So, my next book will be about Christopher Priest and will be published by Gylphi, which is something that makes me inordinately pleased. I’ve started the reading and note taking that inevitably accompanies such a task. But I’ve also put together a chronology of his books and short stories, just as a way of keeping everything straight in my mind. And I realised as I was putting it together that there are gaps. I don’t just mean the pseudonymous stuff (I’ve only included the work he has acknowledged), but there are other gaps. I’m missing the Sally Gunnell book he was ghostwriter on, and I’m sure there are stories missing, also odd details such as where “The Discharge” first appeared. Therefore, if you can fill in any of the gaps, or add more details to this list, I would be very grateful.
The dates given are date of first publication, except for the stories that first appeared in Ersatz Wines. In those cases I have given the date of composition in [square brackets].
[1963] Going Native Ersatz Wines, Nov 63
[1964] Stranglehold Ersatz Wines, Mar 64
[1964] Star Child Ersatz Wines, Nov 64
[1965] The Witch-Burners Ersatz Wines, Jan 65
[1965] Nicolson’s Repentances Ersatz Wines, Oct 65
[1965] Combined Operation Ersatz Wines, Nov 65
[1965] The Ostrich Seed Ersatz Wines, Nov 65
1966 The Run Impulse 3, May 66
1966 Conjugation New Worlds 169, Dec 66 [May 66]
[1967] Chance Ersatz Wines, Apr 67
1967 Impasse SF Impulse 12, Feb 67 [Sep 65]
1967 The Ersatz Wine New Worlds 171, Mar 67 [Mar 66]
1969 The Interrogator New Writings in SF 15 [Jan 68]
1970 Breeding Ground Vision of Tomorrow 4, Jan 70
1970 Nothing Like the Sun Vision of Tomorrow, Jul 70
1970 Fire Storm Quark 1
1970 Double Consummation The Disappearing Future
1970 The Perihelion Man New Writings in SF 16
1970 Indoctrinaire
1971 Sentence in Binary Code Fantastic Stories 20:6, Aug 71
1971 Real-Time World New Writings in SF 19
1972 Charlie was a Bastard Oz Magazine 41, Mar/Apr 72
1972 The Head and the Hand New Worlds Quarterly 3
1972 Fugue for a Darkening Island
1974 Transplant Worlds of If, Feb 74
1974 A Woman Naked Science Fiction Monthly 1:1, Feb 74
1974 The Inverted World New Writings in SF 22
1974 The Invisible Men Stopwatch
1974 Inverted World
1974 Real-Time World (coll)
1974 Your Book of Film Making
1976 An Infinite Summer Andromeda 1
1976 Men of Good Value New Writings in SF 26
1976 The Space Machine
1977 A Dream of Wessex
1978 The Watched F&SF 54, Apr 78
1978 The Negation Anticipations
1978 Whores New Dimensions 8
1978 Anticipations (ed)
1979 Palely Loitering F&SF 56, Jan 79
1979 Static Gravity Omni 1:7, Apr 79
1979 The Agent (+ David Redd) Aries 1
1979 The Cremation Andromeda 3
1979 The Making of the Lesbian Horse (chap)
1979 An Infinite Summer (coll)
1979 Stars of Albion (ed, + Robert Holdstock)
1980 The Miraculous Cairn New Terrors 2
1981 The Affirmation
1984 The Glamour
1985 The Ament Seven Deadly Sins
1986 Short Circuit (as Colin Wedgelock)
1986 Mona Lisa (as John Luther Novak)
1987 The Last Deadloss Visions (chap)
1990 The Quiet Woman
1993 Seize the Moment (with Helen Sharman)
1994 The Book on the Edge of Forever
1995 The Prestige
1996 The Glamour (revised)
1998 The Extremes
1999 The Equatorial Moment The Dream Archipelago
1999 The Dream Archipelago (coll)
1999 eXistenZ (as John Luther Novak)
