Coming up for air after Conflux (the Canberra SF Writer’s Convention), I looked back on the first article I wrote on Conflux and Cons in general a couple of years back. Things have come along quite a bit for me …
A few years back when I’d first arrived in Vietnam, and was still very new to writing, I produced The Four Deaths of Taylor Ngo. Set in a jazz bar in Ha Noi (and, yes, based on a real …
I was recently interviewed by David McDonald for the 2016 Aussie Speculative Fiction Snapshot.
Undertaken every two to three years, the Snapshot is an informal census of the local genre scene. A tonne of cool authors and editors are …
The US culture industry wants the Chinese market. The only way is through the Chinese government, which restricts the number of foreign films allowed in the country each year – thirty-four only. To get one of those precious slots, Hollywood …
I mean, it could have been worse. I was late to watching the movie – anyone with young children is always late to doing anything – but all I’d heard in the lead-up was the splat of pop-cultural fans and …
There is a meme that circulates every few months. A picture, black and white, the 1950s perhaps, everyone on a train with their head buried in a newspaper. It comes with a subtitle along the lines of: ‘All this technology …
Red Harvest, Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars: Remaking the Remake
The American Western was revitalised by an Italian director inspired by a Japanese filmmaker with a love of hardboiled fiction.
This is the strange international pedigree of the ground-breaking A …
Equity
The Americans have done it again. The conservative wing has rigged the Hugo Awards, turning it into a list of ideological screeds, petty revenge stories, and comedic gay erotica. The progressive wing will no doubt punch back, like …
When an individual earns a billion dollars, they are legally killed by society and their wealth redistributed*. This killing is televised: a SWAT team with go-pros enters the palatial residence, or chandeliered bunker, or mahogany-clad private jet, and puts a …
There’s s scene in the classic Australian movie, The Castle, where clueless suburban lawyer Dennis Denuto finds himself in the High Court of Australia. He’s assisting a Queen’s Council argue a complex case of constitutional law. Completely out of his …
