克里夫·巴克

克里夫·巴克（英语：Clive Barker，1952年10月5日—）是英国剧作家、小说家、电影导演和视觉艺术家。巴克在1980年代中期以短篇小说系列《血书》崭露头角，成为恐怖作家。此后，他写了许多小说和其他作品，他的小说被改编成电影，例如《养鬼吃人》、《腥风怒吼》系列。巴克还担任了电影《众神与野兽》的执行制片人，该片获得了奥斯卡最佳改编剧本奖。

早期生活

克里夫·巴克出生于英国利物浦，琼安·露比（旧姓：雷维尔）是画家，父亲李奥纳德·巴克是公司人事主管。。他在利物浦完成学业。大学主修英国文学和哲学，现定居于美国洛杉矶。

个人生活

巴克是公开的同性恋者。

小说

(1985) The Damnation Game

(1986) 受地狱羁绊之心

(1987) Weaveworld

(1988) Cabal

(1989) The Great and Secret Show

(1991) Imajica

(1992) The Thief of Always

(1994) Everville

(1996) Sacrament

(1998) Galilee

(2001) Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

(2001) Tortured Souls

(2002) Abarat

(2004) Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

(2007) Mister B. Gone

(2009) Mr. Maximillian Bacchus And His Travelling Circus

(2011) The Candle in the Cloud

(2011) Absolute Midnight

(?) The Scarlet Gospels

(?) Abarat: The Dynasty of Dreamers

Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is a British writer, filmmaker, and visual artist. He came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of short stories collectively named the Books of Blood, which established him as a leading horror author. His work has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser series (the first installment of which he also wrote and directed) and the Candyman series.

Barker's paintings and illustrations have been shown in galleries in the United States, and have appeared in his books. He has also created characters and series for comic books, and some of his more popular horror stories have been featured in ongoing comics series.

Early life

Barker was born in Liverpool on 5 October 1952. His mother, Joan Ruby (née Revill), was a painter and school welfare officer; his father, Leonard Barker, worked as the personnel director for an industrial relations firm. He was educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool before joining the University of Liverpool, where he studied English and philosophy. At the age of three, he witnessed the infamous death of French skydiver Léo Valentin, who plummeted to the ground during a performance at an air show in Liverpool. He would later allude to Valentin in many of his stories.

Theatrical work

Barker's involvement in live theatre began while still in school with productions of Voodoo and Inferno in 1967. He collaborated on six plays with Theatre of the Imagination in 1974 and two more that he was the sole writer of, A Clowns' Sodom and Day of the Dog, for The Mute Pantomime Theatre in 1976 and 1977.

Barker co-founded the avant-garde theatrical troupe The Dog Company in 1978 with former schoolmates and up-and-coming actors, many of whom would go on to become key collaborators in his film work; Doug Bradley, his long-time friend and former classmate at Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, took on the now-iconic role of Pinhead in the Hellraiser series while Peter Atkins wrote the scripts for the first three Hellraiser sequels. Over the next five years Barker wrote nine plays, often serving as director, including some of his best-known stage productions, The History of The Devil, Frankenstein in Love, and The Secret Life of Cartoons.

From 1982 to 1983, he wrote Crazyface, Subtle Bodies, and Colossus for the Cockpit Youth Theatre.

His theatrical work came to a close as he shifted focus to writing the Books of Blood.

Writing career

Barker is an author of horror and fantasy, although he has said that he thinks of his writing less and less as horror. He began writing early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1–6) and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved toward modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991), and Sacrament (1996).

When Books of Blood was first published in the United States in paperback, Stephen King was quoted on the book covers: "I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker." As influences on his writing, Barker lists Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, William S. Burroughs, William Blake, and Jean Cocteau, among others.

He is the writer of the best-selling Abarat series.

In early 2024, he announced he would stop attending conventions and public events so he could focus more on his writing, as he was working on the manuscripts for 31 different projects, some closer to completion than others.

On 18 August 2026, he announced his return to short fiction with three new fiction anthologies, collectively referred to as "Library of the Dead". They were intended to be a "spiritual successor" to The Books of Blood, and would be financed via Kickstarter. The campaign reached its financing goal within one hour, with the first volume expected to be released in Spring of 2027. The collection will include both new and out-of-print material that received limited exposure upon its original publication.