HWA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
BRIAN LUMLEY was born December 2nd, 1937, just nine months after the most obvious of his
forebears—meaning of course a "literary" forebear, namely, H.P. Lovecraft—had
departed from it. By his pre-teens Lumley had read Dracula and some other horror classics, but
having followed the adventures of Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future in the British Eagle
comic, his first love was science fiction. Then, in his early teens—as a result of reading Robert
Bloch's Lovecraft pastiche 'Notebook Found in a Deserted House' in a British SF magazine—he became
more surely attracted to macabre fiction, an attraction that has lasted a lifetime.
Later still, in his early twenties while serving with the Corps of Royal Military Police in Germany, on finding a collection of stories by Lovecraft himself, Lumley began searching for every available item of the author's work. This culminated in his contacting HPL's publisher August Derleth in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in order to purchase the one or two volumes still missing from his collection. Then, after Derleth had read various "extracts" from the Necronomicon and other fictional "Black Books" of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, which Lumley had included in his letters, he asked if the young soldier had anything solid he could use in a book he was preparing for publication, to be entitled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Thus Lumley began writing in earnest. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Derleth included stories by Lumley in a number of Arkham House anthologies and went on to publish three of the young author's books. One was a short novel with the title Beneath the Moors; the others were collections of short stories and novellas: The Caller of the Black and The Horror at Oakdeene. These stories, set mainly in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos milieu, echoed HPL's literary style: a somewhat archaic, adjectival mode of writing which, during the course of Lumley's military career, he would gradually eschew in favour of his own very distinctive style.
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Despite that Lumley completed a full term of twenty-two years with the RMP—during which time he rose to the rank of Warrant Officer and, in his final years, served as the WO Chief Instruction (the DI) at the RMP Depot and Training Establishment—still he managed to write and see published his three Arkham books plus the first of the six paperback novels in his "Titus Crow" series, and the stand-alone novel, Khai of Ancient Khem, while he was still a soldier. But by then "It was time for the serious stuff!"
Having "retired" from the Army in December 1980, Lumley became "a professional author" (he had never really considered himself that way before) and of necessity began to write in earnest. He still had a projected series of four books in H.P. Lovecraft's "Dreamlands" milieu to complete, during the writing of which he began the Psychomech trilogy, the very first of his works (with the exception of a handful of short stories) to be published in the United Kingdom.
Then came his breakthrough book. Between March to September 1984 he wrote his dead-waking, ground-breaking horror novel Necroscope®, featuring Harry Keogh, the man who can talk to dead people. Not at first realising, however, how successful this book would be (for it would eventually become a best-selling series), in late 1984 and early 1985 he wrote the stand-alone novel Demogorgon. Also in 1985 to early 1986, he completed his "Dreamlands" series with a book of short stories and novellas entitled Iced on Aran; which explains the gap between the writing of Necroscope and Necroscope II: Wamphyri! After Wamphyri!, however, Necroscope III: The Source, took only five months to complete in 1987. With the first two volumes having seen initial paperback publication in the UK, the trilogy was finally picked up by Tor Books in the USA. Except it wasn't going to stop at being a trilogy!
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Such was the appeal of the Necroscope books that Tor published the so-called trilogy in the space of just twelve months: from September 1988 through to September 1989—by which time Lumley had written Necroscopes IV and V: Deadspeak and Deadspawn. And in just five years, the financial problems which the author had experienced on leaving the Army were well and truly behind him. A best-seller in the USA, his books had already passed the million sales and were heading for two million.
But still the story wasn't finished—in fact it wasn't half-way there yet! Such had been the success of the first five volumes, and such was the demand from readers, that Lumley went straight on from Deadspawn to commence writing the massive Vampire World Trilogy, which he considers his finest, most ambitious and important work. Begun in 1991, finished in 1993, Blood Brothers, The Last Aerie and Bloodwars between them contain some three-quarters of a million words of horror, fantasy, even a little of the author's first love . . . science fiction.
Meanwhile in 1994, just short of six years since publishing the original Necroscope, Tor had begun reprinting the entire series in hardcover: a rare event in the modern publishing world. And Blood Brothers was the first Necroscope—or more properly the first series spin-off—to be published in hardcover from the outset. The rest of the volumes in this incredible series have since followed suit. Their titles are:
The Lost Years and Lost Years Two: Resurgence; the "Invaders Trilogy": Invaders, Defilers and Avengers, and the novellas: Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes and Necroscope: The Touch.
Thirteen countries and counting have now published, or are in the process of publishing, these and others of Lumley's novels and short story collections, which in the USA alone have sold well over three million copies. In addition, Necroscope comic books, graphic novels, a role-playing game, quality figurines, and in Germany a series of audio books have been created from themes and characters in the Necroscope books, and Lumley has added his "real" voice to Dangerous Ground, a Downliners Sect rock-&-roll album released in the UK in 2004.
Lumley's works other than Necroscope—such as his SF-ish novel The House of Doors and its sequel Maze of Worlds; also a dozen collections gathered from his more than 130 short stories and novellas, most notably Fruiting Bodies & Other Fungi, whose title story won a British Fantasy Award in 1989—have seen or are seeing print in many European countries as well as the USA, and all the while his reputation is growing apace. As far back as 1990, the readers of Fear magazine voted Lumley "Best Established Genre Author" for The Source, and his short story Necros (not a Necroscope spin-off!) was adapted for Ridley Scott's The Hunger series on the Showtime Television Network.
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But best of all, in 1998 as Guest of Honour at the World Horror Convention in Phoenix, AZ, he received the genre's most coveted Grand Master Award in recognition of his work. Moreover, the original Necroscope has now been optioned (and re-optioned) for a major film, and the original trilogy will be included in the project goes into production.
From 2000 to 2006 fans of Necroscope and Lumley's other works have convened at the annual KeoghCon, and there celebrated with the author and his wife Barbara Ann, who is known to one and all as "Silky". Each successive year ever, stronger bonds have formed between the members of this much extended "family" of friends and fans. (As for the last word, "fans": Lumley prefers to refer to these people—his friends—as "dedicated readers.")
Widely travelled, Brian Lumley has visited or lived in the USA, France, Italy, Cyprus, Germany, Malta, Canada, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, not to mention a dozen or more Greek islands. He still makes regular visits to the Mediterranean, indulging a passion for moussaka, retsina, just a little ouzo . . . and Metaxa, naturally! In addition—as icing on the baklava—Necroscope and its sequels, along with others of his books, are now appearing in Greek translation.
A former President of the Horror Writers Association, Brian Lumley has now been announced as a recipient of that organisation's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented to him at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet on the Saturday evening of the convention.
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External Links
Brian Lumley's Website