Sir Julius Vogel was the eighth premier of New Zealand. His administration is best remembered for the issuing of bonds to fund railway construction and other public works. He was the first Jewish prime minister of New Zealand. Historian Warwick R. Armstrong assesses Vogel's strengths and weaknesses:
Vogel's politics were like his nature, imaginative – and occasionally brilliant – but reckless and speculative. He was an excellent policymaker but he needed a strong leader to restrain him....Yet Vogel had vision. He saw New Zealand as a potential 'Britain of the South Seas', strong both in agriculture and in industry, and inhabited by a large and flourishing population.
Faction Paradox is a series of novels, audio stories, short story anthologies, and comics set in and around a "War in Heaven", a history-spanning conflict between godlike "Great Houses" and their mysterious enemy. The series is named after a group originally created by author Lawrence Miles for BBC Books' Doctor Who novels.
The Book of the War is a hypertext multi-author novel presented in the form of an encyclopedia of the first 50 years of the War in the Faction Paradox universe based on the Doctor Who universe. The book was edited by Lawrence Miles, and written by Miles, Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Ian McIntire, Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale, Jonathan Dennis, and Mark Clapham.
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhauer and Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet.
The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are awarded each year at the New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in New Zealand science fiction, fantasy, horror, and science fiction fandom. They are commonly referred to as the Vogels.
Daniel O'Mahony is a half-British half-Irish author, born in Croydon. He is the oldest of five children, his siblings including Eoin O'Mahony of the band Hamfatter, and Madeleine O'Mahony, who has designed and made hats for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.
The Ancestor Cell is a novel by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole, based on the science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner, Compassion, and Romana III, as well as a brief appearance of the Third Doctor in a ghost-like state due to the Faction's manipulation of the Doctor's timeline, and features the last appearance of Faction Paradox in the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Dead Romance is an original novel by Lawrence Miles, originally published as part of the Virgin New Adventures series. The New Adventures were a spin-off from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Though part of the sequence of stories that featured the fictional archaeologist Bernice Summerfield, this was released as something of a standalone, and she is not in it. The main character and narrator Christine Summerfield are not connected to her in any way. A former New Adventures Seventh Doctor companion, Chris Cwej, does appear. The Seventh Doctor briefly appears as "the Evil Renegade" in Chris's tampered memories.
Russell Kirkpatrick is a New Zealand novelist, geography lecturer, mapmaker and photographer. He has contributed to a number of notable atlases, and since 2004 has completed two fantasy trilogies. He is a three-time winner of the award for best novel at New Zealand's Sir Julius Vogel Awards. His books were first published in Australia and in the mid-2010s he moved to Canberra, where he now lectures at the University of Canberra.
Erasing Sherlock is an original novel by Kelly Hale set in the Faction Paradox universe.
Lyn McConchie is a New Zealand writer of speculative fiction, picture books for children, a nonfiction humour series, a number of standalone books and many short stories, articles, poems, opinion pieces, and reviews.
Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, natural philosopher, theologian, alchemist and one of the most influential scientists in human history. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is considered to be one of the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics by describing universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus.
Philippa Ballantine, who also used the pen name Pip Ballantine, is a contemporary New Zealand author of speculative fiction and an avid podcaster. She now lives in Manassas, Virginia, with her husband and collaborator Tee Morris.
Peter Ackroyd is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. He is noted for the volume of work he has produced, the range of styles therein, his skill at assuming different voices, and the depth of his research.
Dragon Moon Press is an American independent publishing company, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and cross-genre novels. It was founded in 1993 by Gwen Gades, and released its first book in 1998.
Lars Pearson is an American writer, high school teacher, editor, and journalist. He is the owner/publisher of Mad Norwegian Press, a publishing company specializing in reference guides to television shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Doctor Who, plus the Faction Paradox range of novels and comic books. He is also co-author, with Lance Parkin, of "Ahistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe," which puts every Doctor Who-related story onto a single timeline from the beginning of the universe to its end.
Simon Petrie is a New Zealand-born speculative fiction writer now based in Canberra, Australia. He is predominantly recognised as a writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Petrie's stories have appeared in a number of Australian publications including Borderlands, Aurealis and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, in New Zealand publications such as Semaphore Magazine and several Random Static anthologies, and in magazines elsewhere in the English-speaking world such as Redstone Science Fiction, Murky Depths and Sybil's Garage. He is a former member of the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine collective and has edited five issues of the magazine.
William Direen is a New Zealand writer and performer. He graduated from Canterbury University (Christchurch) with the John Tinline Prize (1980) and M.A. Hons. (1st). His masters thesis was titled The influence of Japanese noh, Balinese dance-drama and the Kathakali on four twentieth century western playwrights. He directed Blue Ladder Theatre at 87 Cashel Street, Christchurch, and later produced a series of experimental "psycho-musicals" in Wellington. Later writing (1994–present) ranges from criticism and speculative fiction to poetry sometimes performed with collaborating musicians. From 2006 to 2017 he edited the trans-cultural literary annual Percutio, "dedicated to aspects of the creative process and to works that bridge cultures". He edited a special anthology in 2021 to oppose cost-cutting depletion of New Zealand National Library's non-NZ books. His public persona performs music, solo and in groups such as The Bilders and the trio Ferocious. He has made small tours of USA, Europe, Serbia and Australia, has strong ties with France, and now lives in Otago, New Zealand. He is the subject of a documentary, Bill Direen, A Memory of Others, directed by Simon Ogston (2017).
Helen Lowe is a New Zealand novelist. Her first novel, Thornspell, was published in 2008. She has since published the first two books in The Wall of Night quartet, The Heir of Night and The Gathering of the Lost. Lowe is a three-time winner of the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer in 2012.
Adam Christopher McGechan, who writes under the name Adam Christopher, is a New Zealand novelist. In 2006, he moved from New Zealand to North West England, where he lives with his wife.
