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Pringle, David

Entry updated 9 September 2024. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.

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(1950-    ) Scottish editor and author, long resident in England but back in Scotland from 2004, who served as Research Fellow for the Science Fiction Foundation in East London 1978-1979 and as editor of Foundation 1980-1986. With Malcolm Edwards he was one of the prime movers in the eight-strong collective which founded Interzone in 1982, eventually becoming its sole editor and publisher in 1988 and co-editing all five anthologies taken from the magazine: Interzone: The First Anthology (anth 1985) with John Clute and Colin Greenland, Interzone: The 2nd Anthology (anth 1987) with Clute and Simon Ounsley, Interzone: The 3rd Anthology (anth 1988) with Clute and Ounsley, Interzone: The 4th Anthology (anth 1989) with Clute and Ounsley, and Interzone: The 5th Anthology (anth 1991) with Clute and Lee Montgomerie. For his work on Interzone he received a Semiprozine Hugo in 1995, a special BSFA Award in 1999 and a further special award from the 2005 Worldcon committee.

As Series Editor for GW Books 1988-1991 he was responsible (in tandem, from 1990, with Neil Jones) for commissioning and publishing several Shared-World fantasy and sf novels tied to Games Workshop games like Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 and Dark Future, notably including titles by Kim Newman (as Jack Yeovil), Brian M Stableford (as Brian Craig) and David S Garnett (as David Ferring). For Games Workshop he also edited some tied anthologies, including Ignorant Armies (anth 1989), Wolf Riders (anth 1989) and Red Thirst (anth 1990) in the Warhammer series, Route 666 (anth 1990) in the Dark Future series, and Deathwing (anth 1990) with Neil Jones in the Warhammer 40,000 series. In 1991 he began a second magazine, Million: The Magazine about Popular Fiction, some of whose articles dealt with sf or fantasy writers.

As a critic, Pringle's long advocacy of the works of J G Ballard was developed in J G Ballard: The First Twenty Years (anth 1976 chap) edited with James Goddard, Earth is the Alien Planet: J G Ballard's Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1979 chap) and J G Ballard: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1984). He then produced several guides to sf, fantasy and popular literature in alphabetized format: Science Fiction: 100 SF Authors (1978 chap), Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels: An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984 (1985), Imaginary People: A Who's Who of Modern Fictional Characters (1987; rev 1989, 1996), Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels: An English-Language Selection, 1946-1987 (1988) and The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction: An A-Z of SF Books (1990) with Ken Brown (uncredited). Pringle's lack of an intuitive grasp of US sf could perhaps be detected in the 1949 inception date for books covered in the first of these (a significant few years after the beginning of the Small-Press movement in the USA), but the 200 short essays accumulated in that book and the volume on fantasy provide a valuable conspectus of fantastic literature over the chosen timespan. Pringle also edited a retrospective collection of Theodore Sturgeon's stories, A Touch of Sturgeon (coll 1987); two coffee-table encyclopedias, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: The Definitive Illustrated Guide (1996) and The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy: The Definitive Illustrated Guide (1998); and the substantial genre reference works St James Guide to Fantasy Writers (anth 1996) and St James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers (anth 1998). He contributed some major entries to the first edition of this encyclopedia and revised his Ballard entry for the second edition. [JC/DRL]

see also: SF Magazines.

David William Pringle

born Selkirk, Scotland: 1 March 1950

works

nonfiction

works as editor

series

Interzone

Games Workshop ties

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