Richard Harland facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Richard Harland
Born	Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Nationality	Australian
Education	BA, English Literature, PhD. Literary Theory
Occupation	Novelist
Spouse(s)	Aileen

Richard Harland is an Australian writer who creates amazing fantasy and science fiction stories. He also used to be a university teacher and a performance artist. He lives in New South Wales, Australia.

Richard was born in Huddersfield, United Kingdom, and moved to Australia in 1970. He has written many books, including 17 novels, and also short stories and poems.

He is famous for his Eddon and Vail science fiction thrillers. He also wrote the illustrated Wolf Kingdom series for children. For young adults, he wrote three exciting steampunk fantasy books: Worldshaker, Liberator, and Song of the Slums. Richard has won the Australian Aurealis Award six times for his fantastic stories.

Richard Harland's Journey

Richard studied English at Cambridge University in the UK. He later moved to Australia in 1970 to continue his studies at the University of Newcastle. He planned to stay only until he finished his PhD, but he loved Australia and decided to live there permanently.

For a few years, Richard worked as a singer, songwriter, and poet in Sydney. He published poems and short stories during this time. In the 1980s, he returned to university life. He finished his PhD, and his book Superstructuralism was published in 1987. This led to him teaching English at the University of Wollongong. He taught there for ten years before deciding to become a full-time writer.

Becoming a Fiction Writer

Richard showed his writing talent early on. As a child, he won a UK competition for a short story. At school, he would even trade parts of his ongoing stories for sweets!

He started writing novels later in life. For many years, he found it hard to write longer stories. He realized this was partly because he felt he had to write very serious books. But when he wrote the funny horror novel The Vicar of Morbing Vyle in 1993, he finally overcame this challenge.

While still teaching at Wollongong, he wrote The Dark Edge. This was the first book in his Eddon and Vail series. His publisher wanted a sequel, and Richard realized he couldn't teach full-time and write novels at the same time. So, in 1997, he bravely left his teaching job to focus completely on writing fiction. He has been a full-time writer ever since.

Richard Harland's Novels

Many of Richard Harland's novels include maps. He loves maps and sometimes spends hours looking at them. He often imagines his fictional worlds from high above, like looking at a map.

Since 1999, most of his novels have been for young adults or children. Some of his books have also been turned into audiobooks.

The Vicar Series

The Vicar of Morbing Vyle was Richard Harland's first published novel. He personally visited bookstores to promote it. Even though it's no longer printed, it has a special group of fans who love it. Richard says this was his dream when he first marketed the book.

The Black Crusade, which came out in 2004, tells a story that happened before The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. It follows Basil Smorta, a bank clerk who is forced to travel with a strange group. They have captured the singer Volusia, whom Basil loves. They travel across Eastern Europe in 1894 and meet ghosts, vampires, and other spooky, funny things.

The Black Crusade won an Aurealis Award for "Best Horror Novel" and also the top "Golden Aurealis Best Novel" award.

The Eddon and Vail Series

This series has three science fiction novels. They mix detective mysteries with supernatural events. Inspector Eddon Brac, a traditional detective, works with Vail ev Vessintor. Vail is a goth woman who is good at psychic abilities. Each book shows the challenges they face as they solve strange and surprising murders.

The stories are set in a future where Earth has spread its influence across the universe. But a mysterious threat called the Anti-Human is destroying Earth's colonies.

The first book, The Dark Edge, was a finalist for the 1997 Aurealis Award. The third book, Hidden from View, was nominated for the 1999 Ditmar Award.

The Heaven and Earth Trilogy

This trilogy for young adults is set in Australia 1000 years in the future. It tells the story of a war between heaven and Earth. Each book includes details about angels.

To write this series, Richard researched angels and the universe from many different sources. He wanted to show angels as powerful, beautiful, and mysterious beings. He also wanted them to have personalities that readers could understand, but still be very different from sweet, cartoon-like angels. He found inspiration in books like A Dictionary of Angels and paintings like the Ghent Altarpiece.

The Wolf Kingdom Series

This series has four illustrated fantasy books for older children. They start with Escape! and end with The Heavy Crown, all published in 2008. Richard Harland wrote the stories, and Laura Peterson drew the amazing pictures for each chapter. Each book is a complete story, but they also connect to form a bigger adventure.

