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Christopher Priest (1) (1943–2024)

Author of The Prestige

For other authors named Christopher Priest, see the disambiguation page.

60+ Works 10,460 Members 381 Reviews 36 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Clairwitch, 2005

Works by Christopher Priest

The Prestige (1995) 3,460 copies
Inverted World (1974) 1,745 copies
The Affirmation (1981) — Author — 618 copies
The Separation (2002) 577 copies
The Islanders (2011) 433 copies
A Dream of Wessex (1977) 390 copies
The Adjacent (2013) 338 copies
The Space Machine (1976) 324 copies
The Extremes (1998) 297 copies
Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972) 250 copies
Indoctrinaire (1970) 250 copies
The Glamour (1984) 215 copies
The Dream Archipelago (1999) 215 copies
The Glamour [2005 Revised] (2005) 179 copies
The Gradual (2015) 168 copies
An Infinite Summer (1976) 123 copies
The Quiet Woman (1990) 116 copies
Real-Time World (1973) 89 copies
Anticipations (1978) — Editor — 63 copies
eXistenZ (1999) 62 copies
An American Story (2018) 53 copies
The Evidence (2020) 47 copies
Expect Me Tomorrow (2022) 47 copies
Episodes (2018) 44 copies
Stars of Albion (1979) — Editor; Afterword, some editions — 43 copies
Airside (2023) 27 copies
Short Circuit (1986) 19 copies
Ersatz Wines (2008) 10 copies
I, Haruspex 7 copies
The Watched (novella) (1978) 5 copies
Real-Time World +2 (2008) 4 copies
Whores (1978) 3 copies
A Dying Fall 2 copies
Your Book of Film Making (1974) 2 copies
The Negation [novelette] (1978) 2 copies
落ち逝く 1 copy

Associated Works

The Invisible Man (1897) — Introduction, some editions — 10,828 copies
The Chrysalids (1955) — Introduction, some editions — 4,722 copies
The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) — Introduction, some editions — 2,932 copies
Ice (1967) — Introduction, some editions — 1,127 copies
The 1972 Annual World's Best SF (1972) — Contributor — 220 copies
The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF (2013) — Contributor — 167 copies
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #6 (1977) — Contributor — 134 copies
Plan for Chaos (2009) — Introduction, some editions — 127 copies
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) — Contributor — 126 copies
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy (2008) — Contributor — 109 copies
Granta 7: Best of Young British Novelists (1983) — Contributor — 91 copies
Trips in Time (1977) — Contributor — 89 copies
The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 6 (1973) — Contributor — 84 copies
Science Fiction: The Best of 2002 (2003) — Contributor — 70 copies
The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 (1979) — Contributor — 67 copies
House of Fear: An Anthology of Haunted House Stories (2011) — Contributor — 66 copies
Quark/1 (1970) — Contributor — 59 copies
New Writings in SF-19 (1971) — Contributor — 58 copies
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 6 (1970) — Contributor — 56 copies
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume One (2016) — Contributor — 56 copies
The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #2 (1980) — Contributor — 54 copies
New Writings in SF-26 (1975) — Contributor — 54 copies
New Worlds Quarterly 3 (1972) — Contributor — 54 copies
New Writings in SF-22 (1975) — Contributor — 54 copies
The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease (2008) — Contributor — 52 copies
New Writings in SF-15 (1969) — Contributor — 51 copies
Fearsome Magics (2014) — Contributor — 47 copies
Andromeda No. 1 (1976) — Contributor — 42 copies
Andromeda 3 (1978) — Contributor — 38 copies
New Writings in SF-16 (1969) — Contributor — 38 copies
2084 (2017) — Contributor — 20 copies
Cinema Futura (2010) — Contributor — 19 copies
New Dimensions Science Fiction Number 8 (1978) — Contributor — 15 copies
The Best British Short Stories 2014 (2014) — Contributor — 14 copies
Univers 03 (1975) — Contributor — 14 copies
Destination 3001 (2000) — Contributor — 12 copies
A View from the Edge (1977) — Contributor — 11 copies
As Time Goes By (2015) — Contributor — 8 copies
Bifrost n°41 (2006) — Contributor — 4 copies
Seven Deadly Sins: A Collection of New Fiction (1985) — Contributor — 1 copy

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Discussions

SPOILERS - SEPTEMBER - The Prestige in The Green Dragon (October 2014)
SEPTEMBER - NO SPOILERS - The Prestige in The Green Dragon (September 2014)
Inverted World by Christopher Priest -- Spoiler Thread in Science Fiction Fans (September 2008)

Reviews

A very quirky collection of inter-related short stories centered around a group of islands. The writing is very good. The author presents ambiguity as a type of approach to story-telling and characterization.
 
