the prestige

StarShipSofa No 426 Christopher Priest and Carli Velocci

March 8, 2016 by Jeremy Szal

Coming Up…

Interview: Carli Velocci Why do we keep using Nazis in space trope?

Main Fiction: “A Dying Fall” by Christopher Priest

Christopher Priest’s book – The Inverted World

Originally published in Asimov’s – December 2006

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968. He has published thirteen novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

His novel The Separation won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the BSFA Award. In 1996 Priest won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Prestige. He has been nominated four times for the Hugo award. He has won several awards abroad, including the Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany), the Eurocon Award (Yugoslavia), the Ditmar Award (Australia), and Le Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire (France). In 2001 he was awarded the Prix Utopia (France) for lifetime achievement.

He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations.

Chris Priest’s most recent novel The Gradual will be published by Gollancz in 2016, and in the USA by Titan Books, He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.

Narrated by Mikael Naramore

Mikael Naramore has worked in the audiobook industry since 2001 when, fresh out of college, he was hired as a recording engineer for publisher Brilliance Audio (now Brilliance Publishing, subsidiary of Amazon.com). Over time, he transitioned to Director, all the while absorbing technique and nuance from the best actors in the business. To date, Mikael has narrated well over 100 titles, under his own and assumed names. Authors range from best-sellers Nora Roberts, Lisa Gardner, Edward Klein and Clive Barker to sci-fi rising stars Wesley Chu, Ramez Naam and Mark E. Cooper.

He was recently chosen to narrate prolific playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Ardrey’s seminal Nature of Man series which includes the international best-sellers African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, titles which reportedly had a very heavy influence on Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in their development of 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.

Mikael is also an active writer, musician and recording artist, having scored the soundtrack to an independent short film, produced and engineered critically acclaimed rock records, and written, performed and recorded several “silly little lo-fi rock songs” of his own. He currently resides in the wild and scenic Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon with his wife, two small boys and their beloved Golden Retriever.

Discuss this episode on our forums.