Happy Birthday, Stephen Donaldson

Thanks to the all-seeing eye of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and its indispensable On This Day function, we see that today is Stephen R. Donaldson‘s birthday.

As I’m sure we all know, Stephen Donaldson burst onto the scene in 1977 with his extraordinary debut trilogy, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It was an astonishingly assured and – let’s not deny it – bleak trilogy, that seemed intent on casting as much as possible of the prevailing ‘rules’ of high fantasy through a glass darkly. Followed by The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever trilogy and the Mordant’s Need diptych, these works established a mature and important voice in the rapidly-developing fantasy landscape of the ’70s & ’80s. Donaldson then moved on to the Science Fictional Gap series in the ’90s before returning to The Land in the twenty-first century with The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Stephen R. Donaldson‘s most recent book is Against All Things Ending, the third volume of the The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, available in paperback and as an eBook.

You can find Stephen R. Donaldson‘s books on his author pages at the SF Gateway and the Orion website, and read more about him at his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

He is one of the most important writers in modern fantasy and we salute him on the occasion of his birthday!