2000 The Discharge [online ?]
2002 The Separation
2008 Ersatz Wines (coll)
2008 The Magic
2008 “IT” Came from Outer Space
2009 Real-Time World +2 (coll)
2009 The Trace of Him The Dream Archipelago
2009 The Sorting Out The New Uncanny
2009 The Dream Archipelago (coll, revised)
2011 The Islanders
2011 Fugue for a Darkening Island (revised)
2013 The Adjacent
2016 The Gradual
2017 Shooting an Episode 2084
I have not (yet) included the new novel or the new short story collection, mostly because I’m not exactly sure when they are due to appear. But if you spot any other gaps, I would be really appreciative if you would help me plug them.
Through the dark labyrinth 
Hi Paul,
The Sally Gunnell book is called Running Tall and it was published 1994, ISBN 9780747517177
The Discharge (I am pretty certain) first appeared in a French anthology called Destination 3001, edited by Robert Silverberg and Jacques Chambon, published (I think) in 2001, ISBN 9782290325780.
I think you’re also missing the novella I, Haruspex, which was first published in The Third Alternative issue 16 1998 and later reprinted in Mike Ashley’s The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy (2008, ISBN 9781845298067) and the short stories Widow’s Weeds (House of Fear, ed. Jonathan Oliver, Solaris 2011 ISBN 9781907992063) and Unfinished Business (Crimewave 12: Hurts ed. Andy Cox 2013 ISBN 9780955368370). There is also the short story A Dying Fall, which was published in Asimov’s, December 2006. This was originally commissioned by either a French or a Belgian anthology/magazine and published in French translation – Chris will know the details and I’ll ask him to look it out when he gets back from Cambridge.
Hope this helps! Any others that turn up I will let you know…
Nina, you might want to check “The Discharge”. I have an idea it first appeared on a website set to honour Ellen Datlow, and that was the year before, 2000. The French anthology would have been a reprint.
Chris will be able to resolve this. I know it was definitely commissioned for the Destination 3001 anthology, and that there was some disagreement between Silverberg and Chambon as to whether it should be accepted. (Silverberg protested that the story didn’t have anything to do with the year 3001, Chambon just loved the story and so didn’t care!) I didn’t know about the Datlow connection – as I say, Chris will have the answers.
It may have been the other way round, Destination 3001 first then the Datlow related website. But I know I first came across it when it appeared online. I was invited to write a piece on one of the stories that had appeared in some online venue that was connected to Datlow, and The Discharge was an obvious pick. My piece appeared online in something called the EDSF Project, and was later reprinted in Vector and in What It Is We Do … I wrote that piece in 2004, so the story could have appeared online anytime before that, but I don’t recall any reference to previous publication (and the whole thing has long since disappeared, of course, so we’re relying on my notoriously flaky memory here).
As a matter of interest, how many of Chris’s stories first appeared in languages other than English?
Not counting Futouristic.co.uk (which was broadcast in English first), so far as I’m aware it has only been ‘The Discharge’ and ‘A Dying Fall’ that actually appeared in French before the original English text was published. I think I’m right in saying though that the French were the first to pick up on the Dream Archipelago stories as a linked collection. There was also a Dream Archipelago collection in German, I think, before the English language one.
Chris will be home tomorrow, so he’ll be able to set us straight. He already knows you’re compiling this chronology because I sent him the link last night 🙂
Oh, and The Trace of Him was originally published in Interzone 214, January 2008.
PPS: I also forgot to mention The Stooge, a short story that was commissioned by Barclay’s Bank (long story) and appeared in an anthology they produced in 2010. I’m not sure if this has an ISBN as it was never commercially distributed but Chris can certainly let you have a copy of the text. This one will definitely be in the upcoming short story collection.
And finally (I think) there is futouristic.co.uk which was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for a series of afternoon readings called Perspectives (August 2009). So far as I can remember it has only been published in print in the French SF magazine Angle Mort, I think in around 2014/2015.
Wonderful. Thanks Nina. I knew there were things I was missing, particularly short stories, I hadn’t realised quite how much.
