa Tuttle until 1987 and to Leigh Kennedy until 2011, with whom he had twins.

Bibliography

Novels

  • Indoctrinaire. London: Faber and Faber, 1970.
  • Fugue for a Darkening Island. London: Faber and Faber, 1972. Campbell nominee, 1973[5]
  • The Inverted World. London: Faber and Faber, 1974. BSFA winner, 1974,[1] Hugo Award nominee, 1975[7]
  • The Space Machine. London: Faber and Faber, 1976.
  • A Dream of Wessex (US title The Perfect Lover). London: Faber and Faber, 1977.
  • The Affirmation. London: Faber and Faber, 1981. BSFA nominee, 1981[8]
  • The Glamour. London: Jonathan Cape, 1984. BSFA nominee, 1984[9]
  • Short Circuit. Sphere Books, 1986. (Film tie-in novelisation as Colin Wedgelock)
  • Mona Lisa. Sphere Books, 1986. (Film tie-in novelisation as John Luther Novak)
  • The Quiet Woman. London: Bloomsbury, 1990.
  • The Prestige. London: Simon and Schuster, 1995. BSFA nominee, 1995;[10] World Fantasy Award winner, James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner, Clarke Awards nominee, 1996[5]
  • The Extremes. London: Simon and Schuster, 1998. BSFA winner, 1998;[2] Clarke Award nominee, 1999[11]
  • eXistenZ. Harper, 1999. (Film tie-in novelisation)
  • The Separation. Scribner, 2002. Old Earth Books 2005—BSFA winner, 2002;[3] Clark Award winner, Campbell Award nominee, 2003[12]
  • The Islanders Gollancz, 2011. BSFA winner, 2011; Campbell Award winner, 2012
  • The Adjacent Gollancz, 20 June 2013[13]

Short story collections

  • Real-time World. Faber and Faber, 1975. Reissued 2009
  • An Infinite Summer. Faber and Faber, 1979. Three stories reissued in The Dream Archipelago
  • The Dream Archipelago. Earthlight, 1999. Reissued 2009
  • Ersatz Wines – Instructive Short Stories GrimGrin Studio, 2008. Anthology of early works

Screenplay

Non-fiction

  • Your Book of Film-Making. London: Faber and Faber, 1974.
  • The Making of the Lesbian Horse. Novacon 9 for the Birmingham Science Fiction Group, 1979.
  • The Book on the Edge of Forever. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1993.
  • The Magic – the story of a film. Hastings: GrimGrin Studio, 2008.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "1974 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 17 May 2009. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "1998 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "2002 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  4. ↑ "2011 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 3 May 2012. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "1996 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 17 May 2009. 
  6. ↑ "1979 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 17 May 2009. 
  7. ↑ "1975 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  8. ↑ "1981 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  9. ↑ "1984 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  10. ↑ "1995 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  11. ↑ "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  12. ↑ "2003 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 29 June 2009. 
  13. ↑ "Christopher Priest – The Adjacent cover art and synopsis reveal". Upcoming4.me. Retrieved 23 January 2013. 
  14. ↑ Priest, Christopher (30 December 2011). "The Stooge online". Christopher Priest. Retrieved 10 July 2013. 
  15. ↑ "The Stooge". Back Stage 53 (19): 32. 10 May 2012. "Arekita Productions is casting The Stooge, a short film from a screenplay by Christopher Priest... The story follows a downtrodden but determined man seeking work as a magician's assistant who enters the world of a legendary illusionist and a captivating showgirl, and soon realizes that the world of magic reveals more surprises than he could ever have imagined." 

External links

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