Michael Marshall Smith

Last updated

Michael Marshall Smith
BornMichael Paul Marshall Smith
(1965-05-03) 3 May 1965 (age 58)
Knutsford, Cheshire, England
Pen nameMichael Marshall
OccupationAuthor
NationalityBritish
Website
www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

Michael Paul Marshall Smith (born 3 May 1965) is an English novelist, screenwriter and short story writer who also writes as Michael Marshall, M. M. Smith and Michael Rutger.

Contents

Biography

Born in Knutsford, Cheshire, Smith moved with his family at an early age to first Illinois and then Florida. When he was seven, the family moved again, this time to South Africa, and then to Australia before eventually returning home to England in 1973. [1]

He was educated at Chigwell School, where he was in Swallows House and dated fellow pupil and future senior Sky News editor Sally Arthy, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied Philosophy, Social and Political Science, and became involved with the Cambridge Footlights. [2] Under the pseudonym of Michael Rutger, he moved on to become a comedy writer and performer on the BBC Radio 4 series And Now in Colour , which has been described[ by whom? ] as a 'cult hit'[ citation needed ] and ran for two series. [3] Between 2002 and 2004, he also co-wrote material for two series of surreal comedy Dare to Believe .

Writing career

Smith's first published story was "The Man Who Drew Cats", which won the British Fantasy Award in 1991 for "Best Short Story". [4] He has been published in Postscripts . His first novel, Only Forward , was published in 1994 and won the August Derleth Award for Best Novel in 1995, and then the Philip K. Dick Award in 2000. [5] The plot involves the lead character, Stark, having to find a missing man he believes to have been kidnapped, and travel through the strange zones of his city. In 1996 his second novel, Spares, was released, a novel in which the lead character, Jack, goes on the run with clones who are used for spare body parts for rich people, when he realises they are people with feelings. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks purchased the film rights for Spares, but a film was never made. When the rights lapsed, DreamWorks did produce The Island , whose plot had strong similarities to Spares, though Smith did not consider it worthwhile to pursue legal action over the similarities. He now considers it unlikely a Spares film will ever be made. [6]

The novel The Straw Men was the first to be written under the shortened name "Michael Marshall". [7] This change of name was originally due to the publishing of another book of the same name in 2001 by Martin J. Smith. However, Marshall Smith then decided to use the split to offer the possibility of publishing different genres of books under the two names – "modern day" novels as Michael Marshall, and horror/science fiction as Michael Marshall Smith.

On 1 September 2006, it was announced on his official website that the horror short story "Hell Hath Enlarged Herself" was in development as a feature film by Cuba Productions and Lightworks Films, financed by the UK Film Council. Smith will be a producer and co-screenwriter on the film.

In 2012 he launched Ememess Press, a virtual small press specialising in producing electronic versions of the short fiction written under the name Michael Marshall Smith. [8]

Intruders , a television series on BBC America, is based on Smith's 2007 novel The Intruders. [9]

Bibliography

Novels

As M. M. Smith:

As Michael Marshall:

The Anomaly Series, as Michael Rutger:

  1. The Anomaly (2018) – ISBN   978-1538761854
  2. The Possession (2019) – ISBN   978-1785767678

Novellas

Collections

Awards

YearSocietyAwardCategoryNomineeResult
1991 British Fantasy Society BFA Best NewcomerWon
1991British Fantasy SocietyBFAShort Fiction"The Man Who Drew Cats"Won
1992British Fantasy SocietyBFAShort Fiction"The Dark Land"Won
1995British Fantasy SocietyBFABest Novel – August Derleth AwardOnly ForwardWon
1996British Fantasy SocietyBFAShort Fiction"More Tomorrow"Won
2000 Philadelphia Science Fiction Society Philip K. Dick Award Only ForwardWon
2010British Fantasy SocietyBFAShort Fiction"What Happens When You Wake Up In The Night"Won

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Aldiss</span> British science fiction writer (1925–2017)

Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. G. Ballard</span> English writer (1930–2009)

James Graham Ballard was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations among human psychology, technology, sex, and the mass media. Ballard became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels, such as The Drowned World (1962), but also courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968), and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Gaiman</span> English writer (born 1960)

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and a screenwriter. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and the novels Good Omens, Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. J. Cherryh</span> American speculative fiction author (born 1942)

Carolyn Janice Cherry, better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has written more than 80 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award–winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both set in her Alliance–Union universe, and her Foreigner series. She is known for worldbuilding, depicting fictional realms with great realism supported by vast research in history, language, psychology, and archeology.

