Basil Copper

Basil Copper (born 1924) is a prolific English writer and former journalist and newspaper editor. He became a fulltime writer in 1970. In addition to horror and detective fiction, Copper is perhaps best known for his series of Solar Pons stories continuing the character created as a tribute to Sherlock Holmes by August Derleth. Married, Copper is a longtime resident of Sevenoaks in Kent.

Copper had his very first short story "The Curse" published when he was 14 years old; however his first professionally published short story was "The Spider" in the Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories(1964). His first book was the Mike Faraday novel The Dark Mirror (1966).

The first of Copper's stories published by editor August Derleth was "The House by the Tarn" in Dark Things (1971). Copper went on to have a long-lived relationship with Derleth's Arkham House, which published his collections From Evil's Pillow (1973) and And Afterward, the Dark (1977) and his novels Necropolis (1980) and The House of the Wolf. His work drew praise from Donald Wandrei who said of him:"He beguiles the mind as he lures the imagination beyond the outposts of reality." Copper's work was also championed by editor Peter Haining.

Copper's best-known macabre tales include: "The Academy of Pain", "Amber Print", "The Recompensing of Albano Pizar" (dramatised by ] 4) "The Candle in the Skull' (read over Hallowe'en on BBC Radio 4), "Better Dead", the acclaimed Lovecraftian novella "Beyond the Reef", "Bright Blades Gleaming" and "Ill Met by Daylight".

Copper is also noted for his Cthulhu Mythos story "Shaft Number 247" in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1980).

Copper's novel The Great White Space (1975) features a character called Clark Ashton Scarsdale who appears to be an affectionate tribute to Clark Ashton Smith.

Though his important work is in the domain of the macabre, he has also written the long-running novel series featuring hard-boiled Los Angeles private detective "Mike Faraday" (58 novels from 1966 to 1988).

Copper's interests include swimming, gardening, travel, sailing and historic film material. One of England's leading film collectors, his private archive contained almost one thousand titles (at 1977). He founded the Tunbridge Wells Vintage Film Society and has often given talks at various film organisations in London. He has been a member of the British Film Society and the Vintage Film Circle of London.

Copper's work has been translated into many languages, reprinted in leading anthologies and filmed for television by Universal Pictures. The TV adaptation was of his well-known macabre story "Camera Obscura", filmed as an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery in 1971.

His novels Necropolis (a crossover between a Victorian Gothic and a detective story) and The House of the Wolf (a novel of lycanthropy) were both illustrated by Stephen Fabian. Necropolis received a 1981 nomination for the Locus Award Best Fantasy novel category.

Copper edited a 1982 two-volume omnibus collection of Derleth's stories of the 'Pontine' canon, published by Arkham House, a publishing firm founded by Derleth himself and chiefly publishing weird fiction (such as Cthulhu Mythos tales); in that edition, Copper "edited" most of the tales in ways that many Solar Pons aficionados found objectionable. A later omnibus, The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition, was issued in 2000 under the imprint of Mycroft & Moran (a name which is itself a Holmesian jest); Mycroft & Moran was long a subsidiary of Arkham House (but is no longer so).

Copper has received many honours in recent years. In 1979, the Mark Twain Society of America elected him a Knight of Mark Twain for his outstanding "contribution to modern fiction", while the Praed Street Irregulars have twice honoured him for his work on the Solar Pons series. He has been a member of the Crime Writer's Association for over thirty years, serving as chairman in 1981/82 and on its committee for a total of seven years.

In early 2008, a bio-bibliography was published on him: Basil Copper: A Life in Books, compiled and edited by Stephen Jones. The volume received the 2009 British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction.

In March 2010, Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper was launched at the Brighton World Horror Convention as a two-volume set by PS Publishing.