John Whitbourn
Encyclopedia
John Whitbourn is an author
and tenth-generation (at least) inhabitant of southern England
's Downs
Country. He has produced a variety of novels and short stories focusing on alternative histories set in a 'Catholic
' universe. His works are characterised by wry humor, the reality of magic and a sustained attempt to reflect on the interaction between religion
and politics
on a personal and social scale.
graduate and published author since 1987. His first book, A Dangerous Energy, won the BBC
/Victor Gollancz
Fantasy Novel Prize (judged by, amongst others, Terry Pratchett
) in 1991. In 1562, Elizabeth I suffered from a near-fatal bout of smallpox
. In our world, she recovered, but that did not occur in the world of A Dangerous Energy and its sequels. Instead, Elizabeth I died from that infection, and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to the English throne, leading to a second and permanent Catholic Counter Reformation in England
and Scotland
.
Popes and Phantoms and To Build Jerusalem are other novels located in his own preferred - and wildly skewed - version of history, and followed that success. A Dangerous Energy was reviewed as "the first Counter-Reformation
science fiction
novel
" and To Build Jerusalem furthers the story of that particular alternate history. A third volume in this trilogy
, The Two Confessions, is now complete. Popes and Phantoms was also published in Russia
by Mir Fantastiki
.
At the same time Whitbourn has published a steady stream of short stories, including the extensive Binscombe Tales series of supernatural stories set in his ancestral homeland. They were published in two volume collected form as Binscombe Tales - Sinister Saxon Stories and More Binscombe Tales - Sinister Sutangli Stories by Ash-Tree Press in 1998 and 1999, and reissued in ebook and print editions by Spark Furnace Books in 2011.
His fifth book, The Royal Changeling, (described as the first work of Jacobite
propaganda for several centuries) was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster
's Earthlight imprint.
Subsequent years have seen the release by the same company of his trio of books which he insists on calling The Downs-Lord triptych
(not "trilogy"), including Downs-Lord Dawn (1999), Downs-Lord Day (2000) and Downs-Lord Doomsday (2002).
This depicts the adventures of a 17th Century down-at-luck curate
who crosses into an alternate Earth where - though all physical features are similar to ours - the hapless local humans are little more than food animals of the monstrous life-form known as Null.
He appoints himself their liberator, goes back for 17th century weapons, and manages to defeat the Null (at least in that world's version of the British Isles) and in the process makes himself a God-Emperor. But further complications arise from the interference of a power-hungry 19th Century American professor, extraterrestrial creatures known as "Angels" - which is rather a misnomer - and the exploits of the Emperor's Corps of diplomats who refine Machiavellism to unprecedented subtlety...
A rare interview with Whitbourn in 2000 was revealingly entitled 'Confessions of a Counter-Reformation Green Anarcho-Jacobite'...
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and tenth-generation (at least) inhabitant of southern England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
's Downs
Downland
A downland is an area of open chalk hills. This term is especially used to describe the chalk countryside in southern England. Areas of downland are often referred to as Downs....
Country. He has produced a variety of novels and short stories focusing on alternative histories set in a 'Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
' universe. His works are characterised by wry humor, the reality of magic and a sustained attempt to reflect on the interaction between religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
on a personal and social scale.
Works
Whitbourn is an archaeologyArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
graduate and published author since 1987. His first book, A Dangerous Energy, won the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
/Victor Gollancz
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...
Fantasy Novel Prize (judged by, amongst others, Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
) in 1991. In 1562, Elizabeth I suffered from a near-fatal bout of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
. In our world, she recovered, but that did not occur in the world of A Dangerous Energy and its sequels. Instead, Elizabeth I died from that infection, and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to the English throne, leading to a second and permanent Catholic Counter Reformation in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
Popes and Phantoms and To Build Jerusalem are other novels located in his own preferred - and wildly skewed - version of history, and followed that success. A Dangerous Energy was reviewed as "the first Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
" and To Build Jerusalem furthers the story of that particular alternate history. A third volume in this trilogy
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
, The Two Confessions, is now complete. Popes and Phantoms was also published in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
by Mir Fantastiki
Mir Fantastiki
Mir Fantastiki is a science fiction and fantasy monthly magazine published in Russia since September 2003 and distributed in major ex-USSR countries via trade net and postal subscription....
.
At the same time Whitbourn has published a steady stream of short stories, including the extensive Binscombe Tales series of supernatural stories set in his ancestral homeland. They were published in two volume collected form as Binscombe Tales - Sinister Saxon Stories and More Binscombe Tales - Sinister Sutangli Stories by Ash-Tree Press in 1998 and 1999, and reissued in ebook and print editions by Spark Furnace Books in 2011.
