British author Christopher Priest (b.1943) died on February 2.
Priest began publishing short stories in fanzines in 1963 with “Going Native” and made his first professional sale, “The Run” to Impulse in 1966. Many of his earliest stories were reprinted in 2008 in his collected Ersatz Wines—Instructive Short Stories.
His first novel, Indoctrinaire was published in 1970. He followed up with more than a dozen other novels, many of which were set in his Dream Archipelago series, which were set on a world with a series of islands between two warring continents. The reality of this setting is often called into question in the short stories and novels set there. It may be a real planet or merely a world created by the shared dreams of people. Although many stories and novels are set against this backdrop, they can all be read separately.
Priest co-edited several issues of the critical magazine Foundation as well as the anthologies Anticipations and Stars of Albion, the latter in collaboration with Robert Holdstock.
In addition to his original fiction, Priest published novelizations of the films Short Circuit and eXistenZ using the pseudonyms Colin Wedgelock and John Luther Novak, respectively.
In 1994, Priest published a lengthy exploration of Harlan Ellison’s failure to publish The Last Dangerous Visions (earlier versions were called The Last Deadloss Visions). This essay, called The Book on the Edge of Forever, grew out of Priest’s disappointment that Ellison never published the book, which was to have included Priest’s story “An Infinite Summer,” which Priest eventually withdrew from submission. The essay was nominated for a Hugo for Best Non-Fiction.
Priest’s World Fantasy Award winning novel The Prestige, about a pair of dueling magicians in Edwardian England, was adapted into a 2006 Hugo-nominated film starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, and Michael Caine. He subsequently wrote the non-fiction book The Magic—The Story of a Film discussing the making of The Prestige.
Priest was nominated for the British SF Association Award 10 times, winning on five separate occasions for the novels Inverted World, The Extremes, The Separation, and The Islanders, as well as the short story “Palely Loitering.” He was also the recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Ditmar Award (twice), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (twice), the Kurd Lasswitz Preis, and a lifetime achievement Prix Utopia.
In 2005, Priest was one of the guests of honor at Interaction, the 63rd Worldcon, held in Glasgow, Scotland.
Priest was married three times, to authors Lisa Tuttle, Leigh Kennedy, with whom he had twin children, and, at the time of his death, to Nina Allan.
Obituary by Steven H Silver – http://www.stevenhsilver.com
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