Stephen Hunt is a writer best known for a series of fantasy novels with steampunk elements, known as the Jackelian series, whose central setting is a nation somewhat resembling Victorian England, named the Kingdom of Jackals. Influences on his work include: Jack Williamson, Stephen Goldin, David Gemmell, Bruce Sterling, Larry Niven and Michael Moorcock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilbur Smith</span> South African novelist (1933–2021)

Wilbur Addison Smith was a Northern Rhodesian-born British-South African novelist specializing in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries.

<i>Death on the Nile</i> 1937 novel by Agatha Christie

Death on the Nile is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.

<i>The Island</i> (2005 film) 2005 American action film by Michael Bay

The Island is a 2005 American science fiction action thriller film directed and co-produced by Michael Bay and written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, from a story by Tredwell-Owen. It stars Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Steve Buscemi. The film is about Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor), who struggles to fit into the highly structured world in which he lives, isolated in a compound, and the series of events that unfold when he questions how truthful that world is. After Lincoln learns the compound inhabitants are clones used for organ harvesting as well as surrogates for wealthy people in the outside world, he attempts to escape with Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) and expose the illegal cloning movement.

Stuart Moore is an American writer and editor of comic books and novels.

The Saxon Stories is a historical novel series written by Bernard Cornwell about the birth of England in the ninth and tenth centuries. The series consists of 13 novels. The protagonist of the series is Uhtred of Bebbanburg, born to a Saxon lord in Northumbria. He is captured as a child and raised by a Danish warlord. Uhtred, despite his inclination otherwise, repeatedly fights and schemes to bring about Alfred the Great's dream of uniting all English speakers in one realm over the course of a long life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Finch</span>

Paul Finch is an English author and scriptwriter. He began his writing career on the British television programme The Bill. His early scripts were for children's animation. He has written over 300 short stories which have appeared in magazines, such as the All Hallows, the magazine of the Ghost Story Society and Black Static. He also edits anthologies of Horror stories with the overall title of Terror Tales. He has written variously for the books and other spin-offs from Doctor Who. He is the author of the ongoing series of DS Mark Heck Heckenberg novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Holdstock</span> British fantasy and science fiction author (1948–2009)

Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Jolley</span> American novelist and comic book writer

Dan Jolley is an American novelist and comic book writer. His comics work includes DC Comics' Firestorm and Graphic Universe's Twisted Journeys, a series of interactive fiction or gamebooks in graphic novel form, and his novel work includes the young-adult science fiction espionage series Alex Unlimited along with his international best selling novel, The Gray Widow's Walk, which is his first book in the Gray Widow trilogy that he publishes through Seventh Star Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Delaney</span> English author (1945–2022)

Joseph Henry Delaney was an English author best known for his dark fantasy series, Spook's. Initially embarking on a career as a teacher, Delaney also penned science fiction and fantasy novels for adults under the pseudonym J. K. Haderack. He later transitioned to writing under his real name, beginning with the publication of The Spook's Apprentice, in 2004. This marked the start of his widely successful Spook's series, which eventually encompassed 19 books along with several others set in the same universe. In 2014, The Spook's Apprentice was adapted into both a play script and the feature film Seventh Son. Additionally, Delaney published two other series: the science fiction-themed Arena 13 and the dark fantasy Aberrations.

Michael Angus Phillips, is a British writer and broadcast journalist of Guyanese descent. He is best known for his crime fiction, including four novels featuring black journalist Sam Dean.

Tim Lebbon is a British horror and dark fantasy writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Rob Smith</span> English author, screenwriter, producer (born 1979)

Tom Rob Smith is an English author, screenwriter and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Delaney</span> Irish novelist, journalist and broadcaster (1941–2017)

Francis James Joseph Raphael Delaney was an Irish novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He was the author of The New York Times best-seller Ireland, the non-fiction book Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea and many other works of fiction, non-fiction and collections. He was born in Thomastown, Tipperary, Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Stone</span> British writer

Sam Stone is the horror and fantasy pen name for British Thriller novellist and award winning screenwriter Samantha Lee Howe. She is best known for her USA Today! best selling novel The Stranger In Our Bed published by HarperCollins imprint One More Chapter. This novel has recently been made into a film by production company Buffalo Dragon, The film, directed by Giles Alderson and starring Samantha Bond, Emily Berrington, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Joseph Marcell, Nina Wadia, Bart Edwards and Terri Dwyer, was released on 1 July 2022 on Showtime Networks. Samantha has since sold three more books to HarperCollins One More Chapter and all three were published in 2021 as The House of Killers Trilogy which consists of The House of Killers Book 1, Kill or Die Book 2, and Kill A Spy Book 3.

Organ transplantation is a common theme in science fiction and horror fiction. Numerous horror movies feature the theme of transplanted body parts that are evil or give supernatural powers, with examples including Body Parts, Hands of a Stranger, and The Eye.

References