About the author

John Whitbourn has had nine novels published in the UK, USA and Russia since winning the BBC & Victor Gollancz First Fantasy Novel prize with A Dangerous Energy in 1991. His works have received favourable reviews in The Times, Telegraph, and Guardian, amongst others, and he is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the New Weird.

Most recently, his published novels include: the Downs-Lord trilogy concerning the establishment of empire in an alternative, monster-ridden England; Frankenstein’s Legions, a sequel to Mary Shelley’s seminal science fiction work, in which the techniques of creating life from the dead are turned to political ends; and The Age of the Triffids (Canada & New Zealand only), a sequel to John Wyndham’s 1951 classic.

A former archaeologist, he lives in at least one of the several parallel Binscombes, of which he says: “The scenery and backdrop to the stories may be seen and experienced, in Binscombe itself, and Farncombe and Compton and Godalming and Guildford and Epsom and elsewhere. The inspiration for them lives on, independent and blissfully ignorant of me.”

John adds, “All that a reader need know about me is that I’m struggling up the shore of middle age, living with my wife, Liz, my son, Joseph and daughters, Rebecca and Esther, in a part of the south country where the graveyards and old records are littered, over the last four centuries or so, with strangers bearing my surname. Beyond that there is silence, but I suspect we go back still further.”