Steven Erikson

Did You Know?

• Erikson has stated that all his literary works share compassion as a main theme.
• When creating the Malazan world, Erikson and collaborator Ian Cameron Esslemont agreed to create societies that never knew sexism or gender-based hierarchies of power.
• Erikson has written a comedic science fiction trilogy, the Willful Child Trilogy, which spoofs Star Trek and other genre tropes.

Life and career

Born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Steven Rune Lundin later lived in the UK with his wife and son before returning to Canada. Trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where his thesis was a story cycle titled A Ruin of Feathers about an archaeologist in Central America. After receiving a grant to finish that work, it was published by TSAR. He co-won the Anvil Press International 3-Day Novel Contest but signed away the rights, a mistake he attributes to inexperience. His third book, Revolvo and other Canadian Tales, was also published by TSAR. After moving to England, he sold what he calls his first real novel, This River Awakens, to Hodder and Stoughton. Before adopting the pseudonym Erikson, an homage to his mother's maiden name, he published his first four books under his real name. He also paints using oil paints.

Style

Erikson deliberately plays with and overturns fantasy conventions, presenting characters who violate stereotypes and embody multidimensional human traits. He began Gardens of the Moon mid-plot rather than with a conventional narrative, and his writing features complex plots with many characters. He has been praised for his willingness to kill central characters when it enhances the plot. Erikson has argued that grief, anguish, and vulnerability are universal emotional states, and that writers must mine past experiences—such as the death of a beloved pet—and transpose those emotions into new fictional contexts. He describes the act of becoming someone else in fiction as an act of immense vulnerability, where emotions flood in and one can drown in them, requiring the writer to step outside the self and channel empathy.

Reception

Gardens of the Moon, the debut novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, earned a World Fantasy Award nomination and was hailed as an astounding first effort. Critics praised its blend of originality with intelligent, gripping storytelling. The sequel, Deadhouse Gates, was named one of the year's top ten fantasy novels by SF Site. Author Glen Cook described the series as a masterwork of imagination and possibly the high point of epic fantasy. Stephen R. Donaldson commended Erikson for subverting classic fantasy tropes, crafting complex characters, and weaving in social commentary, noting parallels between the fictional Letheras economy and that of the United States. Donaldson called Erikson an extraordinary writer, comparing him to literary figures such as Joseph Conrad, Henry James, William Faulkner, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Influences

Erikson has described pen-and-paper role-playing games, especially AD&D and GURPS, as the single greatest influence on his writing, even calling them the foundation of the Malazan Empire. His storytelling was also shaped by Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Glen Cook's Black Company, both of which moved beyond Tolkien's style. Additional influences on the Malazan series include Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Homer, Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny, John Gardner, Gustav Hasford, Mark Helprin, and Robin Hobb.