Roberson, Chris

PERSONAL:

Married Allison Baker; children: one daughter. Education: Graduated from University of Texas at Austin.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Austin, TX. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, publisher, and entrepreneur. MonkeyBrain Books, founder and owner, 2003—. Worked as a product support engineer for Dell Computers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

World Fantasy Award finalist, 2003, and Sidewise Award for Best Short-Form Alternate History, both for short story "O One"; John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer finalist, 2005.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Voices of Thunder (novel), Clockwork Storybook (Austin, TX), 2000.

Any Time at All (novel), Clockwork Storybook (Austin, TX), 2002.

Here, There, & Everywhere (novel), Pyr (Amherst, NY), 2005.

(With Robert Rodriquez) The Day Dreamer ("Shark Boy and Lava Girl" series), illustrated by Alex Toader, Troublemaker Publishing, 2005.

(With Robert Rodriquez) Return to Planet Drool, ("Shark Boy and Lava Girl" series), illustrated by Alex Toader, Troublemaker Publishing, 2005.

Adventure, Volume 1, MonkeyBrain Books (Austin, TX), 2005.

Paragaea: A Planetary Romance (novel), Pyr (Amherst, NY), 2006.

Voyage of the Night Shining White (alternate history novel), PS Publishing, 2006.

Also author of Cybermancy Incorporated and Set the Seas on Fire, Clockwork Storybook (Austin, TX).

Contributor to periodicals, including Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Postscripts, Opi8.com, and Subterranean Magazine.

Contributor to anthologies, including Live without a Net, ROC (New York, NY), 2003; The Many Faces of Van Helsing, Ace (New York, NY), 2004; Tales of the Shadowmen, Black Coat Press, 2005; and Future-Shocks, ROC (New York, NY), 2006.

Author of the blog, Chris Roberson.

SIDELIGHTS:

Chris Roberson is a novelist, short-story writer, and publisher who works in the science fiction, fantasy, and pulp adventure genres. Roberson is the founder, with his wife, Allison Baker, of Monkeybrain Books, a small press specializing in nonfiction genre studies with additional output in novels, art books, short-story collections, and other publishing projects. "Basically, the sole publishing philosophy of MonkeyBrain Books is that the press exists to publish the kind of stuff that I like, and I like a lot of stuff," Roberson commented in an online interview with Rick Klaw on Revolution Science Fiction. His first published short story, "O One," was nominated for the prestigious World Fantasy Award. The busy and prolific Roberson is also the editor of the anthology series, Adventure, featuring stories in the best tradition of pulp adventure and fantasy.

Roberson's debut novel, Here, There, & Everywhere, is a complex time-travel adventure centered on female protagonist Roxanne Bonaventure. Witty and intelligent, the precocious Roxanne is wise beyond her years. A fateful encounter has far-reaching effects on her life, however. On her way home from school, Roxanne finds an old woman slumped on the sidewalk, apparently mortally wounded. The woman gives Roxanne a strange bracelet and, without a word of explanation, suddenly dies. Roxanne is upset by the episode, but she goes on with her life. Later, she learns that the bracelet is a powerful time-travel device called the Sofia, and it allows the user to shuttle forward or backward and even into alternate timelines. After much experimentation and help from her scientist father, Roxanne learns to control the Sofia and begins to delve further and further into the timestream. Her adventures quickly mount up. She looks into an alternative past where Pete Best remained the Beatles' original drummer. She fights Nazis in World War II and helps a detective in the 1890s solve a mystery involving H.G. Wells and another mysterious time traveler. She shows her curious father the way the world will look in the far future and, in a more emotional interlude, uses the powers of the Sofia to try to find a cure for his cancer. Along the way, she encounters the Chrono Defense Corps, allegedly an organization in charge of protecting time; she learns of other time travelers and time-travel devices around the world; and she discovers, finally, the identity of the old woman who gave her the Sofia. "Clever popular culture references, amusing showdowns and true human feeling lift this wellcrafted debut," remarked a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

Paragaea: A Planetary Romance is an "entertaining speculative novel" reminiscent of the fantasy works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Alex Raymond, and other early purveyors of the fusion between the scientific and the fantastic, noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. In mid-orbit around the Earth, cosmonaut Akilina "Leena" Chirikova encounters a silvery gateway in the path of her orbiter craft. When she enters the gateway, she is transported to the exotic and dangerous planet of Paragaea, where dinosaurs still roam, hybrid snake men and jaguar men prowl the forests, and where swashbuckling adventure is a way of life. Almost immediately upon landing, Leena is captured by jaguar men, but she is rescued by a fellow human, ship's captain Hieronymous Bonaventure and his jaguar-man colleague, Prince Balam. Determined to find a way to get Leena back home, the trio sets off across the inhospitable but thrilling planet to find someone who can operate the dimensional portals leading to Earth. Roberson's characters, settings, and plotlines evoke a "simpler era when every story offered new worlds to explore," observed the Publishers Weekly critic.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, April 22, 2005, Noah Robischon, "Sci-Fi 101: Surefire Planets," review of Here, There, & Everywhere, p. 67.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2005, review of Here, There, & Everywhere, p. 156.

Library Journal, April 15, 2005, Jackie Cassada, review of Here, There, & Everywhere, p. 79.

Locus, May, 2005, "Chris Roberson: Bells and Whistles and Fireworks," interview with Chris Roberson.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 2001, Charles de Lint, review of Voices of Thunder, p. 43.

Publishers Weekly, February 14, 2005, review of Here, There, & Everywhere, p. 57; October 17, 2005, "November Publications," review of Adventure, Volume 1, p. 45; March 13, 2006, review of Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, p. 47.

School Library Journal, Matthew L. Moffett, review of Here, There, & Everywhere, p. 245.

ONLINE

Emerald City,http://www.emcit.com/ (November 23, 2006), Cheryl Morgan, "More Thrilling Adventures," review of Paragaea.

Eternal Night,http://www.eternalnight.co.uk/ (November 12, 2006), Tobias S. Bucknell, interview with Chris Roberson.

Infinity Plus,http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/ (November 12, 2006), Michael Colbert, "An Interview with Chris Roberson."

Revolution Science Fiction,http://www.revolutionsf.com/ (August 4, 2005), Rick Klaw, "A Baker's Dozen with Chris Roberson," interview with Chris Roberson.

SF Reviews.net,http://www.sfreviews.net/ (November 12, 2005), review of Paragaea.

SF Site,http://www.sfsite.com/ (November 12, 2006), Rich Horton, review of Paragaea.

Strange Horizons Reviews,http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (October 5, 2005), Mahesh Raj Mohan, review of Here, There, & Everywhere; (August 1, 2006), Mark Teppo, review of Paragaea.