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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-author"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Priest, Christopher </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 5 February 2024. Tagged: Author, Fan.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=priest_christopher'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=priest_christopher'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=priest_christopher'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Checklist" onclick="window.location.hash='chklst'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Alpha" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=priest_christopher&abc'" ></span> <span><input class="button PNI" type="button" value="Chron" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=priest_christopher'" ></span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=priest_christopher');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=Priest-Separation.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/Priest-Separation.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>(1943-2024) UK author, first trained as an accountant; active in <a href="/entry/fanzine">Fanzines</a> and <a href="/entry/fandom">Fandom</a> from 1964; married 1981-1987 to Lisa <a href="/entry/tuttle_lisa">Tuttle</a>, 1988-2011 to Leigh <a href="/entry/kennedy_leigh">Kennedy</a>, and partner of Nina <a href="/entry/allan_nina">Allan</a> from 2011 (they married in 2023). He published several <a href="/entry/tie">Ties</a> under various pseudonyms, only two of which he formally acknowledged: John Luther Novak and Colin Wedgelock. He distinguished sharply between any such work and any work to which he signed his name. He was Associate Editor of <a href="/entry/foundation_the_review_of_science_fiction">Foundation</a> 1974-1977; his anthologies are <i>Anticipations</i> (anth <b>1978</b>), and <i>Stars of Albion</i> (anth <b>1979</b>) with Robert P <a href="/entry/holdstock_robert_p">Holdstock</a>. In <i>The Last Deadloss Visions</i> (<b>1987</b> chap; various revs and addenda <b>1987</b> chap; exp vt <i>The Book on the Edge of Forever; The Facts, the Figures, and the Delusions behind Harlan Ellison's Never-Published Anthology</i> <b>1994</b> chap) he produced a cruel analysis of Harlan <a href="/entry/ellison_harlan">Ellison</a>'s non-completion of «The Last Dangerous Visions». </p> <p>Priest began to publish work of sf interest with "The Run" in <i>Impulse</i> (see <a href="/entry/science_fantasy_magazine">Science Fantasy</a>) for May 1966, though some earlier work (not all previously published) was assembled with revealing commentary as <i>Ersatz Wines: Instructive Short Stories</i> (coll <b>2008</b>); most of his best early work, much of it still apprentice, was assembled as <i>Transplantationen</i> (coll trans Tony Westermayr <b>1972</b> Germany), appearing in English only later as <i>Real-Time World</i> (coll <b>1974</b>).</p> <p>Priest's first novel, <i>Indoctrinaire</i> (portion in <i>New Writings in S-F 15</i>, anth <b>1968</b>, edited by John <a href="/entry/carnell_john">Carnell</a>; much exp <b>1970</b>; rev <b>1979</b>), features a researcher in the Antarctic who is abducted to Brazil, where he is immured in at least two bleak <a href="/entry/keep">Keeps</a> (one a <a href="/entry/labyrinths">Labyrinth</a>), in a region subject to <a href="/entry/timeslip">Timeslips</a>; his efforts to make sense of his position or <i>condition</i> – a pattern of frustrated interrogation to be found frequently throughout Priest's work – are abortive. The influence of J G <a href="/entry/ballard_j_g">Ballard</a> and Franz <a href="/entry/kafka_franz">Kafka</a> can be detected here; they are figures who remained relevant to his work for the rest of his career. His last book, a nonfiction study of Ballard of which he had written 70,000 words, was nearly complete at his death.</p> <p><i>Fugue for a Darkening Island</i> (<b>1972</b>; vt <i>Darkening Island</i> <b>1972</b>) is stronger: set in an England of the <a href="/entry/near_future">Near Future</a>, it deals with <a href="/entry/politics">Politics</a> and racial tension, focusing on the arrival of African refugees whose homeland has been destroyed by nuclear <a href="/entry/world_war_three">World War Three</a>; whether or not the narrative structure is literally based on a musical fugue, it is clear that the breaking up of narrative sequence is seriously intended. His third novel, <i>Inverted World</i> (December 1973-March 1974 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>; <b>1974</b>; vt <i>The Inverted World</i> <b>1974</b>), marks the climax of his career as a writer whose work resembled <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a>, and remains one of the most impressive pure-sf novels produced in the UK since World War Two; though its reality turns out to be (in a sense) a matter of <a href="/entry/perception">Perception</a>, the hyperboloid world across which City Earth moves on rollers is perhaps the strangest planet invented since Mesklin in Hal <a href="/entry/clement_hal">Clement</a>'s <i>Mission of Gravity</i> (April-July 1953 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; cut <b>1954</b>; text restored with additions and one added story, as coll <b>1978</b>), and the <a href="/entry/time_distortion">Time Distortion</a> it imposes on the inhabitants of the <a href="/entry/cities">City</a> is described in <a href="/entry/hard_sf">Hard SF</a> terms that lead readers to assume that <i>Inverted World</i> takes place in a genuine <a href="/entry/alternate_cosmos">Alternate Cosmos</a>. The ostensible protagonist exhibits a combination of traumatized lassitude and obduracy which seems characteristically British; but the frame story, set in a <a href="/entry/ruined_earth">Ruined Earth</a> version of Earth, focuses on an energetic female medical technician who experiences a genuine <a href="/entry/conceptual_breakthrough">Conceptual Breakthrough</a> when she grasps the nature of the <a href="/entry/pocket_universe">Pocket Universe</a> in which a strange moving city is trapped. In the end, the elders of the city recognize that they must escape this <a href="/entry/entropy">Entropic</a> reality, and open the city gates to the world. It is a sign of Priest's heterodox understanding of sf that his main protagonist refuses to abandon the old world. (<i>The Making of the Lesbian Horse</i> [<b>1979</b> chap] is a spoof continuation of the book.)</p> <p><i>The Space Machine: A Scientific Romance</i> (<b>1976</b>) is a cleverly plotted <a href="/entry/sequels_by_other_hands">Sequel by Another Hand</a> that pastiches the work of H G <a href="/entry/wells_h_g">Wells</a>, incorporating the author himself in the storyline (see <a href="/entry/recursive_sf">Recursive SF</a>), which proposes plot-explanations for some of the narrative gaps left in <i>The Time Machine</i> (<b>1895</b>) and <i>The War of the Worlds</i> (April-December 1897 <a href="/entry/pearsons_magazine">Pearson's</a>; <b>1898</b>); in its literary focus and its retrospection, and in its anticipation of <a href="/entry/steampunk">Steampunk</a>, the book marked, in hindsight, a significant shift in Priest's work. With <i>A Dream of Wessex</i> (<b>1977</b>; vt <i>The Perfect Lover</i> <b>1977</b>), he began to write tales whose increasingly intricate plots had to be read as maps through which one explored not the world (as in conventional sf) but the protagonists. Here thirty-nine human minds are meshed into a <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> net which projects them (or their mental simulacra) forward from 1983 into a <a href="/entry/virtual_reality">Virtual-Reality</a> world of their consensus imagination, 150 years in the future, in which they "live" without memory of the real world. The entire book is a metaphor about the creative process and its relation to solipsism. </p> <p>The <b>Dream Archipelago</b> series (see <a href="/entry/archipelago">Archipelago</a>) – comprising some stories from <i>An Infinite Summer</i> (coll <b>1979</b>) and later revised, along with other tales, in <i>The Dream Archipelago</i> (coll of linked stories <b>1999</b>; exp <b>2009</b>), plus <i>The Affirmation</i> (<b>1981</b>), <i>The Islanders</i> (<b>2011</b>), <i>The Gradual</i> (<b>2016</b>) and <i>The Evidence</i> (<b>2020</b>) – intensify the sense that Priest's landscapes had now become forms of expression of the psyche, and are of intense interest for the dream-like convolutions of psychic terrain so displayed. The Dream Archipelago itself is a surreally unspecific rendering of England as a land half-sunk beneath the ocean (a vision perhaps influenced by Richard <a href="/entry/jefferies_richard">Jefferies</a>'s <i>After London</i> [<b>1885</b>]), and is a powerful late-century representation of <i>Sehnsucht</i> (C S <a href="/entry/lewis_c_s">Lewis</a>'s expression to describe a longing for something that hovers, forever unattainable, beyond the terms of reality). The protagonist of <i>The Affirmation</i> – who is his own <a href="/entry/doppelgangers">Doppelganger</a>, as is the case in much of Priest's later work – inhabits two worlds: a difficult-to-discern <a href="/entry/london">London</a> and an <a href="/entry/islands">Island</a> in the Dream Archipelago, where <a href="/entry/immortality">Immortality</a>, at the cost of <a href="/entry/amnesia">Amnesia</a>, has been granted him. Each version of the protagonist is writing a book about the world of the other. <i>The Islanders</i> is ostensibly structured as a gazetteer (see <a href="/entry/travel_guides">Travel Guides</a>) to an extremely extensive series of <a href="/entry/islands">Islands</a> that fill the sea between two mutually inimical land masses; but the deeper the reader penetrates into the interwoven tales that underlie and interlace the prose islands of description, the more mutable the archipelago becomes, as does the underlying narrative: a <a href="/entry/fantastic_voyages">Fantastic Voyage</a> without boundaries, or a home to sail for. The book, which cannot easily be called sf, is deeply labyrinthine, deeply <a href="/entry/equipoise">Equipoisal</a>. It was a joint winner of the <a href="/entry/john_w_campbell_memorial_award">John W Campbell Memorial Award</a>.