Overland literary journal

The burned-out Sixties

A Very Irregular Head
Rob Chapman

When Syd Barrett retired from public life at the age of twenty-five, he become one of the most enigmatic figures in popular music history. For the briefest of times he had burst onto the London Underground scene of the 1960s. Like scattered fireworks, he quickly faded into darkness. His more than thirty years of silence, combined with stories of LSD-induced madness, left him as an unsolvable puzzle.

Just what happened to Syd Barrett that turned him from a vibrant genius at the centre of the London counterculture to an antisocial recluse? As in all biographies of Barrett, this question hovers over Rob Chapman’s A Very Irregular Head. In trying to answer it, Chapman sets out to puncture many of the myths that have surrounded Barrett, particularly that of ‘Syd the acid casualty’. Taking his method from literary biographies, Barrett’s rapid ascent to become a defining figure of the London Underground and his precipitous decline is told with sensitivity and scrupulous research. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 21-09-2011, 9 user comments

Robert McKee and storytelling

Robert McKee is the best-known screenwriting teacher in the world. A few years ago, I interviewed him for Inside Film. He was thoughtful and incisive. I admired his opinions about film, a subject on which he showed considerable taste, and at the same time felt wary of his certainty about himself and his notion of storytelling, his conviction that stories were a civilising force and that without them, living was unthinkable.

Later, I attended his Story Seminar. On stage, he was a dominating personality, standing at the front of the room for up to twelve hours a day over three days to explicate his theories of storytelling, with asides for jokes and for his personal opinions, on sometimes completely unrelated issues. McKee sees himself as a custodian of forgotten truths: at one point, he warned that anyone whose phone rang during the seminar would have to pay him twenty dollars, not for rudeness, but because they needed every moment to cover the essential task of understanding ‘story’. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 5-07-2011, 3 user comments

A touch of summer cinema: The Fighter and Black Swan

The holiday horror film season is over, though the forgettable blockbusters – let’s not mention their titles – are still dragging their way like decaying corpses across cinema screens. Still, this season has been different: for the first time in memory, there has been a cluster of films that I’ve actually wanted to see. This is pretty exciting, really, because I like going to the cinema. I like the big screen and sound, the fact I’m shut off from the world. Still, it’s remarkable how often I leave the movie theatre disappointed, cursing, in particular, the scriptwriting. Far too often spectacle replaces story. Thankfully, the first two movies I saw, The Fighter and Black Swan, did not disappoint. Neither are classics, but they pull their weight, and, most importantly, are about something. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 31-01-2011, 13 user comments

Literature, speculative fiction and me

Some time ago, I was talking to an old friend of my parents called Henry. Intelligent, liberal (perhaps back in the seventies he was a radical), Henry was the kind of person I grew up around. As often happens in such situations, the topic turned to writing. I explained to him that I wrote ‘speculative fiction’ (SF), an umbrella term for non-realist or non-mimetic fiction. It includes science fiction, magic realism, fantasy, science fiction, perhaps some ‘postmodern fabulations’. He looked at me puzzled. The discussion moved on until, some time afterwards Henry said, ‘I used to read Doris Lessing before she started writing all that science fiction rubbish.’ ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 26-11-2010, 26 user comments

Fiction review: A Book of Endings

A Book of Endings
Deborah Biancotti
Twelth Planet Press

Among the deleterious effects of the separation of genre from mainstream fiction – a separation that is in many ways a marketing invention – is the marginalisation of various authors. It’s a process that affects the genre writers more than the mainstream ones. Genre is, after all, that embarrassing cousin who is placed at the far end of the dinner table next to the most understanding of relatives, who nod pleasantly, tolerating with good humour the truths we’d rather avoid and which our cousin insists on raising in a slightly too loud voice. Our cousin is always interesting, but not fit for polite, ‘civilised’ company. And yet, all too often, when the dinner comes to an end, we find that the cousin hasn’t actually said anything controversial, hasn’t offended anyone, is in fact, well, not that embarrassing after all. The whole thing was just a family myth, a misconception based on events of years before. The cousin, it appears, has matured. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 8-11-2010, 5 user comments

The Overland line

Over on his blog, Emmett Stinson comments on my article on creative writing courses in the university, ‘Liberated Zone or Pure Commodification?’ There is much to agree with in Stinson’s post, though his defence of creative writing courses is rather tendentious.

