Kim Newman

Kim James Newman (born 31 July 1959) is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer.^[1] He is interested in film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the BSFA award.

Kim Newman
Newman at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY
Born	(1959-07-31) 31 July 1959 (age 64) Brixton, London, England
Pen name	Jack Yeovil
Occupation	Film critic, journalist, writer
Website
johnnyalucard.com

Early life

Kim Newman was born 31 July 1959 in Brixton, London, the son of Bryan Michael Newman and Julia Christen Newman, both potters.^[1][2] His sister, Sasha, was born in 1961, and their mother died in 2003.^[1] Newman attended "a progressive kindergarten and a primary school in Brixton, and then Huish Episcopi County Primary School in Langport, Somerset".^[1] In 1966 the family moved to Aller, Somerset.^[1] He was educated at Dr. Morgan's Grammar School for Boys in Bridgwater.^[1][3] While he attended, the school merged with two others to become Haygrove Comprehensive.^[1] He graduated from the University of Sussex with an English degree in 1980 and set a short story, Angel Down, Sussex (1999) in the area.^[1] Newman acted in school plays and with the Bridgwater Youth Theatre.^[1]

Non-fiction

Early in his career, Newman was a journalist for the magazines City Limits and Knave.

Newman's first two books were the non-fiction Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations (1985), co-written with his friend Neil Gaiman, a light-hearted tribute to entertainingly bad prose in fantastic fiction and Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film, 1968–88 (1988) is a serious history of horror films. An expanded edition, an update of his overview of post-1968 genre cinema, was published in 2011. Nightmare Movies was followed by Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten (1990) and Millennium Movies: End of the World Cinema (1999). Newman's non-fiction also includes the BFI Companion to Horror (1996).

Newman and Stephen Jones jointly edited Horror: 100 Best Books, the 1988 horror volume in Xanadu's 100 Best series and Horror: Another 100 Best Books, a 2005 sequel from Carroll & Graf, U.S. publisher of the series. The books comprise 100 essays by 100 horror writers about 100 horror books and both won the annual Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction.^[4]

Newman is a contributing editor to the UK film magazine Empire, as well as writing the monthly segment, "Kim Newman's Video Dungeon" in which he gives often scathing reviews of recently released straight-to-video horror films. He contributes to Rotten Tomatoes, Venue, Video Watchdog ('The Perfectionist's Guide to Fantastic Video') and Sight & Sound.^[5] Newman is the author of the Doctor Who entry in the British Film Institute's book series on TV Classics.^[6] In 2018, Newman became the chief writer on the BBC Four documentary series Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema.

Newman participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll, where he listed his ten favorite films as follows: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, A Canterbury Tale, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Citizen Kane, Duck Amuck, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Mulholland Drive, Notorious, and To Have and Have Not.^[7]

Fiction

Newman's first published novel was The Night Mayor (1989), set in a virtual reality, based on old black-and-white detective movies.^[8] In the same year, as "Jack Yeovil", he began contributing to a series of novels published by Games Workshop, set in the world of their Warhammer and Dark Future wargaming and role-playing games. Games Workshop's fiction imprint Black Flame returned the Dark Future books to print in 2006, publishing Demon Download, Krokodil Tears, Comeback Tour and the expanded, 250-page version of the short story "Route 666".

Anno Dracula was published in 1992. The novel is set in 1888, during Jack the Ripper's killing spree—but a different 1888, in which Dracula became the ruler of England. Anno Dracula was followed by the Anno Dracula series of novels and shorter works, that followed the same alternative history. The fourth novel in the series was published in 2013 as Johnny Alucard.^[9]

Other novels include Life's Lottery (1999), in which the protagonist's life story is determined by the reader's choices^[10] (an adult version of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children's books), The Quorum (1994), Jago (1991) and Bad Dreams (1990).

Newman wrote a Doctor Who novella, Time and Relative in 2001.

Selected fiction

Novels

• The Night Mayor (1989)
• Bad Dreams (1990)
• Jago (1991)
• The Quorum (1994)
• Life's Lottery (1999)
• Anno Dracula series
  • Anno Dracula (1992)
  • The Bloody Red Baron (1995)
  • Dracula Cha Cha Cha (also published as Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959) (1998)
  • Johnny Alucard (2013)
  • One Thousand Monsters (2017)
  • Anno Dracula 1999: Daikaiju (2019)
• Time and Relative (2001)
• An English Ghost Story (2014)
• The Secrets of Drearcliffe Grange School (2015)^{[11][12][13][14][15]}
• The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School (2018)
• Angels of Music (2016)
• Something More Than Night (2021)