Other than in that French anthology, The Discharge was published online at Scifi.com (Scifiction) on 13 February 2002.
Absolutely no worries! I think the reason these more recent stories slipped under your radar is because they’ve tended to be published in unpredictable venues. I, Haruspex, for example, is a fantastic novella (set in the same world as The Head and the Hand) that very few people have read. Luckily it will also definitely be in the new collection.
Also I don’t keep up with short fiction as assiduously as I should, so I tend to notice things only when they appear in collections.
I’m pleased that you are writing a whole book about Christopher Priest. I think you have always been destined to do one.
I have no information about missing stories, just a fairly peripheral comment. I happen to live a few miles from Weobley, in Herefordshire, where a large part of “The Affirmation” is set. I still get a small thrill when reading about my village in a book by one of my favorite authors. I suspect that Chris must have had a holiday in the area, as it is out of his usual geographical location.
It was written at about the same time as Rob Holdstock’s “Mythago Wood”, set in “Ryhope” in Herefordshire, which seems a version of the village of Woolhope. I know Chris knew Rob, and my imagination sees a shared holiday in the area, maybe after a Birmingham convention!
Herefordshire has hardly featured in any fiction of the fantastic since then, until the supernatural detective stories by Phil Rickman, which are an entertaining light read. I think Arthur Machen had connections with the county, so there is definitely a spooky atmosphere to the area. Well worth a visit if you and Maureen come to Hay on Wye again.
Allan
Before it was collected in The Dream Archipelago, The Trace of Him was originally published in Interzone #214, February 2008;
Two other stories appeared in Interzone:
–In a Flash, Interzone #99, September 1995;
–The Cage of Chrome, Interzone #156, June 2000;
See also Greg Egan’s Interzone index: http://ttapress.com/interzone/egan_index/fiction.php#p ;
Thanks, Jetse, I thought there were other Interzone stories, I just hadn’t had the time to go back through my collection to find them all. I hadn’t come across the Egan index before; useful.
FWIW, “The Discharge” was first published in French in DESTINATION:3001 in September 2000 and its first appearance in English was in the online magazine Sci Fiction on February 13th, 2002. This, and other information, is all available on ISFDb which, while far from perfect, is a good place to start when compiling a list of an author’s work – http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?336
Thanks, Phil, that sorts out the chronology. It must have been SciFiction where I first encountered it, and I’m pretty sure there was no reference to any earlier publication. As for ISFDb, I find so many gaps in it that I tend not to go there as a matter of course.
I’m in Cambridge at the moment — home tomorrow late. Just to say that Rob Holdstock and I did NOT take holidays together, much as I loved the old bugger and miss him still. I don’t know Rob’s connection with Herefordshire, but mine was a proposed moved to Colwall, back in the early 1970s. It all fell through in the end but I visited the area many times. A much neglected part of England, almost in Wales. Weobley is a lovely place.
Paul — there’s a story called Beyond the Beyond, which is terrible. I promised it to a French anthology, then forgot to write it, then was reminded in anxious terms, then dashed off the story in a few hours. The editor concerned said thanks, had it translated, printed it … but we never talked about. I think we were both embarrassed by it. (I’ll try to find the details for you when I’m home.)
But I think you should omit The Agent. It was mostly written by David Redd (Without my permission Redd rewrote an almost completed MS of mine, changing everything, giving it a new setting, a weak ending, etc., ruined it, ruined my interest in it, but it was promised for the John Grant anthology and I had to deliver something.) I am still pissed off about this, decades later, and have never had a proper explanation or apology from Redd for what he did. I have stayed more or less silent about this matter, and perhaps in this age of maturity should no longer feel so pissed off about it — but I do. There is a sort of unwritten but accepted code of honour between writers about not nicking each other’s work. I really would not want you to give the story any traction in your book.
Hi Chris, and thanks. Though it sems that every time you and I talk about your stories you end up saying: “Oh, that one’s terrible.” By your reckoning, I think you must have written more terrible fiction than any other author. As for “The Agent”, yes I know how you feel about that. I will not give it the oxygen of publicity, other than to include it in the complete bibliography.
