Time to catch up with a few events of recent times. First off, Supanova. I went to this with Sam last Saturday at Olympic Park. There weren’t too many celebs we were that interested in so it was a good chance to enjoy the rest of the event properly. We started off with a publishing seminar where we heard some useful things from Garth Nix as a successful author with experience in the industry and from a couple of publishers. The bookseller representative I have to admit thought she had more useful info than she did and showed her distinct dislike of e-books a little too clearly. Anyway it was useful and we later had a chat with Caroline Lowry of D-Publishing who is likely to hear from me again when I finish something worth publishing.

From there we met up with our good friend Erin, moseyed about the stores, listened to Christopher Lloyd answer some fairly inane questions (for the most part) and met a few more people. Artists’ Alley was of course home to some interesting and inspiring people. Last year we found Girl Quirky and Goblin Design and bought a few prints, since then Sam has done a workshop series with Girl Quirky, so we went back to say hi to them and of course buy more prints. We then stumbled across Selina Fenech and her beautiful fairy-based artworks and her silent graphic novel Fallen.

Having enjoyed hearing him in the seminar and learning that he’s a prominent Australian fantasy author, I decided I should buy a book by Garth Nix and since he was signing at the time we got it signed, and I must say he’s a really nice guy, very encouraging of writing in general. We then heard more from him in a fantasy writing seminar which also featured Marianne de Pierres and Kate Forsyth. There were some encouraging words spoken indeed. I’m not sure I learnt much specifically but many ideas were reinforced and felt strangely confident by the end of it. I’ve since started reading Marianne’s Burn Bright, which we bought last year at Supanova and she signed then, and I plan to buy one of Kate’s novels electronically – partly for convenience of reading it at work and partly to annoy the bookseller from the publishing seminar.

The other event I want to mention is the Sydney Dance Company show The Land of Yes & The Land of No. I managed to win a double pass to this via Australian Stage so Sam and I went down to the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta for opening night. Now, I’m not that into modern dance I do confess, my previous experiences of it were some rather ... well, pretentious shall we say, shows at The Performance Space back in my uni days. My opinion was not high. This show however changed that and you can see the difference between a high-quality company and a bunch of people being “artistic” (oh I’m an opinionated so-and-so I know but there you have it).

Anyway, I found this show quite fascinating in its way and the performance was elegant, graceful and beautiful. I didn’t have a way to reference what was happening so much of it remains an enigma to me, but there were some scenes I could get the gist of. I found myself quite in awe of the physical mastery of the dancers themselves and viewed the movements with the music so they became one expression. I think if there were a way to combine, seamlessly, the movement of dance with the poetry of written performance that would be my ideal theatre.

Just a general development, I rearranged my computer desk to create a more efficient and hopefully inspiring workspace. Books right in front of me and more sunlight – it has to be a good thing.




Keep Dreaming!

Fahrenheit 91

I wrote this a couple of days ago but I’m finally putting it up.

I wasn’t sure whether to write a blog about the passing of Ray Bradbury but the Sydney Morning Herald online tipped my hand. Bradbury was without a doubt a master storyteller and a prolific one. He created worlds and ideas with clarity and precision. It’s not stretching anything to say he was one of the greats of SF – by which I mean Speculative Fiction, not just science fiction.

What drives me to write this however is not simple memoriam but an element of disgust with SMH for its reporting of Bradbury’s death; a brief paragraph followed by a reprint of an opinion piece arguing that Bradbury was not a ‘literary’ SF author but the king of ‘pulp’. A simple short obituary would’ve sufficed but to spare the effort they rerun something that ends by saying “The king of pulp [Bradbury] lives.” I ask you, is that appropriate?

Now, the piece was not disparaging of Bradbury overall but it did seem to argue against his skills in writing while explaining how brilliant a writer he was. Regardless, it was not a way to report the death of a writer, pulp or otherwise.

This brings me to the other thing this piece made me want to write about, the whole premise of ‘literary’ and ‘pulp’ as opposite ends of some sort of spectrum. It seems to be a polemic SF is cursed to suffer from for all eternity. Even within the genre there are levels of snobbery demarcating the ‘escapist pulp’ with the ‘heavy’ or ‘literary’ works. Applying such things to Ray Bradbury just seems wrong and, if anything, the piece SMH has deigned to run on the day of his death simply shows that the polemic is an artificial construct – one Bradbury broke.

A piece of fiction should be judged primarily on its own terms. Yes, it needs to be well written. Beyond that it could serve any purpose the author and reader agree between them. For me, the main thing is for there to be a good story told well. My experience of ‘literary’ fiction is of no or limited banal story told with overdone language. My experience of ‘pulp’ or ‘escapist’ stories is stories where things happen. Not all are well told and not all are good – but that will depend on who’s reading them. Bradbury told good stories and told them excellently. So the ‘literary’ side claimed him and the ‘pulp’ side did too. He was neither, they don’t exist. He was Bradbury, the storyteller. Let’s remember that and read the stories and enjoy them. That’s what really matters.

Keep dreaming!