The Summon Stone

Ian Irvine

Ian Irvine is a marine scientist who has developed some of Australia's national guidelines for the protection of the oceanic environment, and still works in this field. He has written 29 novels to date, including the international bestselling 11-book fantasy sequence, The Three Worlds, an eco-thriller trilogy about catastrophic climate change, and 12 books for children and young adults.

Ian grew up in a forest and spent his entire childhood reading books and climbing trees (and frequently both at once, to the terror of his parents). He had no interest in writing as he'd always wanted to be a scientist. After much procrastination and mucking around Ian gained a Ph. D. from the University of Sydney, somehow becoming an expert in the management of contaminated sediments in the process. Work has since taken him all across the eastern hemisphere, including to such idyllic locations as Mauritius, Bali, Fiji and Western Samoa. This provided absolutely no inspiration for his books as Ian prefers to send his characters to unpleasant places, there tormenting them to the limit of human ingenuity.

Ian began the creation of his Three Worlds fantasy environment in the late 1970's, as an escape from the rigours (more correctly, horrors) of writing his doctoral thesis. Before he'd finished world-building, Ian had covered the walls of his flat , and his thesis was a year and a half late.

Science proved insufficient. Beset by creative urges that by 1987 had become irresistible, Ian got out his maps and histories and began writing the first book of what was to become his 'Darwinian' fantasy quartet, The View from the Mirror. He worked on it continually until the final volume was published in 1999, and has been a full-time writer ever since.

Ian lives with his family in the mountains of northern NSW. He is currently editing Justice, the final book in his fantasy trilogy, The Tainted Realm. He's also doing the initial planning for his new Three Worlds series, which will be a direct sequel to The View from the Mirror and will finally answer the question of what happened to Karan and Llian, and their children. Among other things.