Chris Roberson (author)

Chris Roberson

Roberson at WonderCon 2017
Born (1970-08-25) August 25, 1970
Occupation Author, publisher, trombonist
Nationality American
Spouse Allison Baker
Children Georgia
Website
www.chrisroberson.net

Chris Roberson (born August 25, 1970) is an American science fiction author, trombonist, and publisher based in Portland, Oregon, best known for alternate history novels and short stories.

Early life and career

Roberson grew up near Dallas, Texas, and attended the University of Texas, Austin. Graduating with a degree in English literature and a minor in history, he held a variety of jobs - including seven years as a product support engineer for Dell computers - before quitting his job in 2003 to launch small press MonkeyBrain Books.

He cites his upbringing in the 1970s and 1980s, as his major inspiration, since science fiction was particular commonplace in America at that time, saying:

"Everything from Saturday-morning cartoons to comic books to late-night B-movies to pulp novel reprints to blockbuster summer movies--it was all science fiction, in one form or another."[1]

After college, he has suggested that he leaned towards becoming a more literary, post-modernist writer, even writing a couple of novels to that end, which he says will never see the light of day, after realising that he simply "wasn't depressed enough for that line of work".[1] In his twenties, he wrote a couple of mystery novels, seeing them as a commercial venture, but found himself skirting around turning them into 'genre' titles, falling between the two camps of mystery and science fiction, and interesting publishers of neither. Ultimately he settled on writing science fiction, saying:

"My brain tends to work along the lines of science fiction tropes. Whenever I run into an odd little bit of trivia, some obscure historical fact or odd scientific principle, I can't help but start thinking of ways I could use it in a story."[1]

His writings have received positive reviews from Locus Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Infinity Plus and RevolutionSF.[1] After many years in Austin, Texas, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, with his wife (Allison Baker) and their young daughter, Georgia.[2]

Clockwork Storybook

From 1998 to 2002, Roberson was part of writer's collective Clockwork Storybook, alongside noted comics author Bill Willingham (Fables), Matthew Sturges (co-writing with Willingham of Jack of Fables) and Mark Finn (Robert E. Howard scholar and playwright).

Starting as a writing group, CWSB became an online monthly anthology, and then a publishing imprint of the same name. Roberson produced four novels under CWSB, as the collective attempted to capitalise on the Print On Demand revolution. This ultimately fell through, and the four went their separate ways. Two (to date) of Roberson's CWSB books have been subsequently expanded and reprinted. Any Time At All (Sep, 2002) became Here, There & Everywhere (Pyr, 2005), and Set The Seas On Fire (Dec, 2001) was expanded for its April, 2007 release by Solaris. Voices of Thunder (Feb, 2001) has been revised to become Book Of Secrets for upcoming publication by Angry Robot in August, 2009.

Post-Clockwork works

Focusing, after the demise of Clockwork Storybook, on his writing, Roberson sold a short story (his first professional sale) to Roc anthology Live Without a Net, under the editorship of Lou Anders. It was published in 2003, and paved the way for future sales to Asimov's Science Fiction and other anthologies. In 2004, Anders, (by now considered by Roberson "something of a personal patron") by now an editorial director at Prometheus Books' new SF imprint Pyr, bought an expanded version of one of Roberson's CWSB books Any Time At All, which was published in 2005 as Here, There & Everywhere.

In 2003, having "discovered.. in the few years of helping run the CWSB imprint, that [he] really enjoyed being a publisher," Roberson started up his own imprint. Partly this move was inspired by the dissolution of CWSB, and Roberson having discovered a few projects by writers that he had wanted to bring out under that banner. He decided, however, that MonkeyBrain Books would deal exclusively in "traditional offset trade-paperbacks and hardcovers," distributed internationally, rather than printed on demand.[3]

He has also contributed several stories to the annual Tales of the Shadowmen anthologies.

He is preparing a series aimed at the Young Adult audience, entitled Celestial Empire, with the first collection subtitled Fire Star.

Roberson has also written short stories for such magazines as Asimov's Science Fiction, Postscripts, Black October, Fantastic Metropolis, RevolutionSF, Twilight Tales, Opi8, Alien Skin, Electric Velocipede, Subterranean and Lone Star Stories.

