Charlie Brooker selects Claire North, Cory Doctorow and Sylvain Neuvel to write original stories for the first Black Mirror book

Black Mirror, the critically acclaimed Netflix original show, is a cultural phenomenon. Only this week creator Charlie Brooker accepted two trophies at the Emmy Awards for his beloved season three episode San Junipero, produced by Brooker’s TV production company House of Tomorrow.

And today Penguin Random House is delighted to reveal the authors of the first volume of Black Mirror fiction.

Edited by Charlie Brooker, the three-volume series of original fiction will feature novella-length stories from leading names within the literary world. The first volume, published in February 2018, will be authored by: New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow, Carnegie-nominated Claire North and Sylvain Neuvel, author of Sleeping Giants. Each author will provide their own all-original story in the style of the show, with soon to be revealed plotlines.

Speaking after the announcement of the collection, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker said: "All-new Black Mirror stories from exciting authors - that’s a joyous prospect. And they’re appearing in a high-tech new format known as a 'book'. Apparently you just have to glance at some sort of ‘ink code’ printed on paper and images and sounds magically appear in your head, enacting the story. Sounds far-fetched to me, but we’ll see."

About the authors

Cory Doctorow is a co-editor of Boing Boing and a columnist for Locus. His award-winning novel Little Brother was a New York Times bestseller. Born and raised in Canada, he lives in Los Angeles.

Claire North is the pen name for the Carnegie-nominated Catherine Webb. She is the bestselling author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. She lives in London.

Sylvain Neuvel is the author of the Themis Files trilogy: Sleeping Giants, Waking Gods, and the upcoming Only Human. Sleeping Giants has been optioned by Sony Pictures for development into a film and was sold for translation into twenty languages. He lives in Montreal.

Penguin Random House will co-publish the books in the UK and in North America under the Del Rey UK and Del Rey imprints, and foreign rights have already sold in Italy, France, Spain, Brazil and Russia with many more deals to come. Del Rey UK is an imprint of Ebury Publishing, part of Penguin Random House UK, and will handle worldwide translation sales. 

Black Mirror is an addictive anthology series that uses science fiction tropes to make trenchant and unsettling commentary on the convergence between humanity and technology, and a promised future. Season one and two originally aired on Channel 4 between 2011 and 2014. In September 2015, Netflix commissioned a third season and the worldwide release in October 2016 led to further international critical acclaim including two Emmy Awards in September 2017. The heavily anticipated next Netflix season will be coming later this year.

Black Mirror is a truly worldwide phenomenon, produced by House of Tomorrow. Headed up by Black Mirror Showrunner Annabel Jones and creator Charlie Brooker, the company is also behind the BAFTA winning special from 2016, Charlie Brooker’s End of Year Wipe (BBC Two), Cunk on Shakespeare, the BAFTA-nominated programme featuring regular Weekly Wipe contributor Philomena Cunk and BBC Two satirical review show Weekly Wipe. House of Tomorrow is part of Endemol Shine Group.

The first original fiction volume will be published in February 2018, with the second volume scheduled for autumn 2018 and the third in 2019.

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