Chris Roberson grew up near Dallas, Texas, and attended the University of Texas, Austin. Graduating with a degree in English literature and a minor in history, he held a variety of jobs - including seven years as a product support engineer for Dell computers - before quitting his job in 2003 to launch small press MonkeyBrain Books.
He cites his upbringing in the seventies and eighties, as his major inspiration, since science fiction was particular commonplace in America at that time, saying:
"Everything from Saturday-morning cartoons to comic books to late-night B-movies to pulp novel reprints to blockbuster summer movies--it was all science fiction, in one form or another."
After college, he has suggested that he leaned towards becoming a more literary, post-modernist writer, even writing a couple of novels to that end, which he adamant will never see the light of day, after realising that he simply "wasn't depressed enough for that line of work". In his twenties, he wrote a couple of mystery novels, seeing them as a commercial venture, but found himself skirting around turning them into 'genre' titles, falling between the two camps of mystery and science fiction, and interesting publishers of neither. Ultimately he settled on writing science fiction, saying:
"My brain tends to work along the lines of science fiction tropes. Whenever I run into an odd little bit of trivia, some obscure historical fact or odd scientific principle, I can't help but start thinking of ways I could use it in a story."
His writings have received positive reviews from Locus Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Infinity Plus and RevolutionSF. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife (Allison Baker) and their young daughter, Georgia.
From 1998 to 2002, Roberson was part of writer's collective Clockwork Storybook, alongside noted comics author Bill Willingham (Fables), Matthew Sturges (co-writing with Willingham of Jack of Fables) and Mark Finn (Robert E. Howard scholar and playwright).
Starting as a writing group, CWSB became an online monthly anthology, and then a publishing imprint of the same name. Roberson produced four novels under CWSB, as the collective attempted to capitalise on the Print On Demand revolution. This ultimately fell through, and the four went their separate ways.Two (to date) of Roberson's CWSB books have been subsequently expanded and reprinted. Any Time At All (Sep, 2002) became Here, There & Everywhere (Pyr, 2005)(Right.), and Set The Seas On Fire (Dec, 2001) was expanded for its April, 2007 release by Solaris. Voices of Thunder (Feb, 2001) has been revised to become Book Of Secrets for upcoming publication by Angry Robot in August, 2009.
Focusing, after the demise of Clockwork Storybook, on his writing, Roberson sold a short story (his first professional sale) to Roc anthology Live Without a Net, under the editorship of Lou Anders. It was published in 2003, and paved the way for future sales to Asimov's Science Fiction and other anthologies. In 2004, Anders, (by now considered by Roberson "something of a personal patron") by now an editorial director at Prometheus Books' new SF imprint Pyr, bought an expanded version of one of Roberson's CWSB books Any Time At All, which was published in 2005 as Here, There & Everywhere.(Right.)
In 2003, having "discovered.. in the few years of helping run the CWSB imprint, that [he] really enjoyed being a publisher," Roberson started up his own imprint. Partly this move was inspired by the dissolution of CWSB, and Roberson having discovered a few projects by writers that he had wanted to bring out under that banner. He decided, however, that MonkeyBrain Books would deal exclusively in "traditional offset trade-paperbacks and hardcovers," distributed internationally, rather than printed on demand.
He has also contributed several stories to the annual Tales of the Shadowmen anthologies.
Since 2003, he is the publisher (along with his business partner and spouse Allison Baker) of MonkeyBrain Books, an independent publishing house naturally based in Austin, Texas, which specialises in genre fiction and nonfiction genre studies.
In November, 2005, Roberson edited the first volume in a projected annual series of Adventure anthologies, comprising "original fiction in the spirit of early twentieth-century pulp fiction magazines" across the genres, featuring contributions from (among others) Lou Anders, Paul Di Filippo, Mark Finn, Michael Moorcock and Kim Newman. (Many of which featured authors would become MonkeyBrain stalwarts.)
In July 2008, at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, it was announced that Roberson will be working on a comic book miniseries set in the universe of the DC/Vertigo series Fables, created by fellow-former-Clockwork Storybook author Bill Willingham.
Roberson's miniseries is titled From Fabletown With Love, and described by the author as featuring "spies, sex, and shoes." Illustrated by Shawn McManus and released in late 2009 / early 2010, it "answer(s) the question of what happened to Cinderella's fairy godmother."
He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award three times - once each for writing (2004), publishing (2006), and editing (2006). (For Adventure Vol. 1, left.) On two occasions he has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Long Form in 2009 for The Dragon's Nine Sons. He has also been nominated twice for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Short Form, which he won in 2004 with his story "O One".
His novel Paragaea was included in Waterstone's Top Ten SF list for 2006.
Roberson has written several novels and short stories, and self-published (with the Clockwork Storybook team) some of them himself. (His works as publisher can be found here and here.)
Clockwork Storybook Offline, Volume I: Mythology by Roberson, with Finn, Sturges & Willingham
Clockwork Storybook Offline, Volume II: The Goblin Market by Roberson, with Finn, Sturges & Willingham
Voices of Thunder (Clockwork Storybook, February 2001)
Book of Secrets - expanded reprint of Voices of Thunder (Angry Robot, August 2009)
The Clockwork Reader Volume 1 by Clockwork Storybook (Clockwork Storybook November 2001)
Set the Seas on Fire (Clockwork Storybook, December 2001)
Set the Seas on Fire - greatly exanded and reprinted (Solaris, 2007)
Cybermancy Incorporated (Clockwork Storybook, December 2001) (with a cover by Michael Lark)
Any Time at All: The Lives and Time of Roxanne Bonaventure (Clockwork Storybook, September 2002) (with a cover by John Picacio)
Here, There & Everywhere - greatly expanded reprint of Any Time At All (Pyr, April 2005) (with a similar cover by John Picacio)
"O One" in Live Without a Net(Right.) by Lou Anders (ed.) (Roc, 2003)
"So Far From Us in All Ways" in The Many Faces of Van Helsing by Jeanne Cavelos (ed.) (Ace, April 2004)
Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures: Book 1(in collaboration with Robert Rodriguez) (Troublemaker Publishing, May 2005)
Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures: Book 2(in collaboration with Robert Rodriguez) (Troublemaker Publishing, May 2005)
Adventure Vol. 1 (ed.) (MonkeyBrain Books, November 2005)
"Contagion" in FutureShocks by Lou Anders (ed.) (Roc, 2006)
"Eventide" in Forbidden Planets by Peter Crowther (ed.) (DAW Books, 2006)
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance (Pyr, May 2006)
The Voyage of Night Shining White (PS Publishing, 2006)
X-Men: The Return (Pocket Books, May 2007) (with a cover by John Picacio)
The Dragon’s Nine Sons (Solaris, 2008)
End of the Century (Pyr, 2008)
Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (Viking, 2008)
"Death on the Crosstime Express" in Sideways in Crime by Lou Anders (ed.) (Solaris, 2008)
Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Brave New World (Pocket Books, 2008)
Roberson has also written short stories for such magazines as Asimov's Science Fiction, Postscripts, Black October, Fantastic Metropolis, RevolutionSF, Twilight Tales, Opi8, Alien Skin, Electric Velocipede, Subterranean and Lone Star Stories.
He is preparing a series aimed at the Young Adult audience, entitled Celestial Empire, with the first collection subtitled Fire Star.
He is editor of the Adventure anthology series, first published by MonkeyBrain in November, 2005.
Roberson is also writing books for Black Library publishing; Dawn of War II, published March 2009, and Sons of Dorn, coming out in 2010.
