Phillip Mann was born in 1942 in Britain. He is a science fiction author. He studied English and Drama at Manchester University and later in California before moving to New Zealand where he established the first Drama Studies position at a New Zealand university in 1970; at the Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington. Between 1968 and 1970, he worked as a sub-editor with the New China News Agency in Beijing.
"The Eye of the Queen" details the life of Marius Thorndyke, Earth's leading contact linguist and founder of the CLI (Contact Linguistics Institute) after he departs to the world called Pe-Ellia at the invitation of the species for whom that is their home world. This species, have been responsible for restricting Earth's space exploration to just a few inhabited planets none of which have attained space travel. This book met with great success. His next two books 'Master of Paxwax' and its sequel, 'Fall of the Families', have become classics of New Zealand literature. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes Phillip Mann's fiction as possessing "a strong visual and structural sense".
Phillip Mann was made an Honorary Literary Fellows in the New Zealand Society of Authors' annual Waitangi Day Honours in 2015.
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