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keithostertag | 18 other reviews | Mar 11, 2024 |
This small-press hardback is rather more than an anthology of short stories. Rather, it is an exploration by Christopher Priest of his early writing career, from his childhood - not particularly literary - through his gradual realisation that he wanted to be a writer, through early surviving stories, via his first professional sale (to Kyril Bonfigioli for Science Fantasy in 1967), through sales to Michael Moorcock for New Worlds. He finishes with a story entitled The Interrogator, which he submitted to Ted Carnell for New Writings in SF. Carnell rejected it but made constructive suggestions, sufficient for Priest to revise the story and re-submit it in 1968, whereupon it was not only published, but in due course formed the first half of his first novel, Indoctrinaire.

So this book isn't really about the stories. Rather, it's a personalised account of the development of a writer over a period of five years, from someone who wanted to write to a living to someone who not only did write for a living, but was able to make some (not a lot, but still some) money from it. Chris Priest was in his late sixties when he assembled these stories, and there ls an element of "grumpy old man" in his commentary, though I got the feeling that this was slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Anyone who has tried writing for money will appreciate this book. Anyone who fancies writing as a career should read it. It probably won't put them off, but at least they won't be able to say "No-one ever told me..."
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RobertDay | Mar 9, 2024 |
In my memorial catch-up read to bring myself up to date with all of Christopher Priest's books, I came to The Separation. I am a sucker for alternate histories and this did not disappoint. (Warning: some spoilers may follow.)

On a dismal March afternoon in 1999, a military historian is doing a signing session in a bookshop in the Derbyshire spa town of Buxton, in the Peak District. A customer comes into the shop and offers him her father's wartime memoirs, detailing his experiences in RAF Bomber Command. But we find that the account in the memoir seems to be from an alternate reality.

The author researches further and uncovers a story of two identical twins, Joe and Jack Sawyer, both known (confusingly) as J.L. Sawyer. In their day, they won medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics for rowing; but war separates them. One becomes a bomber pilot; the other a conscientious objector, who ends up working for the Red Cross. Both become embroiled with the defection to Britain of the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess - but each has a very different experience of the same event.

But the two timelines aren't irretrievably separated; although their differing attitudes to war cause a rift between the two brothers, their separation and those of the timelines aren't total. Things are complicated by their relationship with Birgit, a Jewish refugee that the two brothers smuggle out of Germany after the Olympics. Both love her; one marries her. Events take tragic turns in each timeline; yet the timelines are intertwined, leading to dislocating events for both brothers.

The themes of identity and duplication re-appear here, as in Priest's earlier novel The Prestige. We also see themes of dislocation and whether what an individual is experiencing at any one time is real or not. At the same time, Priest's grasp of detail is very good; I detected only a handful of minor errors or omissions, no more than you would get in any other memoir of historical events written in our reality by a real person. We are treated to pen portraits of Churchill and Hess; the pacifist brother's reaction to Churchill is interesting, as he considers Churchill to be a despicable warmonger, and yet when he hears him speak he cannot but fail to be moved by his determination and steadfastness. (There is also an account, as from the official minutes, of a key meeting of Churchill's War Cabinet which I found very amusing.) Even these major characters display separations; Churchill uses body doubles so that he can appear be in two places at the same time, whilst JL (the pilot) sees two different instances of Hess' flight to Britain, though there are different explanations for the events he sees.

As the novel was set, partly, in places I know well (Buxton, Bakewell and Lincolnshire), it started by giving me a great sense of presence which persisted for me through the rest of the book. There is also an account of the drafting of a major international treaty which struck me as a very likely depiction of how these things happen in real life. (I suspect that one of Priest's sources was the diary of John Colville, Churchill's private secretary during the war years, as he is namechecked in the book.) There is a minor loose end which isn't adequately explained, but it's incidental to the story and doesn't really impact on the narrative.