</p> <p>In <i>The Gradual</i> (<b>2016</b>), a musician tours the archipelago and discovers the act of voyaging to be fraught with elusive <a href="/entry/time_distortion">Time Distortion</a> effects in which both "absolute" and local time are subject to change, causing voyagers to accumulate a temporal "detriment" which needs regular adjustment and correction. These dislocations carry a significant metaphorical load, which is if anything intensified in the last <b>Archipelago</b> novel, <i>The Evidence</i> (<b>2020</b>), whose first-person narrator is a crime novelist named Todd Fremde – which might be cod-translated from the German as Death Outsider – whose visit to the island Dearth to give a lecture entangles him in a long-ago murder back home.</p> <p>The publication of a singleton, <i>The Glamour</i> (<b>1984</b>; rev <b>1985</b>) marked an even more radical move from the regions of sf or fantasy than did <i>The Affirmation</i>, and though – along with <i>The Prestige</i> (<b>1995</b>) and <i>The Extremes</i> (<b>1998</b>) – they are central both to Priest's career, and to late twentieth century <a href="/entry/fantastika">Fantastika</a> in the UK, they do not respond readily to the descriptive tools of sf criticism. Nor are they meant to: Priest made it clear in various ways that he did not wish to be conceived as a genre writer. The central novels of his career seem, in a retrospective view, to be <i>sui generis</i>. They may be described according to various rubrics, but not satisfactorily. Perhaps they may most profitably be read as explorations of ravenous psyches whose hunger expresses itself through the ingestion of or control over "unreal" (or fantasy) worlds. It is certainly possible to suggest that <i>The Affirmation</i> is a tale of <a href="/entry/parallel_worlds">Parallel Worlds</a>: and that <i>The Glamour</i> is a tale whose protagonist literally becomes invisible (see <a href="/entry/invisibility">Invisibility</a>); and that <i>The Prestige</i> – filmed as <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/prestige_the">Prestige</a> (<i>2006</i>), which film is the subject of a nonfiction study by Priest himself, <i>The Magic: The Story of a Film</i> (<b>2008</b>) – is a tale <a href="/entry/equipoise">Equipoisal</a> between sf and fantasy, conjoining stage and perhaps literal magic with an informed portrait of Nikola <a href="/entry/tesla_nikola">Tesla</a> and his presumed discovery of the secret of <a href="/entry/matter_transmission">Matter Transmission</a> with the side-effect of <a href="/entry/matter_duplication">Matter Duplication</a>. But these readings do scant justice to the intense and conscious inwardness of the tales, nor their refusal to settle into "reliable" readings.</p> <p>Some later books were, however, weighted clearly toward sf readings. Though it shares a good deal of thematic material with its unfixable predecessors, <i>The Quiet Woman</i> (<b>1990</b>) marks a decided return to the external world. Set in the <a href="/entry/near_future">Near Future</a>, with radioactive contamination impinging upon the southern counties, the tale is a scathing vision of an England rapidly becoming a <a href="/entry/dystopias">Dystopia</a>. <i>The Separation</i> (<b>2002</b>), which won the <a href="/entry/arthur_c_clarke_award">Arthur C Clarke Award</a>, envisions two separate versions of the UK, the <a href="/entry/jonbar_point">Jonbar Point</a> that divides them being the flight made by Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) to Scotland in May 1941; a darkly-conceived Winston S <a href="/entry/churchill_winston_s">Churchill</a> plays a role. In the <a href="/entry/alternate_worlds">Alternate World</a> version of the following years, Hess's claim to be conducting a peace mission is believed and leads to negotiations: <a href="/entry/world_war_two">World War Two</a> terminates, safely short of the formal beginning of the Final Solution (see <a href="/entry/holocaust">Holocaust</a>), but the resolution is ambiguous and uncosy. <i>The Adjacent</i> (<b>2013</b>) again subjects a beleaguered Britain to moral and cultural integration through the perspectives granted through the creation of Alternate Worlds (among them, as already noted, the <b>Dream Archipelago</b>), whose testing intersections (or adjacencies) do nothing to blur the coherence of Priest's sense that the modern world is in a state of perhaps terminal distress.</p> <p><i>An American Story</i> (<b>2018</b>) interrogates rival narratives explaining the events of 9/11, subverting official appearances in a fashion perhaps too deeply anchored in contentious conspiracy theories; there is resonance here with <i>The Separation</i>, which also draws on hypotheses challenging an established version of history. The interwoven annotations that explicate and contextualize much of his previous work in <i>Episodes: Short Stories</i> (coll <b>2019</b>), which assembles tales from as early as 1972, point to the complexly urgent relevance, over the decades, of his best fiction. The vigorously told <i>Expect Me Tomorrow</i> (<b>2022</b>) movingly shuttlecocks between two protagonists who both have twin brothers: a nineteenth-century glaciologist haunted by premonitions of <a href="/entry/climate_change">Climate Change</a>, and a former policeman attempting to understand, locked as he is in the desert stretches of southern England in 2050, the nature of the catastrophe and to investigate an historical crime; by an accident of advanced <a href="/entry/communications">Communications</a> <a href="/entry/technology">Technology</a>, his questions reach the Victorian-era twins via <a href="/entry/time_radio">Time Radio</a>, and they perceive these messages as rare but disturbing "voices in the head". In <i>Airside</i> (<b>2023</b>), a focus on the endless recessions of any airport whose size defeats perspective is governed mainly by successive disappearances of an American movie star named Jeanette Marchand in 1949 and later. The protagonist of the tale, a warmly conceived film critic, comes in his search for Marchand to something like terms with the inherent liminality of certain dense intersections in the world, the airsides entered after passing through strait gates out of the measurable real. This contemplative narrative has some of the tone of an (imaginable) voiceover for Chris <a href="/entry/marker_chris">Marker</a>'s <i>La</i> <a href="/entry/jetee_la">Jetée</a> (<i>1962</i>); the protagonist's review of the film appears within this text, along with manifestations of its cast.</p> <p>Priest remains a figure singularly difficult to assess, or to locate on a literary map; it is very unlikely that his ultimately sizeable oeuvre will ever fit neatly into any conspectus of literary fiction or sf. It is not unlikely, on the other hand, that he will become increasingly recognized as an author of importance who occupied (as did Ballard and Kafka before him) his own territory. [JC/PN/DRL]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/bsfa_award">BSFA Award</a>; <a href="/entry/dimensions">Dimensions</a>; <a href="/entry/disaster">Disaster</a>; <a href="/entry/ditmar_award">Ditmar Award</a>; <a href="/entry/fan_funds">Fan Funds</a>; <a href="/entry/history_of_sf">History of SF</a>; <a href="/entry/mars">Mars</a>; <a href="/entry/mathematics">Mathematics</a>; <a href="/entry/media_landscape">Media Landscape</a>; <a href="/entry/milford_science_fiction_writers_conference">Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference</a>; <a href="/entry/new_wave">New Wave</a>; <a href="/entry/new_writings_in_sf">New Writings in SF</a>; <a href="/entry/transportation">Transportation</a>.</p> <h3 id="chklst">Christopher McKenzie Priest</h3> <p><b>born</b> Cheadle, Cheshire: 14 July 1943</p> <p><b>died</b> Rothesay, Isle of Bute, Scotland: 2 February 2024</p> <p><b>works</b></p> <p><input type="button" value="Alphabetical" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=priest_christopher&abc'"> <input type="button" value="Chronological" class="button PNI" onclick="window.location.href='/chron.php?id=priest_christopher'"></p> <p>As Priest strictly segregated his pseudonymous work from signed work, we have listed pseudonymous works separately; it is not believed that all such works have been identified. Some known non-genre titles are not listed here.</p> <p><b>series</b></p> <p><b>Dream Archipelago</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Affirmation&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Affirmation</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1981</b>) [<b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/nonpictorial]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Dream+Archipelago&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Dream Archipelago</a></em> (London: Earthlight, <b>1999</b>) [coll of linked stories: contains three stories revised from <em>An Infinite Summer</em> (see below) plus other works: <b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/Jim <a href="/entry/burns_jim">Burns</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Dream+Archipelago&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Dream Archipelago</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2009</b>) [coll of linked stories: contains additional novella: <b>Dream Archipelago</b>: pb/Sidonie