Sean Williams

Earlier this year, at Conflux, I was granted a unique opportunity. I'm not talking about interviewing Sir Arthur C Clarke, although that was another special moment from the same con. I'm referring to the reading of my sci-fi musical, "The Soap Bubble - A Space Opera", by a hand-picked cast consisting of some of this country's greatest writers, artists and editors, all giving up their spare time and energy to the project in a feat of generosity and goodwill for which I will forever be grateful:

Astrogator Jane Foo-Wong - Deborah Biancotti
Morale Officer Alek Maas - Simon Brown
Captain Gabe McKenzie - Richard Harland
Uncle Warren & The Alien - Rob Hood
Corporal Sarah Mravinsky - Cat Sparks
Security Chief Andre Passant - Nick Stathopoulos

Based on my novella "The Soap Bubble", first published in Alien Shores in 1994, the play version was a project fronted by Bluetongue Theatre director and old friend Catherine Adamek. With funding from Arts SA, and the help of dramaturge Sean Reilly and Phil Spruce, we knocked together a working draft in early 2003, then sent it to various places (such as Playlab) for feedback. The draft performed in June was the latest, and could be described as a deep space First Contact story with a reality TV edge.

Music doesn't currently exist for the songs, but a theme for the show-within-a-show does, as written by me and orchestrated for the reading by Jack Reineckie (this version) and Robert Dobson. Other incidental music used in the performance was written by Mirko Ruckels.

I'm a big believe in collaboration and community. The reading of "The Soap Bubble - A Space Opera" was a celebration of both. I will be eternally in debt to everyone involved: the readers, the musicians, Trevor Stafford for giving me a prime slot at his excellent con, and to the audience for coming along and, afterwards, offering suggestions on how the script could be improved. It all added up to a wonderful experience that I doubt will ever be equalled.

It was also fracking hilarious. Hurrah!

I finally have a Flickr account (here) containing photos that range from the professional (Writers of the Future) to the personal (dusty imprints of my arse). I'll post anything that takes my fancy, in no particular order.

My favourites at the moment are the photos of me and Garth Nix sitting in the original TV series Batmobile. That's about as close to fannish heaven as I'm ever going to get.

And speaking of Worldcon... I prepared a speech for one of my panels that didn't end up being used. It's about the flexible nature of humanity--whether it's changed in the past and should change in the future. I've put it up in the "Opinions" section of the web site. If you're interested you can download it here.

The Writers of the Future bash was amazing fun, with new and old friends combining to make it just as mind-blowing as ever. I'll post something more profound than that soon, when photos of the event appear online. I'm in LA now and absolutely knackered (and very glad to have a working stereo again). In lieu of something topical, here's a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago for a newsletter in Tamworth, with thanks to Mark Snyder for inviting me to contribute.

Like many writers I know, I can pinpoint the moment I fell in love with the speculative genre. For some it was The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia, often passed on from a well-meaning parent, uncle or aunt. I was perhaps five years old and considered too young for such advanced texts. For me it was The Children's Sinbad, an adaptation by F. H. Pritchard who also produced kids' readers of classics like Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus and collections of humorous essays. This thin tome, which I still have, was a gift from my mother. There's a hand-written note in the front identifying it as a presentation from the Miltalie Methodist Sunday School in 1953. Perhaps they would have given her a different book had they known what kind of chain reaction it would trigger in the mind of her son, twenty years later.

Why this book? What kind of bomb, exactly? Well, up until that point, the only exposure to anything fantastical I'd experienced had come through fairy tales, cartoons on TV, and the movies of Walt Disney. They were fun but not especially stimulating. Looking back on the adventures of Sinbad the legendary sailor, I can see key similarities between them and every other speculative story I had been exposed to: exotic lands, wild adventures, and improbable creatures. There was, however, one important difference. Sinbad survived his seven voyages not by breaking the laws of physics or waving a magic wand. He endured by virtue of his wits.

