Tasmanian Writer Wins International Literary Prize
Dave Freer, who lives on a remote island in the Bass Strait off Tasmania, just became the first Australian – in fact, the first person from the Southern Hemisphere, to win the prestigious Prometheus Award – the third longest running of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Literary Awards. The list of previous honourees read like a who’s who of the genre: Sir Terry Pratchett, Wil McCarthy, Neil Stephenson, Cory Doctrow, Larry Niven, Jo Walton, Robert Heinlein to name but a few.
His book, Cloud Castles, is very Australian… well, it has its foundation in a future Australia sending out a shipload of convict transportees. Unfortunately, the ship, the Botany Bay, malfunctioned and had make a crash-landing. It did so on gas giant the size of Neptune – on the only safe ‘solid’ landing place on a vast planet where gravity and pressure would crush on the surface. Here humans can only survive in the cloud-tops on the fringes of space. The ‘solid’ landing is a few square kilometres of anti-gravity plate, floating in the clouds, built as a neutral trading post for two inimical alien empires, as the only place neither side wanted. The empires destroyed each other before humans arrived – except for the handful of traders from either species that were on the trading post when the war started. The convict descendants survived and the landing field has grown into a Dickensian shanty-town called ‘The Big Syd’.
There is no solid place on the gas-giant world, except the Big Syd… but there are plenty of unsolid places – masses of floating vegetation, that generates its own little hydrogen bubbles to keep it afloat in the clouds – bio-engineered by the aliens, and now home to all those who have fled the authoritarian and thug-dominated Big Syd, as well as a fauna of flying alien creatures.
The book, which follows the format of a classic Greek comedy, relates the misadventures of a young, hopelessly idealistic young volunteer from another nearby wealthy human settled world (any similarity the US and to an American Peace Corps volunteer is purely happenstance, I assure you). He wants nothing more than to help uplift the poor underprivileged people of the Big Syd.
Unfortunately, the blokes of the Big Syd would rather to help themselves – to his money, liberty and even life. To make matters worse, Australian idiom had come back into fashion before the convicts shipped out – and he understands not more than half of what they say. All that stand between him and falling to a certain death is his trusty native guide, who has decided that if anyone is going to rob him blind it will be her. Oh, and himself. He’s a Candide-like innocent who blