Michael Butterworth
Michael Butterworth (born 1947) is a British author and publisher who has written novels and short stories in the science fiction genre. Because of the similarity of name he is often erroneously credited with the works of comic strip script writer and novelist Mike Butterworth, author of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire and Gothic romance novels under the pen-name Carola Salisbury.[1] The two authors are not related.
Career
From 1968 to 1975, Butterworth mostly wrote short stories for New Worlds and many anthologies of New Wave SF. These early works share similarities with his contemporaries JG Ballard and William S. Burroughs. He also edited the small press magazines Concentrate, Corridor and Wordworks.
In 1976, he wrote The Time of the Hawklords and founded the publisher and book distributor Savoy Books with David Britton. In the early 1970s Savoy had a distribution deal with New English Library.
In 1977, Butterworth wrote the sequel to ...Hawklords, The Queens Of Deliria. Both books were co-credited to Michael Moorcock who has said that his involvement with the first was negligible and he had no involvement with the second at all[2] A third novel in the Hawklords trilogy is Ledge of Darkness illustrated by Bob Walker; this was only available as part of a Hawkwind 4 LP retrospective box set '25 Years On' in 1994, which never got proper distribution.
In 1978, Butterworth was the co-editor (with David Britton) of The Savoy Book, and in 1984, he co-edited (again with David Britton) Savoy Dreams. From 1987 to the present, he has been an editor and contributor to David Britton's Lord Horror novel and the Lord Horror and Meng & Ecker graphic series. Butterworth and Britton fought against obscenity charges in connection with books that they published.[3]
In 2006, Butterworth founded a new book publishing imprint, Michael Butterworth, which he runs together with Savoy Books. In 2009 he launched the annual contemporary visual arts and writing journal, Corridor8.
From 2011, he has been contributing short fiction and poetry to Emanations, the annual anthology edited by Carter Kaplan and published by International Authors.
In 2016 Butterworth began a series of memoirs. The first, "The Blue Monday Diaries: In the Studio With New Order", is an account of his time spent with the band in the early nineteen-eighties. The book also contains a picture of alternate Manchester at that time. Other volumes will follow.
Butterworth is vegan.
Works
- Novels by Butterworth
- The Time of the Hawklords (1976; co-credited to Michael Moorcock)
- Queens of Deliria (1977; co-credited to Michael Moorcock)
- Ledge of Darkness (1995; graphic novel illustrated by Bob Walker)
- Space:1999 Novelizations
- Planets of Peril
- Mind-Breaks of Space (with J. Jeff Jones)
- The Space-Jackers
- The Psychomorph
- The Time Fighters
- The Edge of the Infinite
In 2006 Michael Butterworth revised and re-ordered the episodes novelised in the above-mentioned Space: 1999 books in a new hardcover, signed and numbered, limited edition omnibus published by Powys Media, under license from Granada Ventures. In addition, he also wrote a novelisation of the episode, The Taybor, which had not been included in the original books. The author contributed a foreword as well. This omnibus was entitled: Year Two.
- Anthologies edited
- The Savoy Book (1978) (with David Britton)
- Savoy Dreams (1984) (with David Britton)
References
- ↑ See, e.g., this list of works by Butterworth.
- ↑ Information from Multiverse.org
- ↑ David Kerekes. "Banned, Torn and Quartered: The Story of Savoy" in David Kerekes and David Slater (eds) Critical Vision: Random Essays & Tracts Concerning Sex Religion Death". Stockport, Cheshiree UK: Headpress, 1995, pp. 145-70.