Seth Dickinson

Seth Dickinson is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction, best known for the 2015 debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant and its sequels The Monster Baru Cormorant and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant.

Career

Dickinson graduated from the University of Chicago. While there, in 2011, Dickinson received the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing for the short story "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter". Dickinson has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.

Dickinson also writes and does narrative design for video games, including for Destiny: The Taken King and Subnautica 2. Dickinson has also written for Magic: The Gathering.

Dickinson's debut novel was The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a hard fantasy expansion of the 2011 short story "The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Field-General, and Their Wounds" (published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies). It follows a young woman who, educated in the schools of the imperial power that colonized her homeland, sets out to gain power to subvert the empire from within. It was published in September 2015 and was well received by critics. It was published as The Traitor in the UK. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the first novel in Dickinson's The Masquerade series. The original draft for a sequel was split into two books: The Monster Baru Cormorant, and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, published in 2020. While the series was originally planned to be a trilogy, a fourth novel has been announced.

Dickinson's fourth novel Exordia is a science fiction story which was released in January 2024. Publishers Weekly wrote: "With cool alien technology, admirably hopeful heroes, and SFF pop culture references littered throughout, this will have readers hooked." Dickinson has said that the book was inspired by the LEGO Bionicle toy line, as well as novels The Andromeda Strain and Sphere by Michael Crichton.