Seth Dickinson is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction, known for his 2015 debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant and its sequels The Monster Baru Cormorant and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant.
Seth Dickinson | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Genre | Hard fantasy |
| Notable works | The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2015) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Career
Dickinson graduated from the University of Chicago, where he received the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing in 2011 for his short story "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter".[1] He has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.[2] He also contributed writing to video games, including Destiny: The Taken King (2015).[3]
His debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a hard fantasy expansion of a 2011 short story, is about a brilliant young woman who, educated in the schools of the imperial power that subjugated her homeland, sets out to gain power to subvert the empire from within. It was published in September 2015 and was well received by critics.[4][5] Dickinson has blogged about addressing issues around gender and feminism, race, homosexuality, and imperialism in the world of Baru Cormorant.[6]
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the first novel in a series called The Masquerade.[7] Dickinson completed the draft of a sequel, The Monster Baru Cormorant, in July 2017,[8] submitting a manuscript of 1,104 pages.[9] The final version, published in 2018, comprised half of this material. The remainder was published in 2020 as The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. As the series was originally planned to be a trilogy, a fourth novel has been announced.[10][11]
In 2023, Tor Books announced that Exordia, Dickinson's fourth novel, would be published in 2024. It is a standalone science fiction novel.[12] It was released in January 2024 to positive review. Publishers' Weekly wrote, "With cool alien technology, admirably hopeful heroes, and SFF pop culture references littered throughout, this will have readers hooked".[13] In an interview with BookPage magazine, Dickinson said that the book was inspired by the LEGO Bionicle toy line, as well as novels The Andromeda Strain and Sphere by Michael Crichton.[14]
Bibliography
Novels
- The Masquerade series
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant, 15 September 2015, Tor Books. Published as The Traitor in the UK. Based on the short story "The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Field-General, and Their Wounds" (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2011).
- The Monster Baru Cormorant, 30 October 2018, Tor Books.
- The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, 9 June 2020, Tor Books.
- A final novel, forthcoming.[11]
- Other novels
- Exordia (2024)[15]
Short fiction
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Field-General, and their Wounds" | 2011 | Beneath Ceaseless Skies, December 2011 | ||
| "Worth of Crows" | 2012 | Beneath Ceaseless Skies, September 2012 | ||
| "Cronus and the Ships" | 2013 | Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2013 | ||
| "A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed)" | 2013 | Strange Horizons, August 2013 | ||
| "Never Dreaming (In Four Burns)" | 2013 | Clarkesworld, November 2013 | ||
| "Testimony Before an Emergency Session of The Naval Cephalopod Command" | 2013 | Drabblecast, December 2013 | ||
| "Morrigan in the Sunglare" | 2014 | Clarkesworld, March 2014 | The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF & Space Opera, edited by David Afsharirad | |
| "Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation" | 2014 | Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 2014 | ||
| "Kumara" | 2014 | Escape Pod, March 2014 | ||
| "Our Fire, Given Freely" | 2014 | Beneath Ceaseless Skies, April 2014 | ||
| "A Tank Only Fears Four Things" | 2014 | Lightspeed, May 2014 | ||
| "Anna Saves Them All" | 2014 | Shimmer, September 2014 | ||
| "Economies of Force" | 2014 | Apex Magazine, September 2014 | ||
| "Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant" | 2014 | Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, September 2014 | ||
| "Three Bodies at Mitanni" | 2015 | Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2015 | The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016, edited by John Joseph Adams The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke | |
| "Please Undo this Hurt" | 2015 | Tor.com, September 2015 | ||
| "Morrigan in Shadow" | 2015 | Clarkesworld, December 2015 | The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF 2015, edited by David Afsharirad | |
| "Laws of Night and Silk" | 2016 | Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2016 | The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan | |
| "The Final Order" | 2020 | From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back | ||
Writing for video games
- FreeSpace 2: Blue Planet (2010)
- Destiny: The Taken King (2015)
- Destiny 2: Forsaken (2018)
