On Saturday, February 23rd the British Fantasy Society and PS Publishing will host the publication launch of the bio/bibliography Basil Copper: A Life In Books. The launch will take place at The Upstairs Bar, Ye Olde Cock Tavern, 22 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1AA from 6:00pm onwards.
Among those signing copies will be Basil Copper, editor/co-designer Stephen Jones, artists Randy Broecker and Les Edwards, co-designer Michael Marshall Smith and publisher Peter Crowther. Special Guests (subject to commitment) include legendary anthology editors Hugh Lamb, Michel Parry and David A. Sutton.
Basil Copper became a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field, “The Spider,” was published in 1964 in The Fifth Pan Book Of Horror Stories, since then his short fiction has appeared in numerous collections and anthologies, and been extensively adapted for radio and television. Along with two non-fiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, his other books include the novels The Great White Space, The Curse Of The Fleers, Necropolis, The Black Death and The House Of The Wolf. Copper has also written more than fifty hardboiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-like consulting detective Solar Pons in several volumes of short stories and the novel Solar Pons Versus The Devil’s Claw.
Concluding three years’ extensive research, multiple award-winning editor and writer Stephen Jones was given unprecedented and unrestricted access to the books and papers of renowned British macabre and crime writer Basil Copper.
The result is Basil Copper: A Life In Books, a unique and in-depth study of the author and his works. Not only does this volume contain the most comprehensive Working Bibliography ever compiled of Basil Copper’s productive output – including Macabre and Supernatural Novels and Collections, the “Solar Pons” series, the “Mike Faraday” series, Short Fiction and Novellas, Media Adaptations, Unpublished Works and much more, enhanced with commentary by the author himself – but it also features several rare and obscure articles covering everything from Arkham House creator August Derleth to a brief history of Count Dracula.
There are also a number of short stories, most of them original to this volume, ranging from his very first published work back in 1938 to a brand-new “Mike Faraday” detective adventure, along with a complete television script based on M.R. James’ classic horror story “Count Magnus.”
