Keith Brooke

Last updated

{{Short description|English writer and publisher Keith Brooke is a British science fiction author, editor, web publisher and anthologist from Essex, England. He is the founder and editor of the infinity plus webzine. He also writes children's fiction under the name Nick Gifford.

Contents

Biography and publishing history

Keith Brooke studied environmental science at university, and took a year out after graduating to write a novel. That novel, Keepers of the Peace, was published by Gollancz in 1990. He remained a full-time writer for some eight years, before finding work in various multimedia, web development and editorial roles at the Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education (now the University of Gloucestershire) and the University of Essex; in 2014 he returned to full-time writing and editing.

Brooke's first story was published in the British small press magazine Dream in 1989, but it was his first sale to Interzone , the story 'Adenotropic Man', which first brought him notice. He continued to be published in Interzone throughout the 1990s. There was, however, a nine-year gap between his third novel, Expatria Incorporated, and his fourth, Lord of Stone (although the latter was originally published on-line in 1997). In 2001 and 2002, US-based Cosmos Books published Brooke's three novels from the early 1990s in their first US editions. 2006 saw publication of Genetopia, achieving publisher Pyr's first ever starred review in Publishers Weekly. His 2009 novel The Accord picked up a second starred PW review. His 2012 novel, Harmony (published in the UK as alt.human) was shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award.

In August 1997, Brooke founded the Infinity Plus website, publishing original and reprinted science fiction book reviews and stories. He continued regular updates for the next ten years, all of which appeared for free. Brooke invited hundreds of SF authors to showcase their work, beginning with several well-known British authors but eventually including newer authors and many from other countries. Regular updates to the site ceased in August 2007, although the archive is still available.

In 2010, Brooke relaunched Infinity Plus as an independent publishing imprint, publishing SF, fantasy, horror and crime fiction by Eric Brown, Kaitlin Queen, Molly Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Garry Kilworth and others, including Brooke himself. Originally an ebook publisher, infinity plus began producing paperback editions in 2012.

Also in 2010, Brooke completed his PhD at the University of Essex: Genetopia: The Emergence of Story, the Emergence of Theme. Since 2007 he has taught creative writing at Essex, specialising in novel-writing and science fiction, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In 2012, Palgrave Macmillan published Strange Divisions and Alien Territories: The Sub-genres of Science Fiction[ sic ], a non-fiction book edited by Brooke which explores the subgenres of science fiction from the perspectives of a range of top SF authors. Combining a critical viewpoint with the exploration of the challenges and opportunities facing authors working in the field, the book's contributors are: Michael Swanwick, Gary Gibson, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson, Catherine Asaro and Kate Dolan, John Grant, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, James Lovegrove, Adam Roberts, Keith Brooke, James Patrick Kelly, Paul Di Filippo and Tony Ballantyne.

Brooke also publishes teen fiction under the pen-name Nick Gifford, with four novels published by Puffin between 2003 and 2006. A fifth Gifford novel, Tomorrow, was published by infinity plus in 2014, described by the publishers as a "time-tangled thriller set in the War Against Chronological Terror ... when three teenagers may have the power to save or destroy a world that is yet to be".

Bibliography

Novels

Young adult novels (published under the pen-name Nick Gifford)

Collections

As editor

With Nick Gevers he has edited the following anthologies:

Short non-fiction

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul J. McAuley</span> British botanist and science fiction author (born 1955)

Paul J. McAuley is a British botanist and science fiction author. A biologist by training, McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction. His novels dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternative history/alternative reality, and space travel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alastair Reynolds</span> Welsh science fiction author (born 1966)

Alastair Preston Reynolds is a Welsh science fiction author. He specialises in hard science fiction and space opera.

Eric Brown was a British science fiction author and Guardian critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Clute</span> Canadian sci-fi and fantasy literature critic (born 1940)

John Frederick Clute is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history" and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of science fiction in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known." He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982.

Keith John Kingston Roberts was an English science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" and "Escapism".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Stableford</span> British science fiction writer (1948–2024)

Brian Michael Stableford was a British academic, critic and science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels and over a hundred volumes of translations. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but later ones dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for some of his very early and late works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Strahan</span> Northern Irish-born Australian editor and publisher

Jonathan Strahan is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.

Nick Gevers is a South African science fiction editor and critic, whose work has appeared in The Washington Post Book World, Interzone, Scifi.com, SF Site, The New York Review of Science Fiction and Nova Express. He wrote two regular review columns for Locus magazine from 2001 to 2008, and is editor at the British independent press, PS Publishing; he also edits the quarterly genre fiction magazine, Postscripts.

Paul Claiborne Park is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He taught literature and writing in the Williams College English Department and the Graduate Program in Art History, retiring as a senior lecturer in 2022. He also taught at the Clarion West writing workshop and the Clarion Workshop and was an instructor at Clarion West in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solaris Books</span>

Solaris Books is an imprint which focuses on publishing science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy novels and anthologies. The range includes titles by both established and new authors. The range is owned by Rebellion Developments and distributed to the UK and US booktrade via local divisions of Simon & Schuster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Lovegrove</span> British writer of speculative fiction (born 1965)

James M. H. Lovegrove is a British writer of speculative fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff</span> American sci-fi and fantasy author

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author and filk musician. As an author, she collaborated on several novels in the Batman and Star Wars franchise with Michael Reaves, and as a filk musician, she is a three-time Pegasus Award winner.

Anna Tambour is an author of satire, fable and other strange and hard-to-categorize fiction and poetry.

Chris Beckett is a British social worker, university lecturer, and science fiction author. He has written several textbooks, dozens of short stories, and six novels.

The Revelation Space series is a book series created by Alastair Reynolds. The fictional universe it is set in is used as the setting for a number of his novels and stories. Its fictional history follows the human species through various conflicts from the relatively near future to approximately 40,000 AD. It takes its name from Revelation Space (2000), which was the first published novel set in the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannu Rajaniemi</span> Finnish businessman and writer

Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finnish American author of science fiction and fantasy, who writes in both English and Finnish. He lives in Oakland, California, and was a founding director of a commercial research organisation ThinkTank Maths.

Gareth Lyn Powell is a British author of science fiction. He is the author of several novels, including Silversands, The Recollection, Ack-Ack Macaque, Hive Monkey, Macaque Attack, and Embers of War.

This is a list of the published works of Aliette de Bodard.

<i>Beyond the Aquila Rift</i> Short story collection by Alastair Reynolds

Beyond the Aquila Rift is a 2016 collection of science fiction short stories and novellas by British author Alastair Reynolds, published by Gollancz, and edited by Jonathan Strahan and William Schafer. It contains works previously published in other venues. The collection features several stories connected to Reynolds's previous stories and novels. "Great Wall of Mars", "Weather", Last Log of the Lachrymosa, and Diamond Dogs take place in the Revelation Space universe, Thousandth Night takes place in the same universe as House of Suns, and "The Water Thief" takes place in the Poseidon's Children universe.

Infinity Plus was a science fiction webzine active from 1997 to 2007, specializing in reviews, interviews, and professionally written fiction. It was founded by Keith Brooke ; Nick Gevers and Paul Barnett were associate editors. As of 2018, it continues to exist as a small press.

References