Ian R. MacLeod

Ian R. MacLeod is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy, born in Solihull in 1956. After studying law and working as a civil servant, he turned to writing full-time in the early 1990s, developing a body of short and long fiction distinguished by literary prose and melancholic, richly imagined alternate worlds. His novels The Light Ages and The House of Storms unfold in an alternate nineteenth-century England ruled by guilds and powered by a magical substance called aether, while Song of Time is narrated by an aging violinist reflecting on a troubled future. He has won the World Fantasy Award twice (for a novella and for the short story "The Chop Girl"), the Sidewise Award for Alternate History on three occasions, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, both for Song of Time.