Clive Barker - Worlds Beyond the Imagination

In a world where everyone thinks they can write a novel, make a movie, paint a masterpiece, craft a bestselling video game or even make it as a Hollywood actor its actually amazing that some rare people can do all of that and so much more. Such is the case with one of my favorite novelist Clive Barker (except for maybe the Hollywood actor part). You may know him better as the man behind the demented vision of Hell in his film Hellraiser (1987) or the creator of a world full of monsters that inhabit the film Nightbreed (1990) but others will know the man from his visionary worlds of his novels Weaveworld, The Great & Secret Show, Imajica, and most recently the Abarat series.

Barker was born in 1952 in Liverpool, England. Like many fantasy and horror novelists he became well known through a series of short stories (which were later collected in several anthologies includes 3 volumes of his Books of Blood, In the Flesh, and The Inhuman Condition, to name a few. He first feature length novel The Damnation Game was published in 1985. Many novels followed in quick concession such as The Hellbound Heart (1986), Weaveworld (1987), Cabal (1988) and The Thief of Always (1992), to name a few. He has written over 15 novels.

Despite having accomplished all this in his novels Barker delved into feature film making with the adaptation of The Hellbound Heart which became Hellraiser (1987). He continued to work in the film industry not only on his own films but also through producing such as the more recent Dread (2009), The Midnight Meat Train (2008) and Candyman (1992).

It is hard to single out one of his novels as my favorite as Sacrament (1996) is one of my personal favorites but it was Cabal that introduced me to his world and the possibilities contained within and it was Imajica (1991) and Galilee (1998) that forever made me a huge fan of his epic ensemble stories. Even his smaller stories such as The Thief of Always and Mister B. Gone (2007) are just as thought provoking and interesting as Barker knows how to both create and craft characters and create worlds of great imagination for them to inhabit. This is one of the reasons why he is one of my all time favorite novelist; his novels despite being labeled modern fantasy horror consistently blend genres so that the reader never knows what to expect from him from one story to the next and his stories open up the imagination to worlds of possibilities.