This is,
obviously, where I get to sound off on any topic that comes to mind. Some of these opinions come in the form of
interviews (more of which can be found via my LJ). Others are speeches or presentations dug up
from the hard drive and presented here.
(They may contain typos or notes that should have been removed. Apologies in advance.) Feel free to disagree with anything expressed
here.
First, here's a link to a log I kept during my brief time in
"I
loved that our toilet had a window on it, even though it was too small to see
through. Presumably it was there so someone could notice the light on
from the outside and avoid the embarrassment caused by premature
door-opening. I'm not entirely sure why it appealed to me so much, but it
was the first thing I latched on to when I arrived. 'Ah,' I thought,
sleep deprived and not really seeing the world terribly well, 'now I am in a
truly civilised country.'"
Keynote address at the opening of the 2006 Salisbury Writers'
Festival:
White Hot Passion: Living and
Writing on the Edge
"Every
story holds a mirror up to the present, to ourselves.
Some of our mirrors are twisted in order to show the truth, or to reveal that
which isn't normally seen at all. That's our job, as authors, poets, lyricists,
and playwrights. And we reveal our own face in the process, whether we want to
or not. We reveal our own passions."
A speech
prepared for the 2006 Worldcon that didn't end up being aired:
"Humanity has such
potential. Exploring that potential is
part of what makes science fiction so popular--in my mind, anyway. I have no doubt that humanity will not
achieve the heights I dream of (long-term, stable civilisations,
justice and freedom, equality, dominion over the galaxy and partnership with
nature, etc) without changes to what makes us tick. Fundamental changes. Instead of putting a suit on the ape and
hoping for the best, let's take the suit right off and teach the ape new
tricks. Unlike with dogs, that’s remains
an option."
A short piece
on the origins of my love of speculative fiction:
"Like many writers I
know, I can pinpoint the moment I fell in love with the speculative genre. For
some it was The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia, often passed on from a well-meaning parent,
uncle or aunt. I was perhaps five years old and considered too young for such
advanced texts. For me it was The Children's Sinbad, an adaptation by F.
H. Pritchard who also produced kids' readers of classics like Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus and
collections of humorous essays. This thin tome, which I still have, was a gift
from my mother. There's a hand-written note in the front identifying it as a
presentation from the Miltalie Methodist Sunday School
in 1953. Perhaps they would have given her a different book had they known what
kind of chain reaction it would trigger in the mind of her son, twenty years
later."
A selection of
speeches and articles from the last few of years (all edited by the wonderful Linda Culshaw):
Friends of the Barr Smith
Library speech (2004)
"That's where The Crooked Letter
started. It ends with an attempt to
build a religion that makes sense to me--one that, given the assumptions that
souls and some sort of life after death are real, might underpin the world we
live in. To build that idea, I've lifted
ideas from everywhere: the notion some cultures have that humans possess two
souls, plus the idea of reincarnation.
Add the Faculties of Plato: id-ego-superego, or kether-chokmah-binah,
or brahma-vishnu-shiva. Throw in the Gilgulim
of the Kabbalah, then it
began to take shape: two heavens, and lives curling back on themselves like
snakes eating their own tails, like Uroboros."
Barr Smith Library fundraiser
opening (2004)
"As a writer, all libraries obviously have a
place close to my heart, and not just because my books may be in them. Libraries are unique places, bordering the
real and the mythic. They could spring
either way, so swollen are they with imagination and speculation. From the Bodleian at
"A Day in the Life of..." (Brisbane
Writers' Festival 2003)
"The Pro is slim, well dressed, and
immaculately groomed--or likes to think he is, anyway--with a penchant for
black. His older brother, the Geek,
tends to shab about in tracksuit pants and t-shirts,
and is somehow never quite the right weight.
That they coexist at all is quite remarkable, given their disparate
tendencies. It doesn't take more than a
casual glance to reveal that they are complete opposites in almost every
respect."
"Maybe this is a bold claim, but I don't think it's possible
to tell that many stories without using romance in some form or other. People are people, and falling in love is
something people do--consciously or unconsciously, against their will as often
as not--and to ignore that aspect of humanity would be like drawing characters
who weren't afraid or never got hungry.
It just wouldn't do."
SF & Music: Convergence GOH
speech (2002)
"I turned fourteen in May, 1981, and whole new
world seemed to open up before me. I
can't remember which came first: ELO's
"Time" or the Alan Parsons Project's "Eye in the Sky." Either way, both changed the landscape of
music forever--for me, if no one else.
Less obviously SFnal and much smoother than
"Time", and not even slightly psychedelic, "Eye in the Sky"
introduced me to an artist who had been dabbling in the field for years. Classic albums like "I, Robot" and
"Tales of Mystery & Imagination" awaited my eager
exploration. Whole possibilities opened
up as I saw how readily science fiction, fantasy and horror could work up-front
in a contemporary musical setting. The
same buzz I got from the books I read lurked between the gatefolds of a double
album cover. What might take a book a
dozen paragraphs to convey could be summed up with one sound-picture in just a
few minutes. That was simply
magic."
"Don't be afraid to dream big. Dream small and you probably won't
succeed. You might succeed by accident,
but you won't be prepared for success.
