<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

James Herbert (b. 1943) is Britain’s most successful commercial horror writer, with more than 50 million copies of his books sold worldwide, translated into over thirty languages. While working as an art director in a London advertising agency, he drew upon his East End background to write his first novel, The Rats (1974). He followed the success of The Rats with The Fog (1975) and The Survivor (1976). Much to the dismay of his publisher, Fluke (1977) was a humorous novel about a man reincarnated as a dog. An attempt to break away from the horror tag, it remains one of the author’s own favorite books. After a high-profile copyright case in the British High Court that lasted for three months, the author was forced to remove material from The Spear (1978), which linked a neo-Nazi cult with the eponymous symbol of occult power. Herbert became a full-time author with Lair (1979), the first sequel to his debut novel. He followed it with The Dark (1980), The Jonah (1981), Shrine (1983), Domain (1984, a second sequel to The Rats), Moon (1985), The Magic Cottage (1986), Sepulchre (1987) and Haunted (1988). In 1989 James Herbert received a £2 million advance for two books, which was then a record in the U.K. The first of these was Creed (1990), followed by Portent (1992). The Ghosts of Sleath (1995) featured the same central character as Haunted, while ’48 (1996) was an alternate history in which Adolph Hitler had unleashed a deadly plague on Britain. The author moved publishers again with Others (1999), and followed it with Once… (2001), Nobody True (2003) and The Legend of Crickley Hall (2005). James Herbert’s Dark Places: Locations and Legends (1993) married the author’s text with photographs by Paul Barkshire, and the graphic novel The City (1994) was a fourth book in the "Rats" saga, illustrated by Ian Miller.The first of James Herbert’s books to be adapted for the screen was The Survivor (1980), which was shot in Australia by director David Hemmings. Even worse was The Rats (aka Deadly Eyes, 1983). Originally conceived as a pilot for a BBC series, Haunted was filmed in 1995 by veteran director Lewis Gilbert, while Fluke (1995) was relocated to an American locale by Italian director Carlo Carlei. James Herbert: By Horror Haunted (1992) is an authorized illustrated study of the author’s life and work edited by Stephen Jones.