Here was a story combining the two things that later in life I would come to love most about speculative fiction, and science fiction in particular. All fiction begins with the question "What if...?" That question, given free reign, allows glimpses of worlds that not only do not exist in this universe, but can not exist. What value do they have, then? Their value lies in encouraging people to think out of the box--of exploring every possibility, no matter how improbable. The exercise of imagination is one we frequently let slip in adulthood, to the detriment of ourselves as individuals and of our species as a whole. Speculation is the juice that fuels our waking dreams, and such dreams can change the world.

Speculation is useless, however, without reason to back it up. The partnership between imagination and the scientific method drives every aspect of society today, unseen for the most part (such as technology relying on physics or chemistry far beyond matriculation levels) and sometimes vilified by people who forget that these two pillars separate us from blind nature, with its dead-ends and its absence of morality. Science fiction is the only avenue for writers driven to seek truths beyond the here and the now (and the "us") to see what possibilities await.

So...that's where it all started. The Children's Sinbad led to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Dark is Rising. From there it was an easy step to Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and the other Grand Masters of science fiction. And from there, perhaps, it was inevitable that I would one day begin to flex my own speculative muscles, and produce the stories I have written so far. I hope that one day, somewhere, one of my stories will inspire a child in ways I cannot presently imagine, so Sinbad's legacy will live on forever.

August is going to be a busy kind of fun. Or a fun kind of busy. I can't decide which, or if there's even a difference.

First up is the 22nd Annual Writers of the Future Awards, which will be held with all due ceremony this year at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. I'm very excited to be involved in the WOTF, having won it way back in 1992 and returning lately as the only Australian judge in a truly stellar line-up. (Our very own Cat Sparks was another recent winner.) The night is spectacular, and the days leading up to it confirm everything I've learned since my early days of a writer: that you never stop learning. I return wiser from every year's celebration.

This year, though, I won't be returning straight away. Worldcon is just around the corner, practically, so it's off to Anaheim straight afterwards and my first World SF Convention outside Australia. I'm pleased to be on the program, so it won't be all pink drinks and schmoozing. See my schedule below. I'll also be catching Gary Numan live in concert (as noted earlier) and trying to keep The Dust Devils on schedule.

Afterwards, it's off to New York for a few days, then home to promote The Devoured Earth, since it'll be on the bookshelves around then. But that's a whole other month, and I've yet to get my head entirely around this one yet...

Worldcon schedule:
Wed 3:00 - Kaffeklatsch
Wed 4:00 - Fantasy Doesn't Have To Be About Kings And Wizards
Thu 4:00 - Changing Human Nature
Fri 2.30 - Pyr: A Look Forward
Fri 5:00 - Autographing
Sat 1:00 - Reading (expect something saucy)

PS. New security restrictions are making me a tad grumpy about the flight across the Pacific but I see no likelihood of changing my plans at the moment. I'll update here as required.

I mentioned in an earlier post my alter ego, Sean Williams, author of The Sound of the Ancestral Ship and editor of The Ethnologist's Cookbook. (We occasionally exchange emails about collaborating, but can't agree on whose name should go first. Ha ha.)

The strange thing is this: Sean emailed me the week before Conflux to say hi and to let me know about the new book. Excellent, I thought. Doppelgangers are fun, especially when they write books I wish I'd written myself.

The very next day, I received an email from another Sean Williams, he of Lawrence Real Estate fame. His email threw me for a second because I naturally assumed it was a reply from the first (or is that second?) Sean Williams. The content made no sense at all until I realised what strange coincidence had occurred. This Sean Williams had chosen to drop me a line within twenty fours hours of the other, apropos of nothing. Weird.

Coincidence and confusion reached a peak two days later when I went to check into the Conflux hotel in Canberra. I'd arranged to share a suite with the excellent Deb Biancotti. She had organised for my name to be on the room. Simple, right? That's what I thought. Turned out there was no "Biancotti & Williams" registered, but there was a "Mr & Mrs Sean Williams". Hilarity ensued--except that it wasn't me. It was another Sean Williams also checking into a suite at the same hotel, on the same day.

