New Story and Southeast Asian Science Fiction
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 …
Tag: Napper
Aussie SF Snapshot
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 Hollywood Kowtow
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 …
Is your newspaper reading you?
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 …
The Samurai, the Gunslinger, the Private Eye: Modernity’s Antagonists
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 …
Americans Destroy Science Fiction
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 …
Rupert’s Run
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 …
Fathers: An Extremely Important Third Wheel
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 …
Oscar Predictions (and Bets)
Mad Max Fury Road will walk away with seven Oscars this year. Three Oscars less than this masterpiece warrants. 
The ones that really matter and that Fury Road deserves to win – Picture, Director, and Cinematography – will go to …
Hanoi: A Love Letter
I love this town.
The frenetic pace, the unapologetic culture, the dynamism of Hanoi. This is a city always 
on the move; horizontal, with scooters swarming through teaming streets; vertical, as mammoth yellow cranes raise buildings up from craters into …