About

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m the author of rather a lot of science fiction novels, as well as more than seventy pieces of shorter fiction, ranging in length from vignettes of a few hundred words to works that are almost short novels in their own right. I have published three collection of shorter work, as well as a few chapbooks containing one or two novella-length stories. A huge career-retrospective “best of” appeared in 2016, marking more than a quarter of a century of publication since my first sale. My work is widely translated and republished. Professionally, I was a scientist before I became a full-time writer, although the two professions overlapped for a good few years. My research area was astronomy and astrophysics, and I spent a long period of time working in and around the European Space Agency’s main research establishment in the Netherlands. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my fiction is strongly informed by my time as a scientist.

I was sad to leave science, but since my departure in 2004, I’ve been blessed by some amazing chances to again move through scientific circles, only this time from the perspective of a writer. I have retained informal ties with ESA which have seen me participating in PR for the Rosetta mission, science & SF crossover for the ESA-linked Space Rocks ongoing multimedia concept, and developing fiction based around futurology workshops within ESA, examining social and technological developments between now and 2060.

I am 58 and living with my wife back in Wales, not too far from my place of birth. I continue to write about a book a year and usually hope to find time to fit in some shorter fiction.

2018 and 2019 saw the first adaptations of my work into different media. An imaginative stage version of “Diamond Dogs” was put on in Chicago over a six week period early in 2018, and I was able to attend two of the performances. in 2019, two of my short stories were adapted as animated films as part of Netflix’s series Love Death and Robots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BONE SILENCE, my third novel about the Ness sisters – and the last for now –  appeared in the UK at the end of January 2020, followed by the American edition in February. I spent lockdown working on INHIBITOR PHASE, a novel in the Revelation Space sequence, and then 2022 saw the publication of EVERSION, a standalone story playing with different narrative modes and themes of first contact. My most recent novel is 2024’s MACHINE VENDETTA, third in the Prefect Dreyfus sub-series set in the RS universe, and my last in that setting for now. I have completed a new book, HALCYON YEARS, which is now going through editing, and I’ve started work on another novel with the provisional title ABANDONMENT. These last two books are standalones, unrelated to anything before them, as will be any other books for the time being.