His fifth book, The Royal Changeling, (described as the first work of Jacobite
Jacobitism
Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...
propaganda for several centuries) was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
's Earthlight imprint.
Subsequent years have seen the release by the same company of his trio of books which he insists on calling The Downs-Lord triptych
Triptych
A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
(not "trilogy"), including Downs-Lord Dawn (1999), Downs-Lord Day (2000) and Downs-Lord Doomsday (2002).
This depicts the adventures of a 17th Century down-at-luck curate
Curate
A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest...
who crosses into an alternate Earth where - though all physical features are similar to ours - the hapless local humans are little more than food animals of the monstrous life-form known as Null.
He appoints himself their liberator, goes back for 17th century weapons, and manages to defeat the Null (at least in that world's version of the British Isles) and in the process makes himself a God-Emperor. But further complications arise from the interference of a power-hungry 19th Century American professor, extraterrestrial creatures known as "Angels" - which is rather a misnomer - and the exploits of the Emperor's Corps of diplomats who refine Machiavellism to unprecedented subtlety...
A rare interview with Whitbourn in 2000 was revealingly entitled 'Confessions of a Counter-Reformation Green Anarcho-Jacobite'...
Books
| Title | Publisher | Year |
|---|---|---|
| A Dangerous Energy | Victor Gollancz Victor Gollancz Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking... |
1992 (paperback 1993) |
| Popes & Phantoms | Victor Gollancz | 1993 (paperback 1994) |
| To Build Jerusalem | Victor Gollancz | 1995 (hardback & paperback) |
| The Royal Changeling | Earthlight - Simon & Schuster | 1998 |
| Binscombe Tales - Sinister Saxon Stories (Vol. 1 collected short stories) | Ash-Tree Press | 1998 |
| More Binscombe Tales - Sinister Sutangli Stories (Vol. 2 collected short stories) | Ash-Tree Press | 1999 |
| Downs-Lord Dawn - Vol. 1 The Downs-Lord Triptych | Earthlight - Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins... |
August 1999 |
| Downs-Lord Day - Vol. 2 The Downs-Lord Triptych | Earthlight - Simon & Schuster | December 2000 |
| Downs-Lord Doomsday - Vol. 3 The Downs-Lord Triptych | Earthlight - Simon & Schuster | February 2002 |
| Frankenstein's Legions | Spark Furnace Books (Kindle edition) | 2011 |
| The Complete Binscombe Tales (Vols. 1, 2 & 3 collected short stories) | Spark Furnace Books (Paperbacks) | 2011 |
| The Complete Binscombe Tales (Vols. 1 to 6 collected short stories) | Spark Furnace Books (Kindle editions) | 2011 |
| Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (One volume) | Spark Furnace Books (Hardback) | 2011 |
| That Devil Wilkes! (Play) | The Parvus Press (Kindle edition) | 2011 |
Short stories
| Title | Published in | Publisher | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Waiting For A Bus" | Third Book of After Midnight Stories | William Kimber William Kimber William "Merry" Kimber , was an English concertina player and Morris dancer who played a key role in the twentieth century revival of Morris Dancing, the traditional English folk dancing... |
1987 |
| "Roots" | Fourth Book of After Midnight Stories | William Kimber | 1988 |
| "Waiting For A Bus" (full version) | The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 14 | DAW Books DAW Books DAW Books is an American science fiction and fantasy publisher, founded by Donald A. Wollheim following his departure from Ace Books in 1971. The company therefore claims to be "the first publishing company ever devoted exclusively to science fiction and fantasy." The first DAW Book published was... (USA) |
1988 |
| "His Holiness Commands" "It Has Been Said" "No Truce With Kings" "Let The Train Take The Strain" |
Binscombe Tales | Haunted Library | 1989 |
| "Rollover Night" "I Could A Tale Unfold" "The More It Changes" "Appendix: A Complete List of Binscombe Tales" |
Rollover Night | Haunted Library | 1990 |
| "Every Little Breeze" | All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society Ghost Story Society The Ghost Story Society is a not-for-profit literary society whose members share an interest in supernatural fiction. Founded in Britain in 1988, it currently has an international membership and is administered by joint organizers Christopher Roden and Barbara Roden, owners of Ash-Tree Press, with... . No 2. |
-- | 1990 |
| "Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Most Men" (paperback 1991) | Mystery for Xmas | Michael O'Mara | 1990 |
