There are many benefits to writing short stories. Writers do it to practice and develop their style of storytelling, and it also allows them to explore singular ideas, concepts and themes. The narratives are easy to control, the outcomes have less room for error, and you can get your story out quickly.
Continue reading “The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party”Tag: book
Daybreak over the Valley
First chapter from the novel
No Absolution
“The cat,” says a familiar voice.
What cat?
In the darkness, you are flying. You feel motion, yet you are sitting at a table, opposite a dirty, unshaven guy pointing a burning cigarette at you.
I know this person.
When an angry Bruce Harvey says, “Where’s my cat, fucker?” you conclude it’s a dream. The has-been movie star is interrogating you in a grimy, run-down room surrounded by four cracked, windowless walls, but the only question running through your head is…
Why this actor?
Harvey karate chops you across the back of your neck. It’s not the pain that wakes you, it’s the warm light bleeding in through your eyelids. The nightmare fades, fizzling away, back into your brain’s nether regions, dying alongside discarded aspirations and forgotten memories. Drool runs down the side of your mouth, but you are unable to move. Your face feels numb, due to your cheek pressed against the cold glass. The tinnitus in your ears stops, replaced by the hum of the ute’s engine, and the friction between tyre, road and air, enters your awareness. You open your eyes, just wide enough to squint, focusing on the golden countryside sweeping past outside.
For a moment; reality is a blur.
You attempt to shift your head and are relieved it moves with little pain. Your arm is cramped, and your neck feels broken, but you know this is temporary. The breaking dawn illuminates the narrow, unmarked road, winding around a chain of hills. A clump of trees obscures the misty valley beyond, sending intermittent shafts of copper light to warm your face. Once the trees go by, you marvel at the spectacle, at the amber clouds cruising along the horizon, at the auburn fields, smothered with whispers of mist, rolling up and down between chestnut-coloured forests.
The Robocaust
I once bought a novel, Robopocalypse (2011) by Daniel H. Wilson, at an airport bookstore for a fast, time-killing read and while I wasn’t totally disappointed with it, it left me once again tackling the question about this robocalypse that everyone is fearful about.
As for the book itself…
Continue reading “The Robocaust”Yellowcop is Everywhere.

It can see and hear everything. It can track where you are in the physical world and what you do in the virtual one. This panoptic surveillance network is legal and built into in every electronic device, gadget or machine that comes off the factory floor, from robot trashcans to autonomous smartcars.
Anonymity is officially dead, that is until the advent of the DENDROS, a quasi-sentient computer algorithm that hacks into all machines spanning the Global Internet of Things.
Peer-to-peer, un-hackable, untraceable and totally cryptonymous, humanity can go back to indulging in its dark side — incognito and free.
Characters
Heidi Matthews is a Missing Persons Unit detective, re-assigned to the Sheepdog Unit, a team of law enforcers dedicated to bringing down the snuff industry. All she needs to do is put aside her animosity towards its unscrupulous leader and help the Sheepdogs put an end to the pandemic of violence.
Luke Pearson is a snuff aficionado who is always one step ahead of the law. Always a suspect but never an accused, his luck may be just about to run out.
Eddie, John and Francoise have broken out of the Psychomax. To stay free all they have to do is keep doing what they do best, and the underground snuff market pays more that anything in the world.
Mark Forrester’s day turns sour when he comes across a stolen pango, a personal area network device that runs all the technology crammed into everyday life. Within the pango, he uncovers evidence of a horrific, insidious crime perpetrated by a sinister snuff group known as the Blood Ring.
But Mark cannot go to the police, for he suspects that the Yellow Monster, which feeds daily on human villainy, may not be interested in justice at all.

Enter The Dendro
The Bad Samaritan now stalking Unbound
A while ago, after finishing my novel A Hostile Takeover, I took on adapting my screenplay ‘The Bad Samaritan’ into my next book project. It turned out to be an ordeal, with convoluted plots ending up driving me insane, but in the end I had myself a completed draft.
Continue reading “The Bad Samaritan now stalking Unbound”PKD
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The early eighties were remarkable, to me anyhow. Not only did my fascination with science fiction grind into high gear, but there was an explosion of new and modern genre films that hit the scene at around that time, many having been influenced by film makers from a bygone era, and more importantly, by novels penned by hardcore science fiction authors just decade earlier.
So, there I was, in the school library, looking for a book that was adapted into a movie I had just seen. Instead of finding the weirdly titled ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, I ended up with a paperback with an even less appealing name. ‘The Man in the High Castle’. The one with the Max Ernst’s ‘The Petrified Forest” cover.
I didn’t even know alternate reality books existed, yet the way the author dealt with the characters as they inhabited a post world war society where the axis powers reigned supreme, prove to me this was a writer worth investing in.
With his little background details, such as as American workers having poorer eye sight than their Germanic overlords, or the grand suggestion that our world could be as fake as the one presented on the novel, Dick basically striped away the veneer that masked my view of reality. That is his amazing talent. After setting off on a mission to read all his books and short stories, It didn’t surprise me, that decades later, this author’s work would become one of the biggest properties for film and TV adaptation.
The Good.


