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Basil Copper (1924 — ) is an English writer and former journalist and newspaper editor. He has written over 50 books and scripts. In addition to fantasy and horror, Copper is known for his series of Solar Pons stories continuing the character created by August Derleth, although tensions between Copper and the Estate of August Derleth make further Solar Pons stories unlikely. 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 Pontine 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).

He also wrote the long-running hard-boiled detective stories of "Mike Faraday" (58 novels from 1966 to 1988).

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.

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.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Basil Copper", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0