Jonathan Clements

Jonathan Clements at Loncon.

Jonathan Clements (born 9 July 1971) is a British author and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Koxinga and Qin Shi Huangdi (the First Emperor of China), as well as monthly opinion columns for Neo magazine. He is also the co-author of encyclopedias of anime and Japanese television dramas.

Background

Clements speaks both Chinese and Japanese, and many of his works relate to East Asia. He wrote his Master's degree at the University of Stirling on manga and anime exports, predicting the rise of several trends in the international industry including back-to-front printing, direct American investment in anime, and the proliferation of attempts to substitute non-Japanese products. Subsequently he translated over 70 anime and manga works for British distributors, and worked as a voice director and actor. He wrote his PhD at the University of Wales on the industrial history of Japanese animation, later published by the British Film Institute as Anime: A History.

He served two years at Titan Books in London as the editor of Manga Max magazine, an experience he would later fictionalise as the Judge Dredd adventure Trapped on Titan. In 2000, he received the Japan Festival Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Understanding of Japanese Culture, specifically for his work on Manga Max magazine.

Script work

He left to work as a scriptwriter on an abortive Astro Boy movie project, and wrote several episodes of Halcyon Sun for Kuju Entertainment, before serving as a writer or translator on TV programs, including Japanorama (BBC Three), Saiko Exciting (Sci-Fi Channel) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (BBC Two). He was also an interviewee and consultant on the documentary Koxinga: A Hero's Legacy (National Geographic Channel), which drew heavily on his book Pirate King. Much of his fiction work is CD audio drama or radio under the auspices of Big Finish Productions, including the Strontium Dog series, starring Simon Pegg, and the Doctor Who spin-off Sympathy for the Devil, starring David Warner and David Tennant.

Other work includes the script for the comic Tastes Like Chicken in the Judge Dredd Megazine, as well as assorted short stories both there and in Doctor Who anthologies. His most famous work, Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, was the name for a fictional TV series that Clements often used in his Newtype USA columns in order to avoid breaking various non-disclosure agreements regarding real titles that he had worked on as a writer, director or translator. The name was later used as the title to a collection of Clements's articles and speeches.

Books

Clements is a prolific author, whose many non-fiction publications, on subjects ranging from the history of the Vikings to the life of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, serve as research for his fiction. His books have been translated into a dozen languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Korean. His major works include:

In 2011, he became a contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 3rd ed,[1] with special responsibility for Chinese and Japanese entries.

References

  1. "The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog » Blog Archive » Get Lost…". Schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com. 10 October 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-02.

External links

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