He is editor of the Adventure anthology series, first published by MonkeyBrain in November, 2005.

Roberson is also writing books for Black Library publishing; Dawn of War II, published March 2009, and Sons of Dorn, which came out in early 2010.

MonkeyBrain

Since 2003, he is the publisher (along with his business partner and spouse Allison Baker) of MonkeyBrain Books, an independent publishing house naturally based in Austin, Texas, which specialises in genre fiction and nonfiction genre studies.

In November, 2005, Roberson edited the first volume in a projected annual series of Adventure anthologies, comprising "original fiction in the spirit of early twentieth-century pulp fiction magazines" across the genres, featuring contributions from (among others) Lou Anders, Paul Di Filippo, Mark Finn, Michael Moorcock and Kim Newman. (Many of which featured authors would become MonkeyBrain stalwarts.)[4]

Comics

In July 2008, at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, it was announced that Roberson will be working on a comic book miniseries set in the universe of the DC/Vertigo series Fables, created by fellow-former-Clockwork Storybook author Bill Willingham.[5]

Roberson's miniseries is titled Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, and described by the author as featuring "spies, sex, and shoes."[5] Illustrated by Shawn McManus and released in late 2009 / early 2010, it "answer(s) the question of what happened to Cinderella's fairy godmother."[5]

Roberson was selected by DC Comics to finish the "Grounded" story arc in the Superman monthly title, which he worked on in addition to his current Vertigo titles, iZombie and Cinderella: Fables are Forever.[6][7] 2015 wrote for Legendary Comics the thriller graphic novel Black Bag, which features arts from JB Bastos.[8]

Awards and nominations

He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award three times - once each for writing (2004), publishing (2006), and editing (2006). (For Adventure Vol. 1, left.) On two occasions he has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Long Form in 2009 for The Dragon's Nine Sons. He has also been nominated twice for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Short Form, which he won in 2004 with his story "O One".

His novel Paragaea was included in Waterstone's Top Ten SF list for 2006.[9]

Bibliography

Novels and short stories

Roberson has written several novels and short stories and self-published (with the Clockwork Storybook team) some of them himself. (His works as publisher can be found here and here.)

Roberson also has two ongoing series:

Bonaventure-Carmody

Similar to the Wold Newton family by Philip José Farmer, Bonaventure-Carmody is about a family of adventurers that has many far-flung descendants.

Novels

Short stories

Celestial Empire

Celestial Empire is about an alternate history world where, using its Treasure Fleet, Imperial China was greatly expanded in size and role by later emperors to the point that the Chinese Empire is a space-faring superpower.

Novels

Short stories

Comics

Titles published by DC Comics and the Vertigo imprint include:

Titles published by Boom! Studios include:

Titles published by IDW Publishing include:

Titles published by Dynamite Entertainment include:

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Tobias S. Buckell interview with Chris Roberson for The Eternal Night. Accessed on the 21st of January, 2008
  2. ↑ Locus Online excerpts from an interview with Roberson, published in Locus Magazine's May 2005 issue. Accessed January 21, 2008
  3. ↑ Infinity Plus interview with Chris Roberson. Accessed January 21, 2008
  4. ↑ Adventure Vol. 1 Publication Information at MonkeyBrainBooks.com. Accessed January 28, 2008
  5. 1 2 3 "CCI: Vertigo Voices "Fables" Panel," by Timothy Callahan, July 28, 2008. Accessed July 29, 2008
  6. ↑ http://www.newsarama.com/comics/chris-roberson-superman-new-writer-101210.html
  7. ↑ http://www.newsarama.com/comics/jms-earth-one-sequel-101110.html
  8. ↑ Legendary Comics Announces Pacific Rim Comic Series
  9. ↑ Lou Anders' Amazon Blog. Accessed January 21, 2008
  10. ↑ DeNardo, John (February 14, 2013). "TOC: Old Mars Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois". SF Signal. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
  11. ↑ Bedford, Robert H. (October 8, 2013). "Mars as We Thought it Could Be: Old Mars, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois". Tor.com. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
  12. ↑ "Masks". www.comicvine.com. 2013. Retrieved 6 November 2013.

References

Interviews

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