Beresford-Browne]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Islanders&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Islanders</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2011</b>) [<b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/Grady McFerrin]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Adjacent&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Adjacent</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2013</b>) [<b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/abroberts]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Gradual&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Gradual</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2016</b>) [<b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/www.us-now.com]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Evidence&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Evidence</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2020</b>) [<b>Dream Archipelago</b>: hb/Tomás Almeida]</li> </ul> <p><b>individual titles</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Indoctrinaire&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Indoctrinaire</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1970</b>) [portion first appeared in <em>New Writings in S-F 15</em> (anth <b>1968</b>) edited by John <a href="/entry/carnell_john">Carnell</a>: hb/uncredited] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Indoctrinaire&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Indoctrinaire</a></em> (London: Pan Books, <b>1979</b>) [rev of the above: pb/Geoff Taylor]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Fugue+for+a+Darkening+Island&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Fugue for a Darkening Island</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1972</b>) [hb/Judith Ann <a href="/entry/lawrence_j_a">Lawrence</a>] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Darkening+Island&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Darkening Island</a></em> (New York: Harper and Row, <b>1972</b>), [vt of the above: hb/Neil Scholl]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Inverted+World&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Inverted World</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1974</b>) [first appeared December 1973-March 1974 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>: hb/nonpictorial] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Inverted+World&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Inverted World</a></em> (New York: Harper and Row, <b>1974</b>) [vt of the above: illus/Andrew M <a href="/entry/stephenson_andrew_m">Stephenson</a>: hb/Sag Harbor Art Works]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Omnibus+2+Inverted+World+and+Fugue+for+a&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Omnibus 2: Inverted World and Fugue for a Darkening Island</a></em> (London: Earthlight, <b>1999</b>) [omni of the above two: pb/Jim <a href="/entry/burns_jim">Burns</a>]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Space+Machine+A+Scientific+Romance&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Space Machine: A Scientific Romance</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1976</b>) [hb/uncredited]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Futur+Interieur&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Futur Interieur</a></em> (Paris: Calmann-Levy, <b>1977</b>) [trans anon from English-language manuscript: precedes English edition by six months: pb/uncredited] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=A+Dream+of+Wessex&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">A Dream of Wessex</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1977</b>) [first publication in English: hb/from Paul Nash] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Perfect+Lover&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Perfect Lover</a></em> (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, <b>1977</b>) [vt of the above: hb/Muriel Nasser]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Omnibus+1+The+Space+Machine+and+a+Dream+of+Wessex&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Omnibus 1: The Space Machine and a Dream of Wessex</a></em> (London: Earthlight, <b>1999</b>) [omni of the above and <em>The Space Machine</em> above: pb/Jim <a href="/entry/burns_jim">Burns</a>]</li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Glamour&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Glamour</a></em> (London: Jonathan Cape, <b>1984</b>) [hb/Brian Robins] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Glamour&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Glamour</a></em> (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, <b>1985</b>) [rev of the above: hb/Linda Fennimore]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Quiet+Woman&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Quiet