Gilman, Felix
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1974- ) UK lawyer and author, in US for some time, most of his work being fantasy, including his first series, the Arjun sequence beginning with Thunderer (2007). Much of the tale is set in a City under invasion from gnomic flying Monsters, opposed by Arjun, a recent arrival in a world whose clockwork intricacies evoke the early work of China Miéville. Gilman's second series, the Half-Made World sequence beginning with The Half-Made World (2010), more comprehensively Steampunk than its predecessor, takes place in what may be described as an Alternate World version of something like America, as unpacked according to the topoi and geography of the Western. In The Rise of Ransom City (2012), the eponymous inventor Harry Ransom (see Invention), whose story is "edited" long after the fact by an opportunistic author of some genius, transforms the world through an enigmatic "process". A sense that the West is under a process of creation and constant metamorphosis, perhaps under the control of a Godgame figure, is not exactly uncountenanced. A singleton, The Revolutions (2014), is set initially in a Steampunk version of Victorian London, but moves into Planetary Romance territory. Gilman gives some impression that the haphazardness of his storylines may, in the end, shaken together, seem prelusory of a not-yet revealed overstory. [JC]
Felix John Gilman
born London: 11 November 1974
works (selected)
series
Arjun
- Thunderer (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2007) [ebook release late December 2007; print edition dated 1 January 2008: Arjun: hb/Stephen Youll]
- Gears of the City (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2008) [ebook released 30 December 2008; print edition dated 1 January 2009: Arjun: hb/Stephen Youll]
Half-Made World
- The Half-Made World (New York: Tor, 2010) [Half-Made World: hb/Ross MacDonald]
- The Rise of Ransom City (New York: Tor, 2012) [Half-Made World: hb/Ross MacDonald]
individual titles
- The Revolutions (New York: Tor, 2014) [hb/Will Staehle]
links
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