Dreams (and imagination) are the primate's way of preparing for things
that haven’t happened yet. Be
prepared. Be bold."
The Delicate Art of Media Tie-ins (QWC article 2004)
"With three Star Wars novels behind me, I can
honestly say that my career hasn’t suffered for it, my bank account definitely
enjoyed it, and best of all: I got a real rush out of it. If you'd told me twenty years ago that I'd be
putting words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker and C-3PO, I would've said you
were joking--but my eyes would've lit up at the thought. That light is still there--and at the end of
that day, for every writer, however it got there, that's what counts."
Romancing the Genre (SAWC
article 2002)
"There are pitfalls in
letting our assumptions rule us rather than the other way around. Take, for instance, "capital-L"
Literature. This is a genre just like
any other, with its dedicated readers, authors and critics, and it is marketed
using similar methods. Alongside the
usual "Horror" and "Children's" signs, the
TV and SF (Advertiser article
2004)
"It's always struck me as strange (and
self-defeating) that networks reward such dedication by cancelling or moving
time-slots without warning, rearranging the order of episodes, and delaying
stars of new seasons by many months, if showing them at all. There's nothing more frustrating than sitting
down to watch the latest episode of your favourite TV show, only to find out at
the last minute that the cricket's on instead, or it's a repeat, or it started
an hour ago and you've missed it."
Reach for the Stars (Young Authors Night keynote
address 2003)
"Of every hundred people who want to write,
only one goes on to do something about it, to actually try writing
something. If you take a hundred of
those people who actually do something about it, whether it's write a few poems
or the beginning of a novel, only one in that hundred actually finishes
anything. And if you take a hundred of
those finishers, only one of them will actually sell their work
professionally. If you add up all the
zeroes, that means that just one wannabe writer in a million will sell or win
an award for their story, poem or novel."
Speeches given
at Adelaide Writers Week in March 2002:
"It's
my conjecture that what we seek when we read is, not an escape at all, but a
return. In fiction, just as in life, we love
revisiting the characters, landscapes, feelings and philosophies that move
us. In fiction, just as in life, we find
homes to return to when perhaps we don't feel at home in our real surroundings,
when we are lonely or understimulated, when we feel
uncomfortable or rejected, or are simply looking for a change."
Author's Meet #1 (Imagination)
"Imagination
is something I'm fascinated with because it's so easy to take for granted. We're taught as children to imagine all sorts
of things, but when we grow up the encouragement dries up, and we sometimes
don't even notice it when we do use it.
As a result, anyone who makes a public spectacle of their imagination,
like SF writers, stands out as different, and we look for explanations."
Author's Meet #2 (My Big
Chance)
"I don't think I'm
overstating things when I say that there exists a large gulf between the
mainstream literary scene in this country and the one in which I move, just as
there's a wide gulf between mainstream society and science in general. This is a shame--and an even greater shame
that it's not just evident in this country, but around the world. Fixing the problem would take more than just
one speech at one literary festival, but I figure you've got to start
somewhere. "
A series of
interviews conducted by the ABC science show Aftershock team in order to
determine if my ideas on various topics fit into the format of the show. It seemed a shame to waste them, so here they
are.
"I'm
advocating not the right to live forever, but the right to choose when and how
we die. That could be never, but it
could also be next week. This means that
I'm for euthanasia as well; longevity is just the opposite side of that
coin. Personally, I don't think you can
responsibly have one without the other."
"If
you're using bootlegged software on your computer and you want to keep using
it, don't campaign against reduced privacy: campaign for cheaper software and
fix the actual problem. If, on the other
hand, you're looking at child-porn, then I think society has every right to
erode your rights in order to catch you."
"Just
another step along the three great civilising roads:
(a) wearing clothes and makeup to conceal what we're actually like, (b) finding
new ways to propagate information (print media, radio, TV etc), and (c) using
tools in increasingly interesting ways.
It certainly seems to me to be a key step in social evolution."
The essay below
was written for an English subject at
"The
closest one could come would be to say that, if a work of fiction contains a
measure of "hard" science without which the plot would be rendered
meaningless and/or inspires a
sensation of awe at the potential of the universe and/or speculates on the effects on the individual as a response to
societal change (or vice versa) and/or
uses the mechanisms of science to tell stories about people and what makes them
tick and/or presents basic
entertainment behind a technological mask, then it is probably science
fiction."
The following
is a GOH speech presented at SwanCon
1999:
The Pros And Cons Of Being A
Hack
"To
anyone unsure of what direction to take in their lives, I offer this advice:
begin a bachelor degree in economics."
This is the
text of a much shorter and more serious version of the above presentation,
given to a roomful of students at
"It
seems to me that the dual purposes of education and entertainment, not
necessarily but most successfully both, is what originally drove storytelling,
and drives most popular fiction today."
And the last is
another speech from 1999, this one a rather long and rambling treatise on the
nature of thrillers as presented during a seminar held at the SA Writers'
Centre:
"Since
information is power, and a story-teller has absolute control over the
dissemination of information, this on-going push-me-pull-you dance between
question and answer -- conflict and resolution, discord and harmony, tension
and relaxation, whatever -- lies at the heart of a good thriller, and is, I
think, the principal tool by which an author keeps tugging a reader
along."