Steven Erikson is the pen name of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian author and archaeologist born on 7 October 1959 in Toronto, Ontario. His background in archaeology and anthropology shapes the Malazan world at every level - the series approaches its fictional civilisations with the detachment of a field researcher cataloguing a dig, interested in systems and structures as much as individuals. Erikson studied at the University of Victoria and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and worked as an archaeologist before turning to fiction full time.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen began as a role-playing game world developed with Ian Cameron Esslemont in the 1980s, eventually growing into one of the most ambitious projects in epic fantasy. Gardens of the Moon was completed in the late 1980s but rejected by publishers for over a decade before finally appearing in 1999. The series concluded with The Crippled God in 2011.
Erikson has since published the Kharkanas Trilogy, a prequel sequence set in the Malazan world's distant past, as well as the Witness trilogy continuing the main sequence storyline.