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Apart from a few superficial changed, such as the book swapped for a film, this television series, Season 1 anyway, is spot on. Highly recommend.


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Both films are as important to watch for any true sci-fi aficionado. Rare that a sequel does justice to the original.


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Again, with a talented director such as Spielberg, this a true PKD experience.


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Great visuals, great cast, and a commitment to the story that’s ingenious and refreshing.


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Standard eighties fare, can’t go wrong.
The Not So Bad.


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The film looks exactly as I visualised it when I first read the short story. For fans, it’s worth sitting through this romantic caper.


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It captures enough of the PKD mindset to pass, but the direction is very very pedestrian. At least it’s got Uma Thurman in it.


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This movie fails to hit the mark because it seems incomplete and under developed. It was a short film that got stretched out into a feature so maybe that’s the problem. Still, it captures the essence of the story it’s based on.


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This movie comes very close to the original short story, Second Variety. Despite the nonthreatening screamers and the cheap effects, there are still some good moments from the source material.
The Just Plain Ugly.


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This is a ‘loose’ adaptation. If they stuck to the original story, they could have had a hit.


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It’s funny, as soon as some corporation buys the entire estate, the quality just drops. TV minus standard fare.


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B standard video fare, giving the brand a bad name.
Honorable mentions


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Even though PKD wasn’t credited, it still has its roots in the original story.

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If you still can’t get enough, there are numerous shorts to track down.

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Private Haldeman

Whenever Joe Haldeman author puts out something, I read it. So, when each of these following novels came
The Forever War
No one keen on hard science fiction should skip this novel. There is a reason it has garnered all those awards and accolades since it was published.
The reason: It tells a ripping story.

William Mandella is a school teacher who’s drafted to fight in an interstellar war against the alien Taurans. He survives battle after battle, but due to time dilation and space travel, hundreds of years go by between each mission. During this time, he experiences humanity morph into something he and his fellow veterans don’t recognise. All he hopes for is to survive the war and be reunited with his wife. But each battle is an evolution of warfare, becoming more deadlier than before.
This novel has it all. You care for Mandella. The battles are as gripping whether they take place on some outpost planet or in deep space. The finale is as satisfactory as one would want it, considering our journey through space and time.
This will turn you into a fan.
Camouflage
The premise revolves around two alien beings, both shape-shifters but of a different variety, who have been on Earth for aeons and whose futures are interlocked. The protagonist alien’s character develops with each page turn. The pace in which the story unfolds is gripping, so too is the action, and there is mounting excitement and tension as the decades pass and the two diametrically opposed mimic’s paths intersect. (Highlander) tropes abound as both have embedded themselves into human history, making do with their special shape-shifting abilities.

All this was very cool.
Now, if it weren’t for the central human character and his middle-age crisis story arc, and the ‘tired and contrived’ (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) ending, this could have been an outstanding work of SF. The evil alien antagonist wasn’t helping either. Where there was scope to explore some genuine villainy, instead the character delved into the cliche world of Nazi bad guy strudel.
I enjoyed this read immensely but it remains for me a major ‘if only’ science fiction novel.
Was it worth the read? Yes, with a smidgen of disappointment.
Haldeman fans will forgive, others may not.
There Is No Darkness
This novel was my first introduction to the Haldemans.
Carl Bok is a student of
On the Earth leg of the excursion, he gets involved in prise fighting, unintentionally roping in his roommates. They fight tournament after tournament, but even though he loses in the end, Carl learns a lesson in fealty.
Next, they visit a planet called Hell. This is where sovereign governments go to fight their conventional, regulated wars. Carl and his colleagues, who are now his friends, are kidnapped and forced to serve in a mercenary army.
Then they travel to The Construct, an ancient alien artefact that has become a hub for hundreds of alien species who’ve set up shop to trade information.
The best aspect of this book is Carl’s growing friendship with the other students. They are each funny and charming in their own way, as they band together to face a brave new universe.
This will resonate with fans as much as any other of his work.
Origin: The Blood Ring

After I published “A Hostile Takeover” I was exploring ideas for a second book. At some point, I entertained the thought of adapting one of my screenplays that had been sitting on the shelf, collecting dust for over a decade. How easy. The basic story and material were there. All I had to do was tweak this, rewrite that, so I committed to writing it, setting a target to keep it short and simple.

The screenplay was called ‘The Bad Samaritan’ and it was turned into a guerilla film back in 1999 by me and a few associates. Its one and only release was at the 2001 Melbourne Film Festival, and it’s been buried ever since. I felt it was a natural step for a novel to come out of it.
In hindsight, I was naive about how easy it would be. In my writing experience, nothing goes down as planned. With me stories evolve, ideas get bigger, themes dig deeper. And when I decided to turn what was originally a serial killer horror thriller into a serial killer science fiction horror thriller, I entered a world of hurt.
The original story idea still resonated with me, enough for me to decide to revisited it again. The challenge being; how do I take this to another level?
Hence, The Blood Ring was born.
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