Edmund Cooper's Biography

This web site is about Edmund Cooper - a British science fiction writer who wrote over 20 novels and more than 40 short stories.

There are two pages - this page is a biography-in-progress and there is a timeline.

I do not wish to cause offence to Mr Cooper's surviving friends and relatives and I invite anyone who can correct anything written here or who can provide further information to please contact me. The information given is not necessarily true but is as per the sources given.

Edmund Cooper was born 30th April 1926 in Marple, Cheshire¹ to Joseph and Harriet who were village shopkeepers^5/²³. He had an older sister, Vera, born in 1921³. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and described himself as being backward at school but he collected several scholarships¹ - four in the same year²⁷.

He left school at 15 and became a labourer³⁰/¹. By the age of 16 he was a civil servant¹.

At 17 he "trained for the sea"¹ but was debarred from joining the armed forces by a heart complaint²⁷ and was a merchant seaman⁵ from 1944-46¹⁸. It is during this time that he had traumatic wartime experiences by which he was haunted in later life⁷. One such experience occurred in 1944 when Edmund was radio officer on the tug Empire Jonathan which was employed in towing concrete floating harbours (code named "Mullberry"²⁸) for the D-Day landings in France. Whilst in a harbour which was almost completed, in the company of another tug with the similar name of Empire John, a radio message was received that gave instructions for one of the tugs to return home. However, due to bad radio conditions neither radio operator on the two tugs was sure for which vessel the instructions were intended. The agreed solution was that both ships would race for the harbour mouth - whichever reached it first would return home. The Empire John won the race but hit a mine laid by the Germans at the harbour entrance and Edmund saw the bodies in the water. He later found out that the instruction to return home was intended for his ship, the Empire Jonathan.²⁰ The Empire Jonathan was renamed Fidget in 1947 and is still in use. The Empire John was scrapped in 1965²⁴.

In the introduction to a collection of short stories called Unborn Tomorrow he says of one piece; "Second Chance has a curious history. It was conceived as a short fantasy which I later tried to incorporate into a novel. I did not know it at the time but I was setting myself up for a splendid nervous breakdown during the period when it was written."⁴ In the introduction to the story collection A World of Difference he says Second Chance was written before he had established his writing career and was the result of nasty letters from his bank manager, being "still haunted by experiences during the Second World War" and going to bed "having dined not wisely but too well" leading to a nightmare which inspired the story⁷. In Second Chance a man is resurrected on Judgement Day to answer for the sins of his life. The trial takes place in a bank manager's office before four judges who all wear the face of the accused. He is told that it is to be decided if he is to be executed or given a second chance at life. The more minor charges are pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth while the more serious sins are hypocrisy, indecision, apathy, fear, complacency, self-deceit and ignorance. He is also charged with complicity in mass murder this accusation arising from his action in shooting down an aircraft which was "strafing a ship carrying a cargo of inflammable liquid, which it was the Prisoner's duty to protect." It is pointed out that this liquid - aircraft fuel - was used to power planes which bombed cities. The man is found guilty and is punished by being reborn. In the novel Transit (1964) the central character is asked if he has ever killed and the "Imagined faces of three nameless airmen loomed sharply and briefly in his consciousness."

After leaving the merchant navy Edmund married Joyce Plant on 13th April 1946¹⁸/²⁵. They lived for a while in Offerton near Stockport²⁵. In 1947 they moved to Stockport²⁵. In 1948 Edmund went to Didsbury Training College where he spent 13 months in training as a teacher in art and English²⁵/¹. It was about this time that he began to write¹. Edmund and Joyce had four children - Glynis (born July 1947²¹), Daryl (Feb 1955¹⁹), Troy (May 1958¹⁹) and Guy (April 1960¹⁹). In 1951 they moved first to Botesdale and then to the small village of Thelnetham in East Anglia²¹/²⁵.

