Philip Reeve (born 1966 in Brighton, United Kingdom) is an English author and illustrator. He is the creator of Mortal Engines and the books relating to it.
He presently lives on Dartmoor with his wife Sarah and their son Sam.
History[]
Reeve studied illustration, first at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology (CCAT - now Anglia Ruskin University), where he contributed a comic strip to the Student Union magazine, and later at Brighton Polytechnic (now the University of Brighton). Before becoming a professional illustrator he worked at a bookshop in Brighton for several years. During his student years and for a few years afterwards he wrote for and performed in comedy sketch shows with a variety of collaborators under various group names, among them The Charles Atlas Sisters.
He provided cartoon illustrations for many books, including the Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths series, and wrote the Buster Bayliss series series of books: Night of the Living Veg, The Big Freeze, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger.[1] He is also the author of a Dead Famous book, Horatio Nelson and His Victory.
His first book for older readers was Mortal Engines which won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Gold Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award. Mortal Engines is the first book in the Mortal Engines Quartet, which also includes Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain.
Reeve began a series of Mortal Engines prequels with Fever Crumb. The first was one of eight finalists for the 2010 Carnegie Medal. In March 2020, Reeve said he did not intend to finish or publish a fourth book in the Fever Crumb series, as too much time had passed, thereby forgoing the world of Mortal Engines.[2] However, in 2024, Reeve published Thunder City, a stand-alone novel set a century before the main events of the books, focusing on Thorbury.
On November 18, 2020, upon asked whether Mortal Engines would be rebooted for the television (after the 2018 film flopped in theaters), Reeve responded that, while that would be nice, it seemed unlikely.[3][4]
Reeve claims not to be a methodical writer. He plans nothing at all, usually starting with an opening image, a closing image, and a few vague notions for the things that happen in between. This leads to thousands of words of rough draft material being abandoned – even entire novels, such as with Fever Crumb and Mortal Engines. However, he takes ideas from these abandoned drafts to build the final version. It usually takes him a year to move a novel from first idea to publication – six months actively writing it, the rest editing and thinking.[5][6]
Besides the various Mortal Engines publications, Reeve's other works includes the Larklight trilogy, Here Lies Arthur, No Such Thing as Dragons, Goblins, the Railhead trilogy, and the Utterly Dark trilogy.
Works[]
- Mortal Engines quartet, called Hungry City Chronicles in the United States
- Mortal Engines (2001)
- Predator's Gold (2003)
- Infernal Devices (2005)
- A Darkling Plain (2006)
- Fever Crumb trilogy
- Fever Crumb (2009)
- A Web of Air (2010)
- Scrivener's Moon (2011)
- Traction City (World Book Day, 2011), a novella, rewritten as "Traction City Blues" for Night Flights
- The Traction Codex: An Historian's Guide to the Era of Predator Cities (2012), with Jeremy Levett, guide
- Night Flights: A Mortal Engines Collection (2018), illustrated by Ian McQue. Prequel, collection of 3 short stories: "Frozen Heart", "Traction City Blues", "Teeth of the Sea"
- The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines (2018), with Jeremy Levett, guide
- Thunder City duology
- Thunder City (2024)
- Bridge of Storms (2026)
Awards[]
- Winner of the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Mortal Engines)
- Short-listed for the Whitbread Book Award (Mortal Engines)
- Winner of the Carnegie Medal (Here Lies Arthur)
- Winner of the Guardian Award (A Darkling Plain)
- Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction (A Darkling Plain)
Trivia[]
- Philip Reeve has narrated only one audiobook - Fever Crumb.
- Philip Reeve believes that a movie needs a rockstar to bring a certain "energy" to it.[7]
- Reeve makes a cameo in the 2018 film as a resident of Batmunkh Gompa. He can be seen when Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) watches the Northern Airfleet being launched into the night when London fires MEDUSA at the Shield-Wall.[8]
- Reeve has mentioned that while the film's universe is different from the canon books, he finds it enjoyable.[9]
- Reeve was 6 or 7 when he fell in love with writing.[9]
- Reeve's favorite character in Mortal Engines is Hester Shaw. His favorite book of the series is Predator's Gold.[10]
- Reeve has been fascinated with airships since he was child.[10]
- Reeve prefers to write in silence as music distracts him.[10]
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ "Scholastic Children's Books Author Zone: Philip Reeve"
- ↑ Philip Reeve (17 March 2020). "Philip Reeve's tweet in response to @SevrinY" (Tweet). Philip Reeve.
- ↑ Bujak, Gabrielle (13 November 2020). "Why HBO Should Reboot Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines UnBoxed Life". www.unboxedlifemag.com. UnBoxed Life.
- ↑ Reeve, Philip (18 November 2020). "Philip Reeve on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 17 January 2020. "I have no idea! It would be nice, but it seems unlikely."
- ↑ Reilly, Fiachra. "Questions and Answers with Philip Reeve". Archived from the original on 30 September 2010.
- ↑ Jones, Rhys (9 October 2010). "An Interview with Philip Reeve". Retrieved 30 October 2010.
- ↑ Anna Fang character dive on Mortal Engines special features
- ↑ Director's commentary feature on Mortal Engines DVD/Blu-ray
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 The Sheehab interviews Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines Movie
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Philip Reeve AMA - Reddit
External links[]
- Philip Reeve - Wikipedia
- Philip Reeve Bookshop UK
- Philip Reeve on Facebook
- Philip Reeve on Twitter
- Philip Reeve - British Council: Literature
- Philip Reeve - the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Philip Reeve - IMDb
- Station Zero - Philip Reeve’s official blog