![[Alarming rictus]](dickinson.jpg)
[Up: Favorite authors] [Robot Wisdom home page]
1927: Born Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson, 16 December in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), within earshot of Victoria Falls (2nd son of colonial servant, mother's father a farmer in S Africa, three brothers)
1932: recognises vocation as writer (poet)
1935: family returned to England (Berkhamstead and Gloucestershire) for boys' school, father dies a few months later
1930s: read all of Kipling; parents were friends of John Masefield
boarding school
early faves: The Radium Seekers by Fenton Ash, The Bird of Dawning by John Masefield [cite]
1940s: scholarship to Eton
served in the British Army (signals corps)
1951: BA from King's College, Cambridge (research bursary)
1950-60s: assistant editor and reviewer for Punch Magazine for 17 years, wrote verse, knew Anthony Powell, read mysteries
1966? gets stuck writing 'Glass-sided Ants' Nest'
1967? 'Weathermonger' inspired by nightmares, breaks writer's block
"Peter Dickinson and his first wife had four children, and he now has six grandchildren. He lives in Hampshire with his second wife, the prize-winning American author Robin McKinley, and their three whippets."
Winner of 16 major young adult fiction awards.
Sources: interview, bio w/pic, Short bio, list of titles, and another. Amazon page
There are several other Peter Dickinsons around, one a composer.
Most everything he's written in the last 20 years has brought tears to my eyes at least once.
Third of the Changes Trilogy
See 1975 below for Trilogy blurb, These were written in reverse order.
UK title: Skin Deep
"Murder of the chief of an
East Indian tribe brought to London and installed in a
townhouse by a female anthropologist who is also a male
tribe member."
Amazon page
Second of the Changes Trilogy
See 1975 below for Trilogy blurb, These were written in reverse order.
UK title: A Pride of Heroes
"Pibble investigates the apparent suicide of a servant of an aristocratic family that runs "Old England", an amusement show complete with lions."
First of the Changes Trilogy
See 1975 below for Trilogy blurb, These were written in reverse order.
UK title: The Seals
"Pibble is called to visit a Nobel- Prize-winner who once employed his father and who now lives within an unusual religious cult."
Loch Ness monster mystery
One of the best, about a rare disease that makes kids especially sweet.
Superb historical drama, early Middle Ages on the Mediterranean I think
"Trying to come to terms with psychic powers that enable him to read the thoughts of others, fifteen-year-old Davy Price is unsettled by secrets that tell him that his own family is in danger."
Superb tale of an alternate world where the Irish have green skin
Middle East anthropological mystery
"This series goes through various people's experiences in the Great Changes that happen where Britain is "infected" by technophobia. People become maddened whenever an engine or other complex mechanism is operating: they tear bus drivers to pieces, and smash alarm clocks. The country reverts to barbarism overnight! A few people, mostly foreigners, are unaffected. In the first book, twelve-year-old Nicola joins a band of Sikhs in search of a home. She and her friend Ajeet are excellent heroes! Grade AAA feminist cool." [Source]
Television version
Interesting collection of metaphysical tidbits.
"A practical joker has invaded the confines of Buckingham Palace. But the jokes cease to be funny when a corpse appears in the throne room--and 13-year-old Princess Louise uncovers a dark trail of carefully-kept royal secrets winding through the palace. "
Anthropological fantasy with Egyptian echoes
Won the Guardian Award
"In search of their grandfather who has disappeared while tracking down ghosts, two brothers, one blind, stumble upon a headquarters of subversive revolutionary activity in an abandoned mine."
"Combining fact with fantasy and science with romance, the authors set out to prove that dragons really did exist. First published in 1979, "The Flight of the Dragon" presents a riveting thesis on how so great a creature as the dragon actually managed to fly. 140 illustrations, 100 in color ."
Inspired an animated movie with John Ritter as the voice of PD. [IMDb]
Amazon page includes very enthusiastic comments
Brilliant tale of Tibet at the time of the Boxer Rebellion
"...I remembered in Kim the old Lama who's got a scar on his temple which he got - it's very significant in the story - when he was a young monk and his monastery went out to fight another monastery over a piece of land. And I thought well I'll tell a story like that, about two monasteries in Tibet. How do I get the kid into Tibet? Then because of my interest in gardening I thought plant-collectors have been in southwest China, on the borders of Tibet, and there are wonderful stories about them. You've then got to detach the child from its parents and I'd read about the Boxer Rebellion, so I had the boy, a missionaries' son, falling in with this planthunter bloke and the Boxers chasing them into Tibet. I told the story [to his sons] like that a few times before I decided to turn it into a book. But then - this is literally true, this actually happened - I'd done a few pages and the boy was standing on the edge of this ravine looking back at his ruined home, and heard horse-hooves on the track behind him - the plant-hunter, of course - and I thought 'This guy's going to be a snore - I'll make him a woman,' and that was Mrs Jones. She galloped away with the book, which is why there isn't a battle after all." [more]
Carnegie Medal winner
Amazon page
Carnegie Medal winner
Psychically gifted child exploited by mercenary-types
African setting
Mystery with Shakespearean play motif (The Tempest)
"Eva's memory and thought patterns, her whole personality, are transferred into the body of a chimpanzee. She becomes the first intelligent monkey in the world."
Salon review, Short review,
class activities,
long academic essay w/spoilers,
B&N page, Amazon page
"A sequel to Dickinson's King and Joker , this novel focuses on the same fictional British royal family after the death of heroine Princess Louise's grandmother, Grand Duchess Marie Romanov. Dickinson juggles several subplots--a rumor of possible terrorist action; the odd behavior of Louise's sister-in-law--but concentrates mostly on the Grand Duchess's possibly scandalous letters and the strange woman hired to translate them from Russian."
Amazing adventures of a child in war-torn Africa
"AK is about a boy with his own gun, raised by a guerrilla group during a civil war. "My mother was the war," protagonist Paul Kagomi says. "She was a witch, a terrible demon, an eater of people, but she looked after me. It's not my fault that I loved her." Paul, of the mythical African nation of Nagala, is one of a group of homeless boys trained in warfare by the National Liberation Army. As the civil war subsides, Paul faces a life with no skills except the ones he learned for battle. AK won a Whitbread Prize in 1990."
"I was listening to the World Service news programme just as the Ugandan civil war was ending about children being used by guerilla groups. They have, in some case, been made to do the most horrific things. And I heard the sentence, 'Even a hardened government soldier will hesitate the extra half-second before gunning down a child' and I went on to write a book called AK on the basis of this. That's where that came from. It modified itself a lot as it went along. My original plan was very simple. This boy has got a Kalshnikov rifle - the guerilla weapon... I went and handled one, at the small-arms place down on Salisbury Plain... and at the end he was going to use it to shoot his way out of trouble, but while I was writing the book started telling me that what was happening in Africa was too serious to be sorted out with that kind of superficial derring-do, and I had to think of something else." [cite]
"In two parallel stories, an intelligent female member of a prehistoric tribe becomes instrumental in advancing the lot of her people, and the daughter of a paleontologist is visiting him on a dig in Africa when important fossil remains are discovered."
"...there's a reason it's told in alternate chapters, because after the first chapter I realised that as this was before the development of language there weren't going to be any conversations, which wouldn't do, so I said, oh well, I'll put in some modern stuff, we'll go on dig, then it immediately struck me that I could use this. But I hadn't planned it before I started writing... If you want to know about the sea ape theory you only need to read three books." [cite]
Illustrates the "aquatic ape" theory
Salon review, B&N page, Amazon page
"While looking after her grandson at a London play center, Poppy Tasker is disturbed by the arrival of a mysterious who seems intensely interested in her young grandson, and her life is further thrown into turmoil by the discovery of a corpse near the playground."
"An old man who is called to fix the huge, elaborate Branton Town Hall Clock built by his grandfather nearly 100 years ago discovers an intelligent group of mice living inside the clock."
"In 1989, Letta, an English teenager, learns of her heritage from her grandfather, great-grandson of the legendary hero of Varina, as he be-comes involved in the nationalistic political struggles in Eastern Europe."
"Gerry Grantworth died mysteriously in the gas-filled Yellow Room at the Vereker family mansion. Gerry had been the passion of Lucy Vereker and the best friend of her lover, Paul. Now, 36 years later, as the two compare accounts of that fatal day, along with war years, sexual liaisons, political scandals and intimate secrets, they will piece together a deadly puzzle."
"Danielle's pet whippet, Chuck, is terrified of absolutely everything, but Danielle is sure that Chuck is going to save the universe one day."
"Four stories tell of ghostly doubles who reach out across time, space, and magical barriers to rescue and change others, including a girl who discovers she has a second self, living another life entirely."
Published in UK as a single 640pp monster, in the US as four separate volumes.
I've read only the fourth so far, but it was outstanding. Very sweetly-drawn portrayal of what the earliest humans with language might have been like 200,000 years ago. In Po's Story they're facing a drought, and deal with a giant crocodile and a different tribe that lacks language.
Salon rave: http://www.salon.com/mwt/shul/1998/08/18shul.html
Publisher's site includes first chapter
"An Englishwoman, Rachel Matson, is 90, smart, alert and paralyzed from the neck down. After her most recent medical diagnosis, she got busy organizing a lifetime of photographs. Now, no longer able to do that, she is trying to figure out how the birds outside her window build their nests. But something more intriguing is about to engage her mind. One of two antique pistols she gave her husband years ago shows up on an antiques appraisal TV show in the possession of somebody she doesn't know. How this could be possible? With the help of her photographs, her nurse, the young woman who took the pistol to the show, and the man who was a prisoner of war (of the Japanese) with her late husband, Rachel unravels the mystery." [source]
"It began in fact as a story I told my wife on a series of dog-walks to help take her mind off some stuff that was bothering her, and it's magical fantasy because that's what she writes..." [cite]
with his wife: "We've embarked on a series of four books of short stories - called ELEMENTALS - about the mythical creatures of the four elements." [cite]
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Artist profiles:
Robert Stone Damascus Gate |
Peter Dickinson |
Lindsey Davis |
Iris Murdoch |
John le Carre |
Tom Wolfe |
Harold Brodkey |
Blanche McCrary Boyd |
William Wharton |
Joseph McElroy |
Ward Just |
G Spencer Brown
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Mary Coughlan |
Jane Siberry |
Hal Willner |
Michael Hurley |
Incredible String Band |
Van Dyke Parks
film:
Richard Lester |
Mike Leigh |
Jacques Rivette
misc:
J Krishnamurti |
Stephen Gaskin |
Hero Joy Nightingale
One-layer portals: James Joyce | Thomas Pynchon
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1899
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