James Lovegrove (born 1965) is a British writer of speculative fiction. His first novel was The Hope, published by Macmillan in 1990. He was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 for his novel Days and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004 for his novel Untied Kingdom.
Lovegrove's work tends towards the literary end of the SF/fantasy spectrum and usually carries a dystopian, satirical edge, much in the tradition of J.G. Ballard and John Wyndham. His subject matter is often the corrupting effects of wealth and commercialism, and recurring motifs are duality and the clash or reconciliation of opposites. Lovegrove has a fondness for wordplay, not only in his prose but sometimes as a plot device, as in the back-to-back double novella Gig, where palindromes form a key part of the narrative, and the novel Provender Gleed, whose cast of characters includes a pair of detectives who solve crimes through the use of anagrams.
Recently Lovegrove has moved into the Young Adult field, writing a series of fantasy novels under a pseudonym (Jay Amory). These have been translated into nine languages so far. He has also written a number of short novels published by Barrington Stoke, a company specialising in books for reluctant readers. Two of his titles for that company have been longlisted for the Manchester Book Award.
As an illustrator, Lovegrove has executed design and poster work for Flying Pig Systems, makers of the Wholehog range of lighting control products, and drew the pictures for the Echo Beach line of postcards and T-shirts.
He has contributed reviews and journalism to magazines such as The Literary Review, Interzone and BBC MindGames Magazine and cryptic crosswords to the weekend section of the Independent, and is a regular reviewer of fiction for the Financial Times.