Brooke, Keith 1967-

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Brooke, Keith 1967-

(Nick Gifford)

PERSONAL:

Born 1967; married; wife's name Alison; children: George, Molly, Ed, Daisy. Education: Degree from the University of East Anglia.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brightlingsea, Essex, England. Agent—Sarah Molloy, A.M. Heath & Company, Ltd., 6 Warwick Ct., Holborn, London WC1R 5DJ, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. University of Essex, Essex, England, manager of the university's Web site.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Keepers of the Peace, Gollancz (London, England), 1990.

Expatria, Gollancz (London, England), 1991, revised edition, Corgi (London, England), 1992.

Expatria Incorporated, Gollancz (London, England), 1992.

Lord of Stone (novel), published online, 1997, revised edition, Cosmos Books (Canton, OH), 2001.

(With Eric Brown) Parallax View (short stories), Sarob Science Fiction & Fantasy (Mountain Ash, Wales), 2000.

Head Shots (short-story collection), Cosmos Books (Canton, OH), 2001.

Genetopia (science fiction novel), Pyr (Amherst, NY), 2006.

Author, under pseudonym Nick Gifford, of several children's novels. Contributor of more than sixty short stories to periodicals, including Dream and Interzone.

SIDELIGHTS:

Keith Brooke began writing at an early age, and he sold his first short stories soon after leaving college. This initial success prompted his wife to encourage him to take a year from his university studies in order to devote himself to his writing. The planned year stretched out to eight years, in which the author sold three novels and many stories. After that period he had to scale back his writing to part-time to take on more regular employment in order to support his family. His success in writing continued, however, and he eventually published several children's novels under a pseudonym.

In Genetopia, published under Brooke's real name in 2006, the author tells the story of Flint, a young man who undertakes a search for his missing sister. They live in the distant future, which is filled with the effects of genetic engineering and nanotechnology. These technologies have gotten out of control and produced strange changes in human beings and their entire ecosystem. Houses can be grown like plants, trees speak to each other, and jungles house organic beings with artificial intelligence—creatures that are both worshiped and feared by their human neighbors. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised Genetopia as an "impressively conceived, poignantly drawn" lesson about the constantly changing nature of life.

In an interview for SFFworld.com, Brooke commented: "Writing is what drives me, what I want to do above almost everything else. When you hit the groove it's like getting lost in reading someone else's story, only hugely magnified. I love that raw excitement of exploring and capturing a world and characters no-one else has encountered; I love the craft of taking that raw draft and shaping it, trying to re-work the words until I've done all I can to help readers get that rush of discovery I had when I wrote the first draft, and even earlier, when I was scribbling down the half-formed ideas and scenes in a notebook."