Christopher Fowler (1953-2023)
Writer Christopher Fowler, 69, died March 3, 2023 in London. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. Fowler was the author of over 50 books in a variety of genres.
Christopher Robert Fowler was born March 26, 1953 in Greenwich, London, and split his time between London and Barcelona until his cancer diagnosis. In addition to his fiction career, he was a marketing writer, and founded film marketing company The Creative Partnership, where he created the iconic tag line for the film Alien: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
His first book of genre interest was collection City Fiction (1986). Notable stories include British Fantasy Award winners “Wageslaves” (1997) and “American Waitress” (2003), and finalist “The Spider Kiss” (2007); Bram Stoker Award finalist “The Green Man” (2002); World Fantasy Award finalist “Beautiful Men” (2010); and novella Breathe (2004). His other collections are More City Jitters (1988), The Bureau of Lost Souls (1989), Sharper Knives (1992), Flesh Wounds (1995), Uncut: Twenty-One Short Stories (1999), The Devil in Me (2001), Demonized: Short Stories (2004), Old Devil Moon (2007), Red Gloves, Volume 1: The London Horrors (2011), Red Gloves, Volume 2: The World Horrors (2011), and Frightening (2017).
Debut novel Roofworld appeared in 1988, first in the London Quartet, which also includes Rune (1990), Red Bride (1993), and Darkest Day (1994; revised as Seventy-Seven Clocks in 2005). Some of those books are related to his long-running Bryant and May detective series, beginning with British Fantasy Award winner Full Dark House (2003) and ending after 17 volumes with London Bridge Is Falling Down (2021). Other works of interest include Spanky (1994), Psychoville (1995), Disturbia (1996), Soho Black (1998), Calabash (2000), The Curse of Snakes (2010), Hell Train (2011), Nyctophobia (2014), and The Sand Men (2015).
He was also a review columnist, and wrote memoirs Paperboy (2009) and Film Freak (2013), with a third, Word Monkey, forthcoming. He is survived by his husband, Peter.
For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
