Robert Holdstock

Biography

Robert Holdstock, the eldest of five children, was born in Hythe, Kent. His father, Robert Frank Holdstock, was a police officer and his mother, Kathleen Madeline Holdstock, was a nurse. At the age of seven Robert started attending Gillingham Grammar School in the Medway Towns. As a young adult he had jobs including banana boatman, construction worker and slate miner. He also earned a Bachelor of Science from University College of North Wales, Bangor, with honours in applied Zoology (1967–1970). He continued his education, earning a Master of Science in Medical Zoology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1971. He conducted research at the Medical Research Council in London from 1971 to 1974, while also doing part-time writing. He became a full-time writer during 1976 and lived out the rest of his life in North London. He died in hospital at the age of 61, following his collapse with an E. coli infection on 18 November 2009.

Writings

Robert Holdstock's first published story, "Pauper's Plot", appeared in the magazine New Worlds in 1968. His first novel was a science fiction work, Eye Among the Blind, published in 1976.

During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s Holdstock wrote many fantasy and science fiction novels along with a number of short stories, most of which were published under a pseudonym. Robert Holdstock's pseudonyms included Robert Faulcon, Chris Carlsen, Richard Kirk, Robert Black, Ken Blake, and Steven Eisler. These included some adaptions of television scripts for 'TV-tie in' novelisations, including some for The Professionals. During this same period he wrote "Space Wars, Worlds and Weapons", a series of essays about the various tropes of science fiction, interspersed with colour reproductions of space art.

In 1980 Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards. The rights were subsequently sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower, also called the Tour of the Universe.

Holdstock wrote a novella, "The Dark Wheel", which was included with the best-selling computer game Elite in 1984. He also wrote The Emerald Forest, based on the film of the same title directed by John Boorman, and novelised episodes of the Granada Television series Bulman.

Holdstock's breakthrough novel Mythago Wood was published in 1984. It began the Ryhope Wood series, which continued until the appearance of Avilion in 2009.

Between 2001 and 2007 Holdstock produced a trilogy of fantasy novels, the Merlin Codex, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings.

Holdstock wrote, edited or contributed to a number of non-fiction works, including Alien Landscapes, Tour of the Universe, Horror: 100 Best Novels and an Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (not The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).

In 2013 a joint volume of poetry with Garry Kilworth (with whom he collaborated on the award winning novella "The Ragthorn") was published by PS Publishing, Poems, Peoms and Other Atrocities.

Critical reception

David Pringle described Eye Among the Blind, Holdstock's first science fiction novel, as a "dogged, detailed, somewhat slow-moving planetary mystery". Ursula K. Le Guin called the same novel "As strong a treatment of a central theme of science fiction – alienness, and the relation of the human and the alien – as any I have read."

According to Michael D. C. Drout, Holdstock's Ryhope Wood series is a significant part of the fantasy genre, displaying the power and aesthetic standards of Tolkien’s fantasy without being either a "close imitation of" or a "reaction against" Tolkien. Drout considers Holdstock, along with Ursula K. Le Guin, a worthy inheritor of the fantasy tradition created by Tolkien. Patrick Curry placed Holdstock in a quartet of noteworthy fantasy authors, alongside Le Guin, John Crowley and Marion Zimmer Bradley, for writing fantasy books that come close to Tolkien's breadth and depth of imagination, and "in some respects surpass Tolkien".

David Langford offers praise for most of Holdstock's work, but regarded Merlin's Wood less highly: "the overall narrative is flawed, distorted by its weight of undeserved loss and inaccessible healing".

Book covers

The covers of Holdstock's books were produced by a variety of notable illustrators. The original UK and US covers of Mythago Wood were illustrated by Eddi Gornall and Christopher Zacharow, respectively; Geoff Taylor illustrated the original UK covers for the Mythago Wood sequels Lavondyss, The Bone Forest, The Hollowing and Merlin's Wood. Illustrators of subsequent covers and editions include Jim Burns, Tom Canty, John Howe, Alan Lee, John Jude Pallencar, Larry Rostant and Ron Walotsky. John Howe stated: "Holdstock is to me one of the best Celtic fantasy authors alive today."

Awards