From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hugh Cook (9 August 1956 – 8 November 2008) was a cult author whose works blend fantasy and science fiction. He is best-known for his epic series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.

Biography

Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook was born in Essex, England in 1956. After spending his early childhood in England he moved to Ocean Island (now Banaba Island in Kiribati). His experiences of English castles and of life on an equatorial island later influenced his writing[1].

He moved to, and was educated in New Zealand. His first novel, Plague Summer was published when he was 24 in 1980.

Between 1986 and 1992 he wrote the ten-novel series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. Disappointing sales prevented the publication of further volumes (up to 60 were planned).

In 1997 he moved to Japan, and lived in Yokohama with his wife and daughter and taught English.

He subsequently published mainly online, through his site, Zen Virus. His online works include poetry, short stories, "flash fiction", and several novels.

In 2005 he underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in the form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He wrote a medical memoir, Cancer Patient, telling of this experience.

Following a relapse, Hugh Cook died on the 8th of November, 2008, in the hospice in Auckland.

Bibliography

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series

• The Wizards and the Warriors - (aka Wizard War[2]) 1986 (ISBN 0-552-12566-0)
• The Wordsmiths and the Warguild - (aka The Questing Hero and The Heroes Return (2 volumes)[3]) 1987 (ISBN 0-552-13130-X)
• The Women and the Warlords - (aka The Oracle[4]) 1987 (ISBN 0-552-13131-8)
• The Walrus and the Warwolf - (the first half was published in the US as Lords of the Swords) 1988 (ISBN 0-552-13327-2)
• The Wicked and the Witless - 1989 (ISBN 0-552-13439-2)
• The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers - 1990 (ISBN 0-552-13536-4)
• The Wazir and the Witch - 1990 (ISBN 0-552-13537-2)
• The Werewolf and the Wormlord - 1991 (ISBN 0-552-13538-0)
• The Worshippers and the Way - 1992 (ISBN 0-552-13848-7)
• The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster - 1992 (ISBN 0-552-13849-5)

The series broadly tells the story of the events leading to the end of a dark age. The idea for the series began with an ambitious outline for a series of twenty novels. This would have been followed by two equally long series, The Chronicles of an Age of Wrath, and The Chronicles of an Age of Heroes. This sixty-volume scheme ended with the publication of the tenth volume because of disappointing sales. [5]

Other novels

• Plague Summer
• The Shift

This describes a postnuclear world where orange intelligent reptilian extraterrestrials known as the Spang have conquered the Earth through the use of a device called the Shift, which controls movement through space and time and can alter history. They are in league with Iridian Troy, the most powerful human on Earth, who has an overprotective attitude towards his daughter. He is opposed by his guilt-ridden over-intellectual employee Gabriel Arkhangel and his daughter's lover Clive Sendarka, whom he pursues using all the resources available to the human race. Humans are regularly exported to a slave colony known as Deep Six, which is far out in interstellar space.

• Oceans of Light series
  • West of Heaven
  • East of Hell
  • North of Paradise

A fantasy trilogy that Cook finished in the 1990s, set in Chalakanesia.

• To Find and Wake the Dreamer

A fast-moving fantasy novel, written on an adult level, about the war on terror. In the city state of Oolong Morblock, where a certain proportion of the people have a natural ability to cause themselves to explode, in effect making them potential suicide bombers, Ibrahim Chess tries to find the middle road: to steer a course of moderation and sanity in a world which is going mad, and where the civil peace is threatened by the increasingly intolerant fanaticism of the conflict between the minority group to which Ibrahim belongs, the astrals, and the city state's dominant group, the norms. Published in 2005.

• Bamboo Horses

A murder mystery with fantasy elements set in the land of Nizon, where people eat with scissors rather than with chopsticks. Fantasy in a modern environment complete with computers and cellphones. Business manager Ken Udamana, a husband and a father of two, believes that someone is planning to murder him and takes a shot at find out who. This novel contains some violence and touches on the subject of an adulterous relationship.

