Richard Morgan
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Richard Morgan (b. 1965) is a British science fiction author.
He graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge where he read History. He then temporarily moved into English Language Teaching in order to travel the world. Fourteen years and a post at Strathclyde University later, he finally had his first book published. He is currently pursuing a degree in Development Economics.
The common theme of Richard Morgan's books is that they take place in a dystopia. His attitude is summed up by his statement that: "Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an elite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a willful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses."[1] (http://www.saxonbullock.com/richardmorganinterview.htm)
In 2002 he published his first novel, Altered Carbon. It was a cyberpunk novel that blended hardboiled detective fiction and science fiction and was centered on the anti-hero Takeshi Kovacs. The film rights for the book sold for a reported figure of $1,000,000 to producer Joel Silver, enabling Morgan to become a fulltime writer. In 2003 the U.S. edition received the Philip K. Dick Award.
He wrote Broken Angels, a sequel to Altered Carbon, in 2003. Broken Angels featured Takeshi Kovacs, and blended science fiction and war fiction in a similar way to his cross-genre debut.
Market Forces was the first non-Kovacs novel, set in the not too distant future. It was originally written as a short story, then a screenplay (both unpublished). After the success of his first two works, it was released as a novel and has also been optioned as a film.
Morgan returns to the Kovacs universe in the recently released Woken Furies.
Richard Morgan also contributed plot and dialogue to the comic book series Black Widow: Homecoming.
Bibliography
- Altered Carbon (2002) ISBN 057507390X
- Broken Angels (2003) ISBN 0575075503
- Market Forces (2004) ISBN 0575075848
- Woken Furies (2005) ISBN 057507325X
- Black Widow: Homecoming (2005) ISBN 0785114939
External links
- Official site (http://www.richardkmorgan.com)
- Science Fiction Weekly Interview (http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue373/interview.html)