According to Lin Carter EC published 50 short stories before his first book appeared¹ although EC states in 1979 that when a bibliographer sent him a working list he was surprised to discover that he had written 42 short stories⁸. My count from on-line bibliographies makes it 43 short stories. Lin Carter and EC himself say that this first novel was Deadly Image^1/2 completed Autumn 1957 and published 1958 (later published in October 1958 by Hutchinson in hardback using the author's original - and preferred - title The Uncertain Midnight although the Panther paperback of 1959 was published using the Deadly Image title²⁵) but he wrote three books prior to this published under pseudonyms: Ferry Rocket as George Kinley (Curtis Warren Ltd 1954), They Shall Not Die as Broderick Quain (Curtis Warren Ltd 1954) which is probably "mystery fiction" and The Black Phoenix (Curtis Warren Ltd 1954) as Martin Lester. Mr Cooper seems to have been embarrassed by these early works.⁹/¹² EC also admitted to having written "romantic women's magazine stories."¹⁶ Richard Avery was another pseudonym which he used initially for his Expendables series - later editions using his true name.

EC says that his first short story was Falcon Chase⁸ although according to on-line bibliographies it was not published until 1956. The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists and the Writers Agency Index gives his first story as The Unicorn published in Everybody's in 1951. Edmund is reported as saying that in the early days he wrote for himself "and was rewarded with a bathroom papered with rejection slips. He then realized that he must write for people, and his purpose in each novel is to entertain and give pleasure, to give people something to think about, and to earn a living for himself and his family."²⁷

According to the jacket notes in Unborn Tomorrow a French film was made of one of his short stories but in reality the film was American and called The Invisible Boy (1957 also known as S.O.S Spaceship)¹⁰ based on Brain Child (1956) and featured the second appearance of the character Robbie the Robot. EC was embarrassed by having his name associated with this movie, which he called "one of the worst science fiction films of all time"²⁹ so he said the film was French apparently in order to conceal his association with it.

In 1959 Seed of Light was published and received good critical reviews which he said had the effect of "encouraging me greatly."⁶

Edmund left the house in East Anglia in 1960 and lived with Valerie Makin in London²¹/²⁵. Between 1960 and 1968 Edmund worked as a journalist for the in-house magazines of the Federation of British Industries and then Esso Petroleum²⁵. He says that he wrote the short story The Life and Death of Plunky Goo (first published 1963) in "a tiny flat in Bayswater" shortly after his second wife (Valerie) had given birth to a son⁴. Joyce divorced Edmund in 1963 (decree absolute August²⁵). Edmund and Valerie married in October 1963 and had four children - Shaun (Nov 1960²⁵), Justine (May 1962²⁵), Regan (May 1963²⁵, now called Safiyyah) and Jason (Aug 1964²⁵).

In 1968 Edmund and his family moved to a remote house in the tiny village of Madehurst, Sussex when he gave up his job with Esso and became a full-time writer²⁵. Sussex is the setting for The Cloud Walker (1973) one of Edmund's favourite books²⁵/²⁷.

In 1969 The Uncertain Midnight was made into a ten part TV serial in the French language and shown in Switzerland and Belgium. The serial was chosen to represent Swiss Television at the 1969 Prix Futura in Berlin². According to the jacket notes in Unborn Tomorrow it was made in Switzerland. During the 70's he reached the peak of his popularity and his books always seemed to be on the shelves. He started writing reviews of SF books for The Sunday Times (principally for "self advertisement; my publishers don't advertise me too much"¹⁶) and his works were translated into several languages. The blurb on the jacket of Merry Christmas, Ms Minerva! (1978) claims that four million copies of his books had been sold world wide. In the late 70's Birmingham University chose his work as an O-level examination subject²⁷. He also attended science fiction conventions such as the third Speculation Conference which was held on 24th June 1972 at the University of Birmingham at which EC was a guest speaker¹³. Ansible - Dave Langford's British sf/fan newsletter - reported on these gatherings.

In 1979 his first wife died. There is a dedication in A World of Difference (1980): "In Memoriam Joyce Cooper 1922-1979 Joyce, my first wife, gave me much and shared my early struggles."