Short stories

• Consenting Adults 1988
• The Kidney Bean Diet 1998
• Consequences 1998
• Heroes of the Third Millennium Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1998, Vol. 95, Iss. 6, p. 99.
• Outing 1998
• Night on Bear Mountain 1999
• An Alien in Japan 1999
• Howie Glenst and the Woman Made From Glass 1999
• The Succubus 1999
• The Earth is Flat 1999
• Her Mint-Green Breath 1999
• Remembering Nagasaki 1999
• Mountaineering Complex 1999
• Machine Readable 1999
• Golf Course 1999
• Sweetness and Light 2000
• Locked Out 2000
• Night in the Month of Madness 2000
• In the Month of Lombok 2000
• Marooned on Footbone 2000
• Lost in the Moid Challenging Destiny No. 10, July 2000 (St. Marys, Canada, ISSN 1206-6656) (pp 7-27).
• Gally Smith and the Massacre of the Orcs 2000
• Boxes 2000
• Portrait of a Woman with her Hair on Fire 2000
• The Invention of Stones 2000
• Basque 2000
• Other Lives 2000
• Swiss Toys 2001
• Limbo Larry 2001
• Gap Music 2001
• That Nightmare Known as Life 2001
• Wet Leaves on the Track 2001
• Hunting Andrew 2001
• A Totally Ordinary Young Woman 2001
• The Warden of Jestabel Zee 2001
• Pogy Bobs and the Hyena of Death 2001
• Golgo Molgo 2001
• The Trial of Edgar Allan Poe 2002
• Cultural Correctness 2002
• Flowers for the Lady 2002
• Views of Texas 2002
• Bad Sex 2003
• Patriots 2003
• The Suicide Bomber 2003
• Quilting 2003
• UFO Invasion - the Truth about Alien Abductions!! 2003
• Acorns 2003
• The Transfer of Patient Twenty-Seven 2003
• Live on Channel 10 2003
• On the Wings of a Cockroach 2003
• The Man on the Balcony 2003
• Sign on the Dotted Line 2003
• Life on Planet Earth 2003
• Saint George and Ibrahim 2003
• Cherry Normal 2003
• The Rat 2003
• Upgrade 2003
• A Subway Ride 2003
• The Wrath of Babril Hestek 2003
• Too Far From Home 2003
• The Angel of the Seventh Apocalypse 2003
• The Triumph of Japanese English 2003
• The Naked Succubus Sex Slave Murders 2003
• Harriet's Armpit 2003
• House Hunting 2003
• The Orc's Armpit 2003
• His Name Was Mac 2003
• The Magniloquator 2003
• Honeymoon 2004
• You're in my Body 2004
• The Executed Man 2004
• The Wind in his Mouth 2004
• Jorgelvace 2004
• Fulfillable Wishes 2004
• Yenlow's Renewal 52 2004
• Grapefruit Perfume Bicycle Birthmark 2004
• Escape from Hell 2004
• Implantation 2004
• Shotgun Al's Last Picnic 2004
• Maggots 2004
• The Therapy of the Great God Mulchagola 2004
• Lost in his Bedroom 2004
• Daddy's Little Girl 2004
• A Better Life 2004
• Suicide Hotel 2004
• Newlyweds 2004
• Burning Louty 2004
• Hot Cardboard 2004
• Santa Claus, Sex Criminal 2004
• Eating Jesus Christ 2005

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness stories

• Invasion of the Chickens 1999
• Vorn the Gladiator 2000
• A Pilgrimage to Plaka Kalada 2003
• The Secret History of Lord Dreldragon 2003
• The Dragon Zenphos 2003

Oolong Morblock stories

• Life and Death in Oolong Jalabar 2000
• Astral Talent 2001
• Life and Death in Oolong Morblock 2003
• A Genie at Work 2003

Chalakanesia stories

• The Ghosting of Heineman Jubiladilia 2000
• Diving on the Wreck 2002

External links

• Zen Virus official site of Hugh Cook
• Another Site by Hugh Cook
• HughCook.com
• Chronicles of an Age of Darkness a fan site
• Great Science Fiction & Fantasy Works
• BSFA Index of Reviews
• Colin Smythe Bibliography
• Most recent blog posts
• Hugh Cook at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database