| "A Partial Cure" | Transactions of the Doppelganger Society | -- | 1990 |
| "Hello Dolly" | Fifth Book of After Midnight Stories | Robert Hale | 1991 |
| "Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Most Men" | Mystery for Xmas | Michael O'Mara | 1991 |
| "Be Assured, He Is Not There" "The Flowering Of The Reformation" |
Popes & Phantoms | Haunted Library | 1992 |
| "The Fall Of A Dictator" | All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No 4 | -- | 1993 |
| "Justice Without Respite" | Ghosts & Scholars. No 15 | Haunted Library | 1993 |
| "Walk This Way" | All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 7 | -- | 1994 |
| "Only One Careful Owner" | A Binscombe Tale For Xmas | Haunted Library | 1994 |
| "Here Is My Resignation" | -- | Lychgate | 1995 |
| "Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside ( Within Reason )" | A Binscombe Tale For Summer | Haunted Library | 1996 |
| "Ingratitude" | All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 15 | -- | 1997 |
| "Bury My Heart At Southerham (East Sussex)" | Midnight Never Comes | Ash-Tree Press | 1997 |
| "BINSCOMBE TALES" (collected short stories) | Sinister Saxon Stories. Vol. 1 | Ash-Tree Press | 1998 |
| "In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent?" | Interzone no 135 | -- | September 1998 |
| Introduction to "Litany of Strange Sorrow" by John Gale | -- | Doppelganger Press | 1999 |
| "MORE BINSCOMBE TALES" (collected short stories) | Sinister Sutangli Stories. Vol. 2 | Ash-Tree Press | 23 April 1999 |
| "In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent?" | -- | Nowa Fantastyka (Poland Poland Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north... ) |
September 1999 |
| "The Way, the Truth..." | The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction | -- | January 2000 |
| "Culloden II" | All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 23 | -- | 2000 |
| "Democracy" (part one of the 'Stalinspace' series) | -- | Nowa Fantastyka (Poland) | March 2000 |
| "Just Hanging Around" | Ghosts & Scholars. No. 31 | -- | 2000 |
| "Excuse Me" | Shadows & Silence | Ash-Tree Press | December 2000 |
| "The Hills Are Alive" | Interzone no 165 | -- | March 2001 |
| "The Sunken Garden" | Acquainted With the Night | Ash-Tree Press | 2004 |
| "A Pillar of the Church" | At Ease With the Dead | Ash-Tree Press | 2007 |
| "Enlightenment" | Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo | Ash-Tree Press | 2008 |
Articles
| Title | Published in | Year |
|---|---|---|
| "The Day The Cornish Invaded Guildford" (1497 rebellion) | The Surrey Advertiser | June 2, 1989. |
| "The Bones of a Revolutionary" (Tom Paine's remains) | The Surrey Advertiser | September 22, 1989. |
| "A Gift To Woden From Pevensey?" | The Parish Pump No. 65 | Spring 1990. |
| "A Gift To Woden From Pevensey?" | Wiðowinde: Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas No. 88 | August 1990. |
| "What Would Have Happened If..." | The Catholic Times | November 6, 1994 |
| "Taking Fantastic Liberties With Our History" | The Surrey Advertiser | May 29, 1989 |
| "Sticks & Stones" | Wiðowinde: Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas No. 113 | Spring 1998 |
| "Why I Like It Here" | Downs Country Magazine no. 22 | May 1998 |
| "In the Shade of the Typewriter Tree" | Interzone no 135 | September 1998 |
| "'Orrible Massacre in Sussex" | Downs Country Magazine no. 26 | January 1999 |
| "The 'Prehistory' of St. Edmund's - 1534 - 1899" |
Essay in The Catholic Parish of St. Edmund, King & Martyr, Godalming, 1899 - 1999 - A Centenary Commemorative History | November 1999. |
| "Monmouth's Stalin Organs - or Ingenious Inventions and Annoying Authors" | The So-ho Gazette - Newsletter of the 1685 Society | July 2000 |
| "Confessions of a Counter-Reformation Green Anarcho-Jacobite" (Interview) | Starburst Magazine No. 266 | October 2000 |
| "Whitbourn's Wisdom" (Interview) | SFX magazine no 73 | January 2001 |
| "Angles, Saxons Normans - & Vandals (& Scots)" | Wiðowinde: Journal Of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas No 128 | Summer 2002 |
| "Looking For New England" | 3SF Magazine No 1 | October 2002 |
| "A Hymn To Merrily" | All Hallows: Journal Of The Ghost Story Society No 32 | February 2003 |
| Author Profile - Phil Rickman | SFX magazine no 124 | December 2004 |
| "Borderline Gothic: Phil Rickman & The Merrily Watkins Series" | 21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000. Ed. Danel Olson. The Scarecrow Press Inc. | 2011 |
Other
- Publish & Be Damned! The Suppressed/Depressed Edition. Ash-Tree Press. Web publication. 2003.