Valerie left the Madehurst house in 1980²⁵. In the 1981-82 electoral register, Edmund Cooper is listed with Dawn Cooper. In the 1983-84 register, Dawn Cooper is listed.¹⁵

A reader of EC's books met him by chance on a train in April 1981 and described him as tall, "very smartly dressed" but "very lean" and the skin of his face was "sunken" - this was less than a year before his death. "He was very pleasant and seemed interested in which SciFi authors I preferred and which of his works I liked. He was very interested in my opinion of his novels..." Of his books he recommended The Uncertain Midnight, A Far Sunset, The Cloud Walker and in particular Prisoner of Fire.¹¹

Edmund Cooper died from chronic alcholism at St Richards Hospital in Chichester on 11 March 1982 aged 55²⁵. In accordance with Edmund's wishes his ashes were scattered in a bluebell dell on the lower slopes of Kinder near Edale in the Peak District National Park.²¹

There was a short Sunday Times obituary of three column inches stating that EC, who reviewed for the paper for nearly 15 years, died in Chichester and that he was in the middle of a new novel. The piece described him as an infrequent visitor to the Sunday Times offices and as an "elegant and cheerful outsider who belonged to no literary cabal" who seemed to prefer the "freedom of his Sussex countryside."

From Ansible Issue 161 -
"Terry Pratchett had a sobering moment while on his latest tour. `I was signing in Weston-super-Mare when a lady in the queue, after proffering a book, said with a sigh: "My father was an sf writer. But no-one's ever heard of him." I cautiously ventured: "Who was he?" She said "Edmund Cooper.""

From Ansible Issue 163 -
"Edmund Cooper was mentioned in A161, provoking a rant from Ian Covell about the fading of this author's reputation. Apparently his publishers Hodder & Stoughton held grimly on to book rights for decades, refusing either to revert or reprint, so that `gradually he slipped from the current crop; commentary by the feminist mafia didn't help.' [....] as a many-years-fan of Cooper, it has been heartbreaking to watch his work slip out of ken and print; the man was an artist and a poet (and yes, I have all his published work, and a bibliography in the final stages of preparation), and SF's treatment of him has been an insult.'"

Edmund Cooper's Family Life: As shown above there is a first wife Joyce, a divorce in 1963, a second wife Valerie and eight children. His sister married and had a daughter. There are currently ten grandchildren. There are dedications in War Games of Zelos (1975 Coronet) to "Shaun whose passion for War Games took me to Zelos" and in The Tenth Planet (©1973, Coronet 1976) to Daryl Cooper, "my scientific advisor" who is now Professor at the Mathematics Department of the University of California.

On Cooper's Interests: EC described his interests in 1971 as "chess, philosophy and wine."¹ Obviously, EC drank excessively and many of his characters share this trait. Perhaps the greatest drinkers in his books were those in Five to Twelve (1968), Kronk (1970) and the character Commander James Conrad from the Expendables series (1975-76). Other interests included walking (especially in the woods near his Madehurst home¹⁷) listening to music and watching television²⁷.

Ian Covell says that EC was an "artist and a poet" (see quote from Ansible 163 above) and there are characters who are engaged in painting in Transit and The Cloud Walker and in poetry in Kronk and Five to Twelve. In Title To Be Announced (ttba), the magazine of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society, there is mention of a poem called Poet's Corner by EC and the editor of the magazine, Nick Lowe, appearing in the Easter 1975 issue¹⁴. He also wrote a poem entitled Letter to a Dead Sailor inspired by his wartime experiences²⁰ which was broadcast by the BBC in 1949¹¹. The prefaces to his books have quotations from W H Auden, Voltaire, Doestoevsky, Alan Seeger, John Webster, T S Eliot, Xenophanes, John Milton, Edward Fitzgerald, John Donne and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

On Cooper and Religion: EC was an atheist and said of Christianity; "There have been more destruction and more misery created by the brotherly love that is promulgated by this dreadful religion than by anything else throughout history..." He was quite scathing about the Church's attitude to women and birth control even saying that Attila the Hun and Hitler were benevolent despots compared to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.¹⁶

