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Richard K. Morgan | |
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| Born | Richard Kingsley Morgan 24 September 1965 (1965-09-24) (age 60) Norwich, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Genre | Hardboiled,cyberpunk, science fiction, fantasy |
| Website | |
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Richard Kingsley Morgan (born 24 September 1965 inNorwich) is a British science fiction and fantasy author of books, short stories, and graphic novels. He is the winner of thePhilip K. Dick Award for his 2003 bookAltered Carbon,[1] which was adapted intoa Netflix series released in 2018.[2] His third book,Market Forces, won the John W. Campbell Award in 2005,[3] while his 2008 workThirteen garnered him theArthur C. Clarke Award.[4]
Morgan was born in Norfolk, and brought up in the village of Hethersett, near Norwich, and had a semi-rural upbringing. He attended a private school and later studied modern languages and history atQueens' College, Cambridge.[5] After graduating he startedteaching English to travel the world. After 14 years and a post at theUniversity of Strathclyde, his first novel was published and he became a full-time writer. He lived in Glasgow until 2015, when he moved toSaxlingham Nethergate with his wife Virginia and their son Daniel.[6]
In 2002 Morgan's first novelAltered Carbon was published, combining elements ofcyberpunk andhardboileddetective fiction and featuring theantiheroTakeshi Kovacs. In 2003 the U.S. edition of Altered Carbon received thePhilip K. Dick Award and the film rights were sold for a reported figure of $1,000,000 to film producerJoel Silver, enabling Morgan to become a full-time writer.[7] The film rights were later acquired byLaeta Kalogridis, but production was trapped indevelopment hell for a decade, eventually gaining release in 2018 as aNetflix series.[8]
In 2003,Broken Angels was published, the sequel toAltered Carbon, again featuring Takeshi Kovacs and blending science fiction and war fiction in a similar way to his cross-genre début. The success of this book solidified his literary reputation.[7]
Market Forces, Morgan's first non-Kovacs novel, is set in the near future.[7] It was originally written as a short story, then as a screenplay (both unpublished). After the success of his first two works, it was released as a novel and optioned as a film.
Morgan's third Kovacs novel, intended as the final novel in the series,[9]Woken Furies, was released in the UK in March 2005 and in the U.S. in September 2005. In this novel, the Takeshi Kovacs character comes into his own as a hero, not merely a long-black-coat clad, boilerplate antihero.[10]
Morgan wrote two six-issue miniseries forMarvel Comics under theMarvel Knights imprint. His first story,Black Widow: Homecoming published monthly in 2004 was followed by a second,Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her published monthly in 2005; both are available in collected editions. The second miniseries ended on a cliffhanger, but a third miniseries was never released, with Morgan stating that the series was "an artefact of limited appeal". Morgan's work on the character introduced a new backstory for the character involving theRed Room.[11] He received a "Special Thanks" credit in the 2021Black Widow film.[12]
Black Man was released in May 2007 in the UK and in June 2007 in the United States (asThirteen orTh1rte3n). Later UK editions were published with theThirteen title. According to the author, the book is about the constraints of physicality and the idea that people are locked into who they are. These are things he could not deal with in the Kovacs universe, because for Kovacs and people like him mortality is avoidable: they just skip into a new body.[13] The novel won the 2008Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Morgan wrote a fantasy trilogy with a gay protagonist,A Land Fit for Heroes, the first volume of which has the titleThe Steel Remains and was published in August 2008 in the UK[14] and on 20 January 2009 in the United States.[15] The second volume, titledThe Cold Commands was published in 2011. The third book in the series is calledThe Dark Defiles and was published on 17 August 2014.[16]
In 2008 Morgan worked withStarbreeze as a writer forSyndicate, the 2012 re-imagining of the1992 video game.[17] Additionally, Morgan worked withElectronic Arts andCrytek as lead writer for their 2011 video game,Crysis 2.
In 2015/16 Liber Primus Games released avisual novel based on theA Land Fit For Heroes trilogy.[18]
In October 2018 Morgan's science fiction novel,Thin Air, was published in the UK by Gollancz.[19] In an interview before the launch ofThin Air, Morgan described a common feature of his works:
There is a central conceit that I keep — not consciously, I swear! — returning to in my work. It takes different metaphorical guises, but at root it's always the same sense of something grand and worthwhile being abandoned by vicious and stupid men in favour of short-term profit and tribal hegemony. You see it in the regressive politics of the Protectorate in the Kovacs novels, the way both the Yhelteth Empire and the — so-called — Free Cities fail their duty as civilisations inA Land Fit for Heroes. So also withThin Air — the landscape is littered with the markers of a retreat from the grand scheme of terraforming and building a home for humanity on Mars, in favour of an ultraprofitable corporate stasis and an ongoing lie of highly emotive intangibles sold to the general populace in lieu of actual progress.[20]
A graphic novel titledAltered Carbon: Download Blues, which continues to follow the character Takeshi Kovacs, was released in July 2019, and an animated feature entitledAltered Carbon: Resleeved was released in 2020 on Netflix.
Morgan's books are generally set in a post-extropianistdystopian world. Morgan described his "takeaway" of one of his books as:
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 élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a wilful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the majority whom the system oppresses.[21]
ALTERED CARBON by Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey Books)
2005 - Market Forces by Richard Morgan [sic]
Thirteen – Richard Morgan – WINNER 2008
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Philip K. Dick Award 2003 forAltered Carbon | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2005 forMarket Forces | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008 forBlack Man | Succeeded by |
