Seth Dickinson


Seth Dickinson is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction, known for his 2015 debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

Career

Dickinson graduated from the University of Chicago, where he won the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing in 2011 for his short story "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter". He has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. He also contributed writing to video games, including .
His debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a hard fantasy expansion of a 2011 short story, is about a brilliant young woman who, educated in the schools of the imperial power that subjugated her homeland, sets out to gain power to subvert the empire from within. It was published in September 2015 and was well received by critics. Publishers Weekly appreciated the "seductively complex", ambitious worldbuilding and the "subtle language" of Dickinson's "compelling, utterly surprising narrative". Niall Alexander, writing for Tor.com, characterized the novel as "one of 2015's very finest fantasies" and as "clever and subversive" in the vein of K. J. Parker's best works, highlighting its "intricately crafted narrative and character". At NPR, Amal El-Mohtar praised the "crucial, necessary" novel for its brutality in looking "unflinchingly into the self-replicating virus of empire", noting in particular the unexpectedly "viscerally riveting" portrayal of economic conflict. Dickinson has blogged about addressing issues around gender and feminism, race and homosexuality, as well as imperialism in the world of Baru Cormorant.
Dickinson completed the draft of a sequel, The Monster Baru Cormorant, in July 2017, submitting a manuscript of 1,104 pages. The final version, published in 2018, comprised half of this material, with the remainder to be published as the third novel out of a planned four.

Works

Novels

The ''Masquerade'' series

  1. The Traitor Baru Cormorant, 15 September 2015, Tor Books,. Published as The Traitor in the UK. Based on the short story "The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Field-General, and Their Wounds".
  2. The Monster Baru Cormorant, 30 October 2018, Tor Books,.
  3. The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, forthcoming 9 June 2020,
  4. A final novel, forthcoming

    Short fiction