Priest, Christopher

(British, 1943– )

Priest was born in Manchester, and was an accountant before becoming a full-time writer. His earlier science fiction writings include Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972). Begin with this futuristic view of political tensions in England as African refugees arrive from a homeland devastated by nuclear war. In A Dream of Wessex (1977) a group of experimenters link their minds through a computer network and lose contact with reality in the cyber-world they inhabit. The Affirmation (1981) marks Priest's move away from science fiction into more realist modes marked by psychological tensions. The story concerns the victim of a breakdown whose attempt to write a therapeutic account of his difficulties leads ultimately to madness. In The Prestige (1995) an investigative journalist becomes embroiled in the legacy of evil surviving from the conflict between two nineteenth-century stage magicians.

Iain M. Banks, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock  DH