Perhaps the thing that I was most worried about as the book drew to a close was the instance of Priest's framing device, the military historian. I could not see how that was going to be closed; yet it was, in an ingenious way. I said that the alternate histories were intertwined instead of being discrete, and that might cause some readers expecting a literal or more science-fictional approach to the subject to have trouble with this book. Yet I am often struck, on looking at old films or photographs of cities, or travelling by train to another town or even another country, by all the individuals I see in passing. They all have their own lives, which I know nothing about. I see them once, and then they are gone from my view. From their viewpoint, the same could be said of me. Is not each of these lives a separate alternate reality, a parallel history affected in different ways by the same events?

The intertwining timelines in this novel have a certain inevitability about them; the parts fit together with elegance even if the impacts on the two protagonists are life-changing. I found this a most intriguing exploration of history and the effects of separations on both private lives and great events.
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RobertDay | 22 other reviews | Mar 1, 2024 |
The Extremes is an interesting exploration of virtual reality that's a bit at variance to the way the tech eventually worked out for us - first published in 1998, Priest uses injectable infusions of programmed nanochips to achieve his VR effects (making them much more immersive than mere digital technologies). At the same time, Priest also explores gun culture, both in the US and the UK, and how this could be affected by the arrival of sophisticated VR technology. This is done through the eyes of his p.o.v. character Teresa Simons, an FBI agent, born in the UK but a US Air Force brat who is therefore brought up in an exclusively American culture. Under the tutelage of her father, she becomes proficient with firearms, eventually joins the FBI, and marries a fellow agent. However, he is killed in a mass shooting on the same day as another mass shooting in a (fictional) town on the south coast of England. Teresa travels to England to visit this town and to try to gain some insight into her feelings through the shared experience of the townsfolk. But that sharing goes beyond our current experience through the influence of commercialised VR 'Extreme Experience' ('ExEx') simulations.

The novel was first published in 1998, so Priest would have written it in knowledge of the Dunblane massacre in March 1996, which resulted in the wholesale tightening of gun ownership laws in the UK and the total banning of any legal basis for holding handguns. However, the latest British mass shooting he references in the novel is the Hungerford massacre of August 1987; and the shooter in the novel seems to have had little difficulty in acquiring weapons. Having developed his theme, I would imagine Priest would not want to worry too much about legal details; someone on the wrong side of the law who wishes to acquire handguns will, even today. Priest instead concentrates in developing his characters to show the mindsets that gun possession enables, on both sides of the legal divide. His writing of Teresa is particularly good in this respect; and as a British writer, he does not overdo the "isn't Britain quaint" reaction that some American writers might have fallen into the trap of.

The FBI uses ExEx simulations to enable agents to learn how to handle mass shooting incidents through trial and error. The long-term psychological impact of this on participants is also a theme. The ExEx sequences are written in a hyper-realistic style. I was reminded of Christopher Nolan's IMAX set-piece sequences inserted into his 2008 Batman film, The Dark Knight which could well have a connection because Nolan filmed Priest's preceding novel, The Prestige, in 2006. Certainly, I got a similar feeling in coming across those sequences in this novel to the sudden switch into the hyper-realistic IMAX format when watching The Dark Knight.

As his story develops, Priest increasingly explores the implications of 'nested' VR simulations, throwing our expectations of what constitutes 'reality' into doubt. It may well take a second reading for me to process this one completely.

At the same time, being set in a near future that is now more than twenty years in our past, the novel also offers a slightly nostalgic look (well, for me at least) at the Britain of the past. I found the fictional south coast seaside town setting, seen from the perspective of the local inhabitants, rather reminiscent of the Midlands town where I grew up.

The next Christopher Priest novel on my TBR pile is his novelisation of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. This came out in 1999 - the year after The Extremes - and is also about VR gaming tech bioware and its corporate politics. As I recollect the film, it also looks at issues arising from simulations run within simulations. It makes me wonder whether Priest worked on the two projects at the same time. The thematic similarities hardly seem like coincidence.
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RobertDay | 12 other reviews | Feb 14, 2024 |

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Statistics

Works
60
Also by
48
Members
10,460
Popularity
#2,276
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
381
ISBNs
392
Languages
17
Favorited
36

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