M.R. Carey

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M.R. Carey

Goodreads Author


Born
in Liverpool, The United Kingdom
Website

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Member Since
June 2014

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Mike Carey is the acclaimed writer of Lucifer and Hellblazer (now filmed as Constantine). He has recently completed a comics adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and is the current writer on Marvel's X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four. He has also written the screenplay for a movie, Frost Flowers, which is soon to be produced by Hadaly Films and Bluestar Pictures.

Also writes as Mike Carey
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Popular Answered Questions

M.R. Carey Hi Kim. It grew out of a very specific commission. I’d agreed to write a short story for an anthology of dark fantasy and horror on the theme of “scho…moreHi Kim. It grew out of a very specific commission. I’d agreed to write a short story for an anthology of dark fantasy and horror on the theme of “school days”. Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner were editing, and I’d had to back out of their previous collection because of time problems, so I was determined not to miss the boat again.

But having said I’d do it, I couldn’t come up with a single workable idea. The deadline started to loom, and everything that came into my head was sort of a grimdark Harry Potter riff – not the slightest bit original, and not appealing either.

Then I woke up one morning with the idea of Melanie in my mind. There was no story, to start with – there was just her. This little girl sitting in a classroom, writing an essay about what she was going to do when she grew up. Only that was never going to happen because she was already dead and didn’t know it.

Everything flowed from that first image, and it flowed really quickly. I wrote the short story, Iphigenia In Aulis, in four days, and for two of those I was in Norway for a comics convention. It was one of those rare situations where the story obsesses you so much that you use every spare moment to write some more of it down. I was sneaking away to the hotel room in between panels to add a few more paragraphs, and writing in bed before I got up to shower.

And once the short was done, I had the very strong feeling that the story wasn’t. I persuaded my editors at Orbit to vary out my contract so I could write The Girl With All the Gifts. Fortunately they were really flexible and helpful. Of course, it helped that they were sold on the story.
(less)
M.R. Carey I think one of the reasons for that, Vesper, is that I'd just completed a novel where I was co-writing with my wife, Linda, and our daughter Louise. M…moreI think one of the reasons for that, Vesper, is that I'd just completed a novel where I was co-writing with my wife, Linda, and our daughter Louise. Most of the characters in that book, The City of Silk and Steel, are female, and I enjoyed writing the dynamics of those relationships. I was still in that head-space when I came to write GIRL, and choosing a female protagonist and point of view character felt like a natural and unforced choice.

Of course the other half of your question is why a child - and that arises of necessity from the nature of the story. It's really a coming of age narrative as much as anything else, and Melanie's changing perspective on the world and her place in it is a big part of the point.

The hardest part for me was writing the scene in which Dr Caldwell attempts to dissect Melanie. It was challenging in the sense that I found it hard to put that sequence of events into words. My mind wanted to slip away from it.(less)
Average rating: 3.95 · 356,000 ratings · 38,597 reviews · 41 distinct worksSimilar authors
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The Trials of Koli (Rampart...

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The Fall of Koli (Rampart T...

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Someone Like Me

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3.99 avg rating — 3,461 ratings3 editions
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More books by M.R. Carey…
The Girl with All the Gifts The Boy on the Bridge
(2 books)
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The Book of Koli The Trials of Koli The Fall of Koli
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Quotes by M.R. Carey  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“you can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them.”
M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

“And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out.”
M.R. Carey, The Girl With All the Gifts

“Melanie thinks: when your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.”
M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

Polls

What would you like to discuss in March (read before March 1st)? A vote is a commitment to return to discuss the book if your choice wins. (Don't vote if you aren't sure you'll return.) Happy voting!

Golden State by Ben H. Winters
2019, 3.49 stars, 319 pages
$2.99 Kindle, cheap used print, may be at your library
"Lazlo Ratesic is 54, a 19-year veteran of the Speculative Service, from a family of law enforcement and in a strange alternate society that values law and truth above all else. This is how Laz must, by law, introduce himself, lest he fail to disclose his true purpose or nature, and by doing so, be guilty of a lie.

Laz is a resident of The Golden State, a nation resembling California, where like-minded Americans retreated after the erosion of truth and the spread of lies made public life, and governance, increasingly impossible. There, surrounded by the high walls of compulsory truth-telling, knowingly contradicting the truth--the Objectively So--is the greatest possible crime. Stopping those crimes, punishing them, is Laz's job. In its service, he is one of the few individuals permitted to harbor untruths--to "speculate" on what might have happened in the commission of a crime.

But the Golden State is far less a paradise than its name might suggest. To monitor, verify, and enforce the Objectively So requires a veritable panopticon of surveillance, recording, and record-keeping. And when those in control of the truth twist it for nefarious means, the Speculators may be the only ones with the power to fight back."

 
  9 votes, 50.0%

The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey
2020, 4.11 stars, 416 pages
$4.99 Kindle, print starting at $8.52, at the library

"Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.

Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don't venture beyond the walls.

What he doesn't know is - what happens when you aren't given a choice?

The first in a gripping new trilogy, The Book of Koli charts the journey of one unforgettable young boy struggling to find his place in a chilling post-apocalyptic world. Perfect for readers of Station Eleven and Annihilation."


 
  5 votes, 27.8%

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
2019, 3.71 stars, 274 pages
$11.99 Kindle, used starting at $7.34, at the library

"On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.

When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.">

 
  3 votes, 16.7%

The Running Man by Richard Bachman, aka Stephen King
1982, 3.88 stars, 317 pages
$9.99 Kindle, cheap used print, probably at your library
"The Running Man is set within a dystopian future in which the poor are seen more by the government as worrisome rodents than actual human beings. The protagonist of The Running Man, Ben Richards, is quick to realize this as he watches his daughter, Cathy, grow more sick by the day and tread closer and closer to death. Desperate for money to pay Cathy’s medical bills, Ben enlists himself in a true reality style game show where the objective is to merely stay alive."

 
  1 vote, 5.6%

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