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

Peter Dickinson, born in Livingstone, Zambia, on December 16, 1927, has written more than 50 books for adults and children, almost all of them on "a little old portable typewriter." He has accumulated an astonishing string of awards and honors, including the Library Association Carnegie Medal (twice), the Whitbred Children’s Award (twice), the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger (three times), and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction.

Dickinson suggests that he looks and sounds a bit like Gandalf’s crazy twin, a "bony, beaky, wrinkled sort of fellow, with a lot of untidy grey hair and a weird hooting voice." He lives in the England countryside with his wife, the also much-lauded writer Robin McKinley.

Some of his outstanding books for young adults and children include The Changes trilogy, set in a near-future England in which the use of technology has become associated with witchcraft. The Kin is a quartet of books chronicling the adventures of four early human children, set in Africa, 200,000 years ago, just after the development of spoken language. The children's travels and trials elicit thoughts about the nature of language, the budding of religious feelings, the structure of societies, and humanity's differences from other animals. A Bone from a Dry Sea alternates chapters about a contemporary girl who accompanies her paleontologist father to a fossil site, with chapters lived by a young female humanoid of ancient times, whose cleverness keeps her small tribe from starving. Water: Tales of the Elemental Spirits is a collaboration with Robin McKinley, each contributing stories about mythical water-creatures, mermaids, sea serpents, and the like.

His books for adults include an award-winning series starring detective James Pibble, as well as a pair of literary thrillers involving a fictional royal family, King and Joker, and its sequel, Skeleton-in-Waiting.

External Links

• Official Site

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