Back home now. Surely, from the viewpoint of the book you’re writing, publication history is more or less irrelevant, once it’s known to exist? If it’s a matter of tracing the actual texts, I can let you have them (or maybe Nina would be a more reliable source).
Even “Beyond the Beyond”, which I assure you is not something I want to be remembered by.
I’ll let you have a copy of An American Story soon: it’s been accepted by Gollancz, but I need to read through their notes, which I haven’t been able to do because of the long weekend in Cambridge. Excellent conference on J. G. Ballard — until I went I had no idea the extent of the Ballardian interest and scholarship that now exists. Speakers had come in from Poland, Italy, France and Canada. Fay Ballard was also there, and gave a fascinating talk about her father.
Chris, the sort of academic litcrit book I’m writing, publication history is vitally important. Strictly speaking, all quotations should be from the first edition (though given your practice of revising books, that’s a habit I won’t be following). And there’s also the fact that I don’t know an awful lot of these stories, several of them I’d never even heard of before I started putting the bibliography together, so I need to know what I’m looking for and where to find them so I can decide what if anything I need to say about them.
And I am really looking forward to An American Story.
“I think you must have written more terrible fiction than any other author.”
Hope you put that in the prelims to the book.
I’m sure that will be on all the publicity material.
If your publisher requires first publication details, then of course you shall have them. Looking through the recent comments, I think you and Phil and Nina have sorted most of them out. (What Phil says about The Discharge is correct.)
I’m not trying to be awkward about publication history. The problem is that when you sell a short story the process is always a bit more cloudy and indefinite than when you sell a book to a publisher. When the thing turns up at home in print, you take a quick glance at it and then move on.
But if you notice any details about publication still missing, let me know and I’ll have a search.
Collections too are tricky to keep hold of. Nina said for example that there was an earlier version of The Dream Archipelago in German. This is not strictly true. The publisher actually bought my collection An Infinite Summer as a translated reprint, but the editor took it upon himself to call the book The Dream Archipelago. That was pretty annoying.
But not as annoying as the Dutch publisher (CentriPress) who brought out De Droomarchipel in 1981 — this was an unauthorized retitling of The Affirmation.
The TRUE first edition of The Dream Archipelago (i.e. containing the five original stories, The Negation, Whores, The Cremation, The Watched and The Miraculous Cairn) was published in French by Lattès, under the title L’Archipel du Rêve. That was in 1980 or 1981, I think — but I can’t find my only remaining copy, so someone had better check the date, if required.
(The expanded edition of ‘L’Archipel has also been published in France, two or three years ago.)
I know bibliographers sometimes get annoyed with writers because of this sort of thing, but most of it’s not our fault and we find it irritating too.
Here’s the word on A Dying Fall (which I consider to be one of my not-terrible stories). It was originally commissioned by Jean-Claude Vantroyen, book editor on the Brussels newspaper, Le Soir. His only editorial requirement was that I must mention the Belgian monarch. King Albert. (Did so — can’t remember how.) So the story appeared first in French, in Le Soir, but I can’t remember the exact date. I later sold it in the English language to Asimov’s.
You might also like to know that Futur Intérieur (published by Calmann-Lévy in 1977) is the true first edition, appearing several months before the English language version, A Dream of Wessex. The French edition of L’inclinaison (The Gradual) also appeared last year, a few days before the Gollancz English-language edition.
I might remember more of these anomalies if given the right clue, or if you or Phil spot something, and ask.
Wow, that’s great stuff, thank you. I’m still trying to work out how I’m going to handle the bibliography. My inclination is just to stick to first English Language edition where possible. But I need to keep track of the stories that first appeared in other languages, because that will probably be useful for the record. (I hate bibliographies. They always appear so straightforward then turn into a terribly complicated swamp. But they are useful, and of course essential for this sort of enterprise.)