Christopher Priest is perhaps the most versatile and gifted of the younger British writers who have grown up within--but are, in different ways, extending or transcending--the genre of science fiction. Priest has already established a select but growing reputation in France, the Netherlands, and Australia, as well as at home. A professional writer of fiction, he has never written for the stage and his rare attempts at television or film writing have come to nothing. He is, apparently, the author of novels (other than those listed above) which he had published under a pseudonym; but he will neither confirm their existence nor reveal what his pseudonym is.

Born in Cheadle, a suburb of Manchester, to Walter Mackenzie and Millicent Alice Haslock Priest, he was (he reports) not an only child and did not have an unhappy childhood. He was (he goes on):

educated at Manchester Warehousemen, Clerks' Orphan...