Short story collections

• The Original Dr. Shade, and Other Stories (1994)
• Famous Monsters (1995)
• Back in the USSA (1997) (with Eugene Byrne)
• Seven Stars (2000)
• Where the Bodies are Buried (2000)
• Unforgivable Stories (2000)
• Dead Travel Fast (2005)
• Diogenes Club series
  • The Man from the Diogenes Club (2006)
  • The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club (2007)
  • Mysteries of the Diogenes Club (2010)
  • The Man From the Diogenes Club (2017)
• Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (Titan Books, 2011; ISBN 9780857682833)

Comics

• Anno Dracula – 1895: Seven Days in Mayhem (Titan Comics, 2017, 5 issues) with artist Paul McCaffrey.

As "Jack Yeovil"

• Warhammer setting
  • Drachenfels (1989)
  • Beasts in Velvet (1991)
  • Genevieve Undead (1993, three novellas published as a single book)
  • Silver Nails (2002, short stories)
  • The Vampire Genevieve (2005, compilation of the above four books)
• Dark Future setting
  • Krokodil Tears (1990)
  • Demon Download (1990)
  • Route 666 (1993)
  • Comeback Tour (1991)
• Orgy of the Blood Parasites (1994)
• "The Big Fish" in Shadows over Innsmouth (1994)

Awards

• The Horror Writers of America Bram Stoker Award for Best Non Fiction, shared 1989 (Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Newman)^[4]
• The Horror Writers of America Bram Stoker Award for Best Non Fiction, shared 2005 (Horror: Another 100 Best Books, eds. Jones and Newman)^[4]
• The British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Fiction (The Original Dr Shade)
• The Dracula Society's Children of the Night Award for Best Novel (Anno Dracula)
• The Fiction Award of the Lord Ruthven Assembly (Anno Dracula)
• International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel (Anno Dracula)
• International Horror Guild Award for Best Novella (Coppola's Dracula)
• Prix Ozone for Best Novel (Anno Dracula)
• The British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2000 (Where the Bodies Are Buried)

Newman has been nominated for the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award six times^{[nb 1]} and for the World Fantasy Award seven times.^{[nb 2]}

Notes

1. Kim Newman's Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award nominations include Best Article for 'Rediscovering Polanski' in Video Watchdog #108, 'Edgar Wallace: Your Pocket Guide to the Rialto Krimi Series' in Video Watchdog #134, and 'Suspense: The Lost Episodes' in Video Watchdog #140; Best Commentary for I Walked with a Zombie and Mark of the Vampire (both with Stephen Jones); and DVD Reviewer of the Year (for 2008)
2. Kim Newman's World Fantasy Award nominations include Best Novel for Anno Dracula; Best Collection for The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club; and Best Novella for Out of the Night, When the Full Moon Is Bright...; Coppola's Dracula; Soho Golem; The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train and Cold Snap.

References

1. Newman, Kim (24 May 2011). "Biography". The Kim Newman Web Site. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
2. Kim James Newman. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007.
3. Newman, Kim (7 September 2020). "Fifty years ago today was my first day at Dr Morgan's Grammar School for Boys, Bridgwater". Twitter. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
4. Bibliography: Horror: 100 Best Books". Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
     "Bibliography: Horror: Another 100 Best Books". ISFDB. Retrieved 2015-02-22.
     Select a "Title" for more data including a complete table of contents.
5. "Kim Newman | the Guardian". TheGuardian.com.
6. "Doctor Who: A Cultural Reading by Kim Newman - GoodReads". GoodReads. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
7. . Archived from the original on 18 August 2016.
8. Clute and Grant 1997, p. 682.
9. . Archived from the original on 13 October 2012.
10. "Life's Lottery by Kim Newman review". 16 September 2014.
11. Lovegrove, James (24 October 2014). "'An English Ghost Story', by Kim Newman". Financial Times. ISSN 0307-1766. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
12. "Back in Black: The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman". Tor.com. 20 October 2015. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
13. . Starburst Magazine. Archived from the original on 25 February 2016. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
14. "The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman". SFFWorld. 7 November 2015. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
15. . Film4 FrightFest. Archived from the original on 25 February 2016. Retrieved 17 February 2016.

Bibliography

• Clute, John and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St Martin's Press, 1997. ISBN 0-312-15897-1.

External links

• Kim Newman – official site
• – Newman's film related writings archive (ongoing project)
• Kim Newman at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Kim Newman at Library of Congress, with 31 library catalogue records
• Works by or about Kim Newman at Internet Archive
• . Crime Time. Archived from the original on 18 April 2000. Original publication date unknown.