Cross, Gillian
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1945- ) UK author, primarily for children, in various genres, including the Demon Headmaster sequence of horror tales [see Checklist below]. Of sf interest are Born of the Sun (1983), in which the search for an Incan Lost World intersects with family romance; New World (1992), in which adventures within a Virtual Reality world turn nightmarish; Pictures in the Dark (1996), about the consequences of the protagonist's photographing an unknown animal; and the Dark Ground sequence of Young Adult sf – comprising Dark Ground (2004) and The Black Room (2005) – whose protagonist suffers Miniaturization, which is accomplished by a process which takes him out of his "zombie" body, and discovers other adolescents in the same plight, with no clue as to what scientific process has extracted them from their full-size bodies, and to what end. Cross is a capable and flexible writer whose works increasingly unfold in darkness: the vision of entrapment presented in her Dark Ground books hauntingly conveys a sense of the trammels of life. [JC]
see also: Carnegie Medal.
Gillian Clare Cross
born London: 24 December 1945
works (selected)
series
Demon Headmaster
- The Demon Headmaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- The Prime Minister's Brain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- The Demon Headmaster and the Prime Minister's Brain (London: Puffin Books, 1995) [vt of the above: Demon Headmaster: pb/]
- Hunky Parker Is Watching You (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- The Revenge of the Demon Headmaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) [vt of the above: Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- The Demon Headmaster Takes Over (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- Facing the Demon Headmaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [Demon Headmaster: hb/]
- Beware of the Demon Headmaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [chap: Demon Headmaster: hb/]
Dark Ground
- Dark Ground (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [Dark Ground: hb/Paul Young]
- The Black Room (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) [Dark Ground: hb/Paul Young]
- The Nightmare Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) [Dark Ground: hb/Jonathan Barkat]
individual titles
- Born of the Sun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) [hb/]
- A Map of Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) [hb/]
- Underground (London: Heinemann, 1990) [hb/]
- New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) [hb/Slatter-Anderson]
- Pictures in the Dark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) [hb/Slatter-Anderson]
links
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