Still, there were several points that attracted my attention. In particular, Stinson critiques my argument for an engaged literature. He writes:

Davidson’s piece is ultimately interesting and even-handed, although it runs what currently seems to be Overland’s party line on what literature should be, which is ‘a literature that takes us back into the world – that thinks about the issues that surround and affect us – rather than away from it: a culture of engagement rather than escapism, of reflection rather than consolation’. As I’ve noted elsewhere, an extremely problematic set of assumptions underpins this notion of literature (and more on this below).

... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 29-09-2010, 11 user comments

MWF – In conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson

Sunday 29 August. Kim Stanley Robinson sat calmly at the front of the vast reaches of BMW edge. Lucy Sussex – a longtime supporter of Overland – interviewed Robinson in a freewheeling discussion about his work and opinions. It’s not surprising that that the hall wasn’t full: Robinson was the Guest of Honour at the World Science Fiction Convention a few days later. Many of his fans no doubt planned to catch him there. Still, it’s a pity the session wasn’t better attended, for Robinson is one of the most astute commentators on politics and history. He possesses qualities too rare among novelists; most importantly he thinks deeply about his work; he has an aesthetic and political project. As a result, Robinson is not simply a novelist, but a commentator – a kind of public intellectual that is all too rare. As a radical leftist, Robinson – along with another SF leftist at the festival, China Mieville – has the knack of appearing eminently reasonable, rational, knowledgeable. It is hard to underestimate his value. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 9-09-2010, 9 user comments

Future of the Greens

Saturday evening. 21 August 2010. The function room in the Victoria Hotel is hot. Crammed in are hundreds of people. At the rear, journalists circle around television cameras. They care little for the buzzing green-clad crowd: their focus is elsewhere. They scribble notes, look at the floor. It is artificially bright in this little area: a bubble of luminosity thrown by the TV lights. Greens activists hug each other, chatter animatedly. There are several questions everyone asks: Where did you hand out how-to-vote cards? How will the Greens go? Who will win government? In their hearts, they know that tonight will be a victory for the party.

They are not wrong. Before long, it is announced that Adam Bandt – a friend of mine – has been elected as member for the seat of Melbourne. His first words are ‘Melbourne, together we’ve made history today.’ If his first words are passionate, the rest of his speech is a lesson in composure and diplomacy. The speech is not heavy on content, though he does highlight the Greens progressive policies on refugees, climate change and same-sex marriage. He finishes to a storm of applause. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 24-08-2010, 22 user comments

The Library of Forgotten Books

For anyone who is interested, PS Publishing in the UK has recently released my collection, The Library of Forgotten Books. There’s a plain hardcover and a cool jacketed and signed hardcover. The reviews so far have been pretty positive.

One of the reviewers writes: ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 19-08-2010, 4 user comments

Fiction review – Slice of Life

Slice of Life
Paul Haines
The Mayne Press

Genre publishing exists like a hidden enclave in the broader Australian culture, replete with its own publications and personalities, politics and institutions. Hidden away in this world are number of highly talented writers whose work deserves much greater recognition than it receives. At the literary end of this spectrum is the work of Ben Peek or Deborah Biancotti. Closer to the genre side of things stands Paul Haines, whose second collection, Slice of Life, was recently published by The Mayne Press and has been shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 14-07-2010, 1 user comment