The books were launched with the Children's Book Council of Australia.

In these stories, talking, two-legged wolves have taken over and enslaved humans. Only a group called the "Free Folk" remains, hiding underground and planning to fight back. The mystery of how these wolves became rulers is revealed throughout the series. The books follow a brother and sister whose parents are taken by the wolves. They join the "Free Folk" and become very important to the rebellion. Richard has always been fascinated by wolves. He remembers passing a spooky wood called 'Wolves Wood' on his school bus as a child, which left a big impression on him.

The series won the 2008 Aurealis Award for "best children's illustrated work/picture book." The judges praised both Richard's story and Laura Peterson's strong illustrations.

Other Children's Fiction

• Walter Wants to Be a Werewolf (2003)

This book is part of the Aussie Chomps series for teenagers. Walter is a young werewolf who has trouble turning into a werewolf when the full moon rises. He even visits a doctor to find a cure!

• Sassycat: The Night of the Dead (2005)

Published by Scholastic, this novel is mostly told from the point of view of Sassycat, a very proud cat. She moves to a new home with her owner, Rebecca. Sassycat doesn't think much of her new animal neighbors. But she has to work with them to defeat ghosts invading their area from a nearby cemetery.

Worldshaker, Liberator, Song of the Slums

Richard Harland's series of YA steampunk novels began with Worldshaker. This book was partly inspired by the works of Mervyn Peake and Charles Dickens. It came out in May 2009 in Australia and then in many other countries. The main idea for this book came from a dream Richard had.

The main character is Col, who lives in the fancy upper parts of a giant city-ship. He is chosen to be the next commander. But his world changes when a girl from the lower decks escapes and asks for his help. She shows him the poverty and unfairness below his privileged life.

The story is similar to the 1927 film Metropolis. Both stories feature a young man who is set to inherit power in an unfair society. He teams up with a young woman from the working class to challenge the cruel system.

Richard worked on Worldshaker for five years and rewrote it three times. The sequel, Liberator, was also published worldwide.

For his third steampunk novel, Song of the Slums, Richard set the story in an earlier time in the same world. It's after a planned (but never built) tunnel invasion of England by Napoleon. But it's before the giant city-ships were launched. The main character is Astor, who comes from a rich family but ends up in the very polluted, foggy slums of 'London Town'. There, she joins a gang and discovers she's great at playing a new kind of rhythmic music – like rock 'n roll – a century before Elvis! The novel tells the story of how 'gang music' becomes popular and Astor's band rises to fame.

The Ferren Trilogy

Ferren and the Angel (2023) is the first book in the Ferren trilogy. It's a rewritten version of a novel from the Heaven and Earth trilogy. This dystopian YA novel is published by IFWG Publishing.

The story is set far in the future, where only ruins are left of our current civilization. Artificially created beings called "Humen" are fighting an endless war against Heaven. The descendants of original humans live in isolated tribes, not knowing much about the past.

Fifteen-year-old Ferren belongs to a tribe called "the People." His tribe, like others, thinks they are allies of the Humen, but they are also very afraid of them. Especially scary are the black-clad Selectors, who choose one tribal member each year for "military service."

Ferren's life changes when he sees a "Celestial" (an angel) shot down and crashing to Earth. He investigates and finds the angel Miriael, who is badly hurt. Feeling sorry for his tribe's supposed enemy, he gives her human food. This "corrupts" her spiritual purity but allows her to live on Earth.

From Miriael, Ferren learns important truths about his world. After being temporarily sent away by his tribe, he goes into the Humen Camp and discovers the real meaning of "military service." In the end, his friendship with Miriael becomes key to protecting his tribe during a huge battle between Earth and Heaven.

Richard Harland's Short Stories

Richard Harland has published over 20 short stories and novellas. These have appeared in magazines and collections in the United States, Australia, Canada, and France. His work has been included in "best of" collections like Dreaming Again and Ghosts by Gaslight. Many of his shorter stories have also won or been nominated for Australian awards for fantasy and horror.