Hugh Cook was born in Essex, England on August 9, 1956. He moved to New Zealand with his parents in 1964. He wrote poetry during his college years. He spent ten years as an army medic, attaining the rank of sergeant. His first novel, Plague Summer, was published in 1980. He left the Army to focus on writing. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 15 novels including The Shift, the ten-part Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, To Find and Wake the Dreamer, and the Oceans of Light Trilogy. In 2005, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. After months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, the cancer went into remission and he compiled a memoir entitled Cancer Patient. He was an early adopter of print-on-demand publishing. He died of cancer on November 8, 2008 at the age of 52. He posthumously received a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2015 for his services to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