Australian SF Writers

Readers of Overland may have noticed in the last couple of years that we've endeavoured to publish and review the best writers from the Speculative Fiction scene here in Australia. We've had stories by such luminaries as Margo Lanagan, Jack Dann, Lucy Sussex, Ben Peek. We've also interviewed international figures  China Mieville and Kim Stanley Robinson. Recently I decided that over the summer one of my projects will be to catch up on the work of some of the other fine writers of Australian SF who are less recognised than they should be, including: Trent Jamieson, Deb Biancotti, Ben Peek, Paul Haines, Kim Westwood. Some of their work will be reviewed in Overland - one more reason to subscribe! - some I may blog about. It's going to be a fun project, I think, partly because when I say these writers are fine, I really mean it. I've admired their work in the past, but I've never had a chance to systematically take a look at their careers. If anyone can think of Australian SF writers I really should add to the list, let me know. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 2-12-2009, 3 user comments

Port Phillip Rising

A few Friends of the Earth activists are currently in the middle of walking from Sorrento to Port Melbourne, as part of an awareness campaign about climate change and rising sea levels. You can read about their trek here.

Here's a video from their third day:

Safety Beach to Mornington - Day 3 from Port Phillip Rising on Vimeo.

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 25-11-2009, No comments

No SF Booker Winners

Recently there's been a bit of a discussion about why no SF writer has won the Booker prize. As far as I know, it was begun by Kim Stanley Robinson in a piece for New Scientist. After quoting Virginia Woolf's complimentary letter to SF great Olaf Stapleton, he wrote:

Oh, I know there is a Booker prize, I've heard of it even in California - supposedly given to the best fiction published in the Commonwealth every year - but there are no Woolves on those juries, and so they judge in ignorance and give their awards to what usually turn out to be historical novels.

Sometimes these are fine historical novels, written by tremendous writers; I particularly like Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh, and my favorite was Penelope Fitzgerald. But working, like all of us, in the rain shadow of the great modernists, they tend to do the same things the modernists did in smaller ways. A good new novel about the first world war, for instance, is still not going to tell us more than Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. More importantly, these novels are not about now in the way science fiction is. Thus it seems to me that three or four of the last 10 Booker prizes should have gone to science fiction novels the juries hadn't read. Should I name names? Why not: Air by Geoff Ryman should have won in 2005, Life by Gwyneth Jones in 2004, and Signs of Life by M. John Harrison in 1997. Indeed this year the prize should probably go to a science fiction comedy called Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts.

Adam Roberts, who Robinson mentioned, responded in the Guardian with this:

I found myself noticing how much of this year's shortlist is built around essentially science fiction conceits, although mostly in slightly stifled ways: Coetzee's Summertime is, among other things, about uncertainty in the face of versions of reality - the topic that Philip K Dick made so brilliantly his own. Byatt's absorbing The Children's Book, though rooted in a detailed Edwardianism, is in part about fantasy, and is structured around entry into and expulsion from Narnia-like paradises, or anti-Narnia hells. Adam Foulds's The Quickening Maze, set in the 1840s, is about transcending reality and distils moments of intensity that gesture towards SF's sense of wonder. They're all good novels. But how much better they could have been if their authors had allowed themselves to play with the complete paint-box of SF and fantasy.

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 4-10-2009, 1 user comment

non-fiction workshop

For anyone interested, Express Media have organised this:

The Art of Non-Fiction with Rjurik Davidson
Saturday Sept 12  2-4pm
$25

Interested in writing non-fiction? Fancy yourself as an essayist? Like the idea of writing reviews? Come and learn the art of non-fiction writing with Overland magazine Associate Editor Rjurik Davidson. In this workshop you will learn: how to raise your non-fiction to a higher level, how to structure a non-fiction piece, how to research, how editors work and what they're looking for and how to be professional.

Rjurik Davidson is Associate Editor at Overland magazine. He is an award-winning writer of short stories, essays, reviews and scripts. His collection The Library of Forgotten Books will be published later this year. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 26-08-2009, No comments