Tempted though I was to assume his identity, I checked in under Deb's name and went to hide under the bed.

I've been flattened by a second bout of the cold that's doing the rounds here in Adelaide (losing my voice once is bad enough; twice in two weeks just plain sucks) but the work continues and LJ-worthy items accrue as a matter of course. Here are some, in no particular order.

At last night's meeting of the new board of the South Australian Writers' Centre, I was honoured to be voted in as Chair for a second time. Having been off the board for a few years (I was seconded in January to fill an empty seat) it's been really nice getting back into the swing of things. Giving back to the community is something I strongly believe in, and I hope that I can help the centre (the oldest in Australia) continue its excellent work.

Conflux ho! It's official: I'll be a guest at Conflux (Canberra, 9-12 June). Proposed program items include the world-premiere reading of "The Soap Bubble: A Space Opera" with an all-star cast, an interview with Sir Arthur C Clarke, and other goodies. If you're coming, keep an eye on the web site. If you're not, change your mind and join the party!

Sometimes made-up words take on a life of their own. A "glast" puts in a pivotal appearance in the final Books of the Cataclysm (The Hanging Mountains and The Devoured Earth). It's also the name of a space telescope due to be launched in 2007. Whoops and, well, whatever. :-)

The Crooked Letter received a "spankingly good review" (to quote the legendary Steve Savile) from Rob H Bedford at SFF World. Here's the link, and below are my favourite bits. I love this review for three reasons: (1) I always wanted to start a book by killing off a main character then following what happened to him afterwards, and Rob tips his hat to that. (2) Rob also recognises the fact that The Crooked Letter is as much a horror novel as fantasy novel influenced by apocalyptic SF, which no other reviewer (iirc) has mentioned. (3) He says such nice things in general!

"In The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams explores the nature of life, death, and reality. Big subjects, but with the precision of an archaeological expert, Williams is more than up to the task. There is a lot to admire in Williams epic fantasy, the wide range of global religions and myths of which, his afterlife is comprised, to the characterization of the protagonists. The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision. ... When I first opened the book, I was expecting an epic fantasy. While the scope of the novel and range of characters lends itself to such a description, pigeon-holing the book in such a category does a disservice to the book and to Williams. On every page, it becomes very evident that Williams is playing with a different set of rules. The darkness of the events, as well as the tone of the book elicited more of a horror feel for me, as I continued to follow Seth and Hadrian’s plight. ... In a year that is proving to be an interesting and enjoyable one for Fantasy and Science Fiction, Williams’s The Crooked Letter is near the top of my list as the year approaches the half-way mark."

With that, I'm off to take some drugs. Bleurgh.

A crook neck kept me from attending Supanova last weekend (alas) but my time up north was still fruitful and fun. Conjure rocked. Thanks to everyone for being so patient with their stiff-necked Oz GOH--particularly to the concom for arranging drugs and massages, the panellists on the one program item I was forced to cancel, and my fellow tie-in writers (and the wonderful Marianne de Pierres) for covering me at various functions. All's well that end's well.

At it did end will. The wonderful Gary Kemble covered Conjure for the ABC. See here for a chronological rundown of the entire event. You can also link straight to my GOH speech and an interview. I spent a fair amount of time talking about romance and sex, so be warned. :-)

To top it all off, Geodesica: Ascent picked up the Ditmar Award for Best Novel. I'm still slightly stunned, given the competition. The trophy was made by Gillian Sandrasegar and looks absolutely stunning on my brag shelf.

One last link before getting back to the new book: the Courier Mail in Brisbane recently ran a piece on Philip Pullman. I was asked to give my opinions on the great man (and other writers) along with Sophie Masson, Richard Harland, and Ian Irvine. You can see the article here.

That's it for now. As much as I love visiting Brisbane, it's great to be home. Autumn is a wonderful time in Adelaide. The neck is feeling better and the new book is coming along great. It's all good. (My motto for 2006.)

I'll post another update in a couple of days.