Gateway Essentials: Richard Cowper

So, now that we know how this works, here’s your Essential introduction to one of the unique voices of British science fiction: John Middleton Murry, Jr, who wrote his best work under the pen name Richard Cowper . . .

The son of the famous critic John Middleton Murry, Cowper announced himself to the science fiction world in 1967 with Breakthrough, which found favour for a subtlety and richness of characterisation not seen in most contemporary SF. But it was the idea of a transformed future England became his signature leitmotif and it is this theme that is explored in what is generally considered his best stand-alone work, The Twilight of Briareus and which informs his crowning achievement, the Corlay sequence: the introductory novella ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ and the novels The Road to Corlay, A Dream of Kinship and A Tapestry of Time.

You can find more of Richard Cowper’s work via his Author page on the SF Gateway website and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.