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Until 2001 Cobley was predominantly an SF writer. He had written a number of short stories, since gathered in the collection Iron Mosaic. He had also written a column of comment and polemic entitled 'Phaedrus' for Strathclyde Telegraph, the campus paper of the University of Strathclyde. Later, he edited and published a single page broadsheet called Shark Tactics, containing acerbic book reviews for the SF community (it was inspired by Bruce Sterling's Cheap Truth). Shark Tactics ran for six issues and was mailed out free to a number of writers and critics in the field. Cobley sold his first novel, Shadowkings, the first part of the Shadowkings trilogy, in 2000. It was published by Simon & Schuster in 2001, and followed by Shadowgod in 2003 and Shadowmasque in 2005. A dark, somewhat grim fantasy on an epic scale, it was also published in both Russia and Germany.

Cobley started work on a new space opera trilogy entitled Humanity's Fire, the first volume of which - Seeds Of Earth - was published as a C-format paperback by Orbit Books on March 5, 2009, and in A-format on January 10, 2010. The second volume, The Orphaned Worlds, was published in April 2010, with the 3rd volume, The Ascendant Stars, slated for 2011. Humanity's Fire is a galaxy-spanning space opera, the setting of which Cobley plans to use for further standalone stories and novels. The trilogy has also been contracted to be published in Germany by Heyne, and in France by Bragelonne.

Further information can be obtained from the author's website at http://www.michaelcobley.com. This supersedes the author's previous blogs.

Novels

• the Shadowkings trilogy
• Shadowkings. London: Earthlight, 2001 (paper). ISBN 0-7432-0717-3
• Shadowgod. London: Earthlight, 2003 (paper). ISBN 0-7434-6114-2
• Shadowmasque. London: Simon & Schuster, 2005 (paper). ISBN 0-7432-5682-4

• the Humanity's Fire trilogy
• Seeds Of Earth. London: Orbit Books, 2009 (paper). ISBN 978-1841496320
• The Orphaned Worlds. London: Orbit Books, 2010 (paper). ISBN 978-1841496313

Collections

• Iron Mosaic. Stafford: Immanion Press, 2004. ISBN 1-904853-03-X