On Cooper and SF: On his writing he said that he thought of science fiction as a literature of ideas which he used to explore possible themes and that he saw himself as a "kind of Cassandra" and a "sort of latter-day frustrated messiah, perhaps a very poor one" pointing out "possible dooms." Edmund Cooper professed himself to be more interested in the way in which future technology would affect people than in the technology itself.¹⁶ In the introduction to Jupiter Laughs: "[I] have discovered that I am only at my best when I have a theme in which I deeply believe. The basic duty of a professional fiction writer is to entertain his readers and perhaps give them food for thought. I believe that I have a duty to myself and that is to put up for public examination ideas, themes and attitudes which have affected me deeply and personally. If I have succeeded in entertaining my readers while doing this, then I have succeeded in all I ever wish to achieve." He is also quoted as saying: "A writer must never lie to himself; he must beleive in his own ideas and he must be able to look critically at what he has written" and "I do the best I can and what matters is how I feel about what I write. If I myself am satisfied, that is what matters to me."²⁷

Of other authors he said that he did not admire particular sf writers but certain books, praising Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop and An Age, Asimov's robot stories, Earth Abides by George R Stewart, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller and Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald. He seems to have, in general, disliked "hard sf" or, at least, some of the ideas used in many sf tales. Concepts such as faster-than-light travel, matter transmitters and contact with aliens he regarded as being extremely unlikely or impossible. Although he admitted that he had used faster-than-light drives in his stories himself, he said of FTL; "...it's impossible, it offends against the laws of science, so it's not sf".¹⁶

According to the Watch database (available to search at www.watch-file.com) "The copyright contact for Edmund Cooper, formerly Dawn Poupart, is now the Edmund Cooper Literary Trust [information supplied by Dee Page, September 2004]".

Request for contributions - I do not wish to cause offence to Mr Cooper's surviving friends and relatives and I invite anyone who can correct anything written here or who can provide further information to please contact me.

Anyone out there got an O-level in Cooperology? Or were you taught by him at school in Ixworth²⁵ or at Chichester College of Further Education where Edmund taught for a year?²⁷ Or maybe you have an original Cooper watercolour? Tell me about it or post a message on the Edmund Cooper Yahoo! Group.

References/Sources
1 Introduction to Double Phoenix (a collection of two novellas including The Firebird by Cooper) by Lin Carter. 1971 Ballantine Books

2 Foreword to The Uncertain Midnight by Cooper dated Autumn 1970. 1971 Hodder paperback edition.

3 Valerie Cooper and Glynis Greenman (nee Cooper). The brother-in-law mentioned in the foreword to The Square Root of Tomorrow (1970 Robert Hale and Co.) is Valerie Cooper's brother John (source - Valerie).

5 Back cover of the hardback edition of Prisoner of Fire by Cooper. 1974 Hodder and Stoughton.

7 Introduction to A World of Difference by Cooper dated October 1979. 1980 Robert Hale.

8 Introduction to Jupiter Laughs by Cooper dated January 1979. 1981 Coronet Edition.

16 An Interview with Edmund Cooper by James Goddard appearing in Science Fiction Monthly Vol 2 Part 4 1973.

17 Hope for the Future - The Science Fiction Novels of Edmund Cooper by James Goddard Science Fiction Monthly Vol 2 Part 4 1973.

27 Article thought to have appeared in the West Sussex Gazette 1979. Supplied by Valerie Cooper.

30 Mention is made in the foreword to Sea Horse in the Sky (Putnam - US published hardback edition) and foreword to All Fools Day (Hodder and Stoughton hardback edition) that Edmund Cooper was a warehouse labourer. Thanks to CL.

Visit the Edmund Cooper Yahoo! Group to view/post messages and images, chat, vote on your favourite Cooper novels and characters and (as they say) much, much more.

Thanks
My thanks to David Langford of Ansible, Al Hubin, Steve Holland, Jon Farley, Guy Beauchamp, Glynis Greenman, Daryl Cooper, Safiyyah Cooper, Justine Cooper, Shaun Cooper, Jason Cooper and Valerie Cooper.

The photo shown at the top of the page and used for the background is of Edmund Cooper in 1968 taken in the lane outside his home in Madehurst by Valerie Cooper.