Christopher Priest Cover Gallery

Chris Priest is one of Britain's finest SF writers, winner of many awards and author of The Prestige, about the intense rivalry of two magicians and how their obsession with outdoing the other destroys their lives. It was made into an excellent movie in 2006 starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, which garnered a couple of Oscar nominations.

For background, I'd suggest you take a look at his Wikipedia entry or, if you have a copy, check the entry for Chris written by Peter Nicholls and John Clute in which Inverted World is described as "one of the two or three most impressive pure-sf novels produced in the UK since World War Two". He's one of only a handful of British writers (Ballard, Aldiss and Moorcock being the others) whose in-genre work can sit comfortably on a bookshop's mainstream shelves and critics can write about it without squirming as they desperately try not be seen praising a science fiction novel; after all, Chris Priest's novels are superbly written, complexly plotted and anyone who writes about characters and the relationships between them... I mean, they can't be writing science fiction, can they?

Chris Priest has recently set up his own publishing company, GrimGrin Studio, to publish new editions of some out-of-print books and a number of non-fiction titles.

I've incorporated a number of pseudonymous novels into the following gallery. I think it's complete, although I should note that the author has denied using some of these names at various times (and confirmed some at other times).

Indoctrinaire (1970)
NEL 0-450-00918-1, Nov 1971. Cover by Bruce Pennington
Pan 0-330-25608-4, Jan 1979.

Hitch-Hiker (as Petra Christian [with Peter Cave])
NEL 0-450-00686-7, Jul 1971; Jul 1971; Nov 1972.
NEL 0-450-01476-2, May 1973.
NEL 0-450-02709-0, May 1975.

Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972)
NEL 0-450-01575-0, Sep 1973. Cover by Bruce Pennington?
Pan 0-330-25544-4, Nov 1978. Cover by Mike Ploog.

The New Drifters (as Petra Christian [with Peter Cave])
NEL 0-450-01081-3, May 1972; Jul 1972; Feb 1973
NEL 0-450-02281-1, Dec 1974.

The Holiday Campers (as Petra Christian)
NEL 0-450-01442-8, May 1973; Jun 1973.

Girls of the Night (as Petra Christian)
NEL 0-450-01572-6, Sep 1973.

The Sexploiters (as Petra Christian [with Peter Cave])
NEL 0-450-01645-5, Nov 1973; Mar 1974.
NEL 0-450-02398-2, Apr 1975.

Bed and Bawd (as Petra Christian [with Peter Cave])
NEL 0-450-01806-7, May 1974.

Inverted World (1974)
NEL 0-450-02303-6, Jun 1975.
Pan 0-330-25660-2, Apr 1979.
Gollancz (SF Masterworks) 0-575-08210-0, Jan 2010 (forthcoming)

Real-Time World
NEL 0-450-02141-6, Oct 1974. Cover by Bruce Pennington?
NEL 0-450-02432-6, Feb 1976. (same as above?)
[revised edition] GrimGrin Studios, 0-955-97353-8, Nov 2008.

Hello Sailor! (as Petra Christian)
NEL 0-450-02627-2, Oct 1975.

The Space Machine (1976)
Futura/Orbit 0-8600-7939-2, Mar 1977. Cover by Chris Foss
Pan 0-330-26345-5, May 1981.

A Dream of Wessex (1977)
Pan 0-330-25543-6, Nov 1978. Cover by Geoff Taylor?
Abacus 0-349-12811-1, Jul 1987. (not pictured)

An Infinite Summer (1979)
Pan 0-330-26048-0, Jun 1980.

The Making of a Lesbian Horse (chapbook) (1979)
Birmingham Science Fiction Group, 1979.

The Affirmation (1981)
Vintage/Arena 0-099-30680-8, Feb 1983.
Gollancz 0-575-04283-4, Dec 1988. (not pictured)
Gollancz 0-575-07577-5, Feb 2006.

Harrier! (by Donald MacKenzie)
Granada 0-586-05825-7, Mar 1983.

Thunderbolt! (by Donald MacKenzie)
Panther 0-586-05937-7, Jun 1984.

The Glamour (1984)
Abacus 0-349-12810-3, 1988.
Gollancz 0-575-07579-1, Jun 2005.

Mona Lisa (by John Luther Novak)
Sphere 0-7221-7034-3, Aug 1986.

Short Circuit (by Colin Wedgelock)
Sphere 0-7221-7035-1, Nov 1986.

The Quiet Woman (1990)
Abacus 0-349-10195-7, Apr 1991.

The Prestige (1995)
Touchstone 0-684-81755-1, Sep 1996.
Gollancz 0-575-07580-5, Feb 2005.
Gollancz 0-575-07906-1, Nov 2006.

The Extremes (1998)
Scribner 0-684-81941-4, 1999. Cover by Holly Warburton
Gollancz 0-575-07578-3, Sep 2005.

Existenz (by John Luther Novak)
Pocket Books 0-671-03308-5, Apr 1999.

The Dream Archipelago
Earthlight 0-671-03388-3, May 1999.
Gollancz 0-575-08436-7, Mar 2009. (forthcoming)

The Separation
Scribner 0-743-22033-1, Aug 2002.
Gollancz 0-575-07003-X, Feb 2004.
Gollancz 0-575-08115-5, Aug 2007.

Ersatz Wines
GrimGrin Studios 978-095597354-3, 2008.

Non-Fiction

Your Book of Film-Making
Faber, 1974.

Seize the Moment: The Autobiography of Britain's FIrst Astronaut, with Helen Sharman
Gollancz, 1993.

Running Tall, with Sally Gunnell
Gollancz, Nov 1994.

The Song of the Book (chapbook) (2000)
Birmingham Science Fiction Group, Nov 2000.

The Magic: The Story of the Film
GrimGrin Studio, Sep 2008.


Anthologies

Anticipations
Faber, 1978.

(* Most of the above books are available via Amazon. With thanks to John Herrington and Phil Stevensen-Payne for some additional covers.)