Woman</a></em> (London: Bloomsbury, <b>1990</b>) [hb/Kim Marsland]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Prestige&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Prestige</a></em> (London: Simon and Schuster, <b>1995</b>) [hb/Holly Warburton]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Extremes&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Extremes</a></em> (London: Simon and Schuster, <b>1998</b>) [hb/Holly Warburton]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Separation&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Separation</a></em> (London: Simon and Schuster, <b>2002</b>) [pb/photographic collage by www.hen.uk.com]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=An+American+Story&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">An American Story</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2018</b>) [hb/Alamy]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Expect+Me+Tomorrow&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Expect Me Tomorrow</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2022</b>) [hb/photographic]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Airside&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Airside</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2023</b>) [hb/blacksheep]</li> </ul> <p><b>collections and stories</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Transplantationen+Utopisch-technische+Erzahlungen&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Transplantationen: Utopisch-technische Erzählungen</a></em> (Munich, Germany: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlage, <b>1972</b>) [coll: trans Tony Westermayr from the English: pb/] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Real-Time+World&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Real-Time World</a></em> (London: New English Library, <b>1974</b>) [coll: first English publication in book form of the above: hb/Chris <a href="/entry/achilleos_chris">Achilleos</a>]</li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Making+of+the+Lesbian+Horse&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Making of the Lesbian Horse</a></em> (Birmingham, England: The Birmingham Science Fiction Group, <b>1979</b>) [chap: a joke sequel to <em>Inverted World</em>: pb/nonpictorial]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=An+Infinite+Summer&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">An Infinite Summer</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1979</b>) [coll: contains three tales of the <b>Dream Archipelago</b>: all assembled in <em>The Dream Archipelago</em> (see above): hb/nonpictorial]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Ersatz+Wines+Instructive+Short+Stories&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Ersatz Wines: Instructive Short Stories</a></em> (Hastings, East Sussex: GrimGrin Studio, <b>2008</b>) [coll: early work with extensive commentary: hb/from G P Hasenclever]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Episodes+Short+Stories&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Episodes: Short Stories</a></em> (London: Gollancz, <b>2019</b>) [coll: hb/Tomás Almeida]</li> </ul> <p><b>pseudonymous fiction</b> (selected)</p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Short+Circuit&field-author=Colin+Wedgelock" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Short Circuit</a></em> (London: Sphere Books, <b>1986</b>) as by Colin Wedgelock [tie to the film: <a href="/entry/short_circuit">Short Circuit</a>: based on the screenplay by Steve Wilson: pb/uncredited]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Mona+Lisa&field-author=John+Luther+Novak" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Mona Lisa</a></em> (London: Sphere Books, <b>1986</b>) as by John Luther Novak [tie to the film: pb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=eXistenZ&field-author=John+Luther+Novak" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">eXistenZ</a></em> (London: Pocket Books, <b>1999</b>) as by John Luther Novak [tie to the film: <a href="/entry/existenz">eXistenZ</a>: pb/Ava V Gerlitz]</li> </ul> <p><b>nonfiction</b> (selected)</p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Your+Book+of+Film-Making&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Your Book of Film-Making</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1974</b>) [nonfiction: chap: pb/]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Last+Deadloss+Visions&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Last Deadloss Visions</a></em> (Pewsey, Wiltshire: privately, <b>1987</b>) [nonfiction: chap: <a href="/entry/dangerous_visions">Dangerous Visions</a>: Harlan <a href="/entry/ellison_harlan">Ellison</a>: pb/nonpictorial] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Truth+Shall+Set+You+Free&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">"The Truth Shall Set You Free"</a></em> (Pewsey, Wiltshire: privately, <b>1988</b>) [nonfiction: chap: updates prepared for the above: <a href="/entry/dangerous_visions">Dangerous Visions</a>: Harlan <a href="/entry/ellison_harlan">Ellison</a>: pb/nonpictorial]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Truth+Shall+Set+You+Free+An+Enquiry+into&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">"The Truth Shall Set You Free": An Enquiry into the Non-Appearance of Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions</a></em> (Pewsey, Wiltshire: privately, <b>1988</b>) [nonfiction: chap: rev vt of the above: heavily rewritten version: pb/nonpictorial] <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Book+on+the+Edge+of+Forever+The+Facts+the&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Book on the Edge of Forever; The Facts, the Figures, and the Delusions behind Harlan Ellison's Never-Published Anthology</a></em> (Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books, <b>1994</b>) [nonfiction: chap: exp vt of the above, incorporating all update information: pb/Drew Friedman]</li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Seize+the+Moment+The+Autobiography+of+Britain&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Seize the Moment: The Autobiography of Britain's First Astronaut</a></em> (London: Victor Gollancz, <b>1993</b>) with Helen Sharman [nonfiction: introduction by Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a>: hb/Adrian Sensicle]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Song+of+the+Book&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Song of the Book</a></em> (Birmingham, England: The Birmingham Science Fiction Group, <b>2000</b>) [nonfiction: chap: pb/David <a href="/entry/hardy_david_a">Hardy</a>]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Magic+The+Story+of+a+Film&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Magic: The Story of a Film</a></em> (Hastings, East Sussex: GrimGrin Studio, <b>2008</b>) [nonfiction: <em>The</em> <a href="/entry/prestige_the">Prestige</a>: hb/Christopher Priest]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=It+Came+from+Outer+Space+Occasional+Pieces&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">"It" Came from Outer Space: Occasional Pieces 1973-2008</a></em> (Hastings, East Sussex: GrimGrin Studio, <b>2009</b>) [nonfiction: coll: hb/Christopher Priest]</li> </ul> <p><b>works as editor</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Anticipations&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Anticipations</a></em> (London: Faber and Faber, <b>1978</b>) [anth: hb/Dave Griffiths]</li> <li><em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Stars+of+Albion&field-author=Priest+Christopher" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Stars of Albion</a></em> (London: Pan Books, <b>1979</b>) with Robert P <a href="/entry/holdstock_robert_p">Holdstock</a> [anth: pb/Bob Norrington]</li> </ul> <p><b>about the author</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>Nicholas <a href="/entry/ruddick_nicholas">Ruddick</a>. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Christopher+Priest&field-author=Ruddick+Nicholas" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Christopher Priest</a></em> (Mercer, Washington: Starmont House, <b>1990</b>) [nonfiction: pb/photographic]</li> <li>Andrew M <a href="/entry/butler_andrew_m">Butler</a>, editor. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Christopher+Priest+The+Interaction&field-author=Butler+Andrew+M" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Christopher Priest: The Interaction</a></em> (London: Science Fiction Foundation, <b>2005</b>) [anth: <b>Foundation Studies in Science Fiction</b>: pb/Colin Odell]</li> <li>Paul <a href="/entry/kincaid_paul">Kincaid</a>. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=The+Unstable+Realities+of+Christopher+Priest&field-author=Kincaid+Paul" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest</a></em> (Canterbury, Kent: Gylphi Limited, <b>2020</b>) [nonfiction: in the publisher's <b>SF Storyworlds</b> series: pb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/">Christopher Priest</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?336">Internet Speculative Fiction Database</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://fancyclopedia.org/Christopher_Priest"><em>Fancyclopedia 3</em></a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=priest_christopher">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/priest_christopher' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; float: left;'> </ul> <p align=center style="float:right; padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;">ISSN 3049-7612<br /> <a href="/facts.php?id=logo"> <img src="/images/VitMan.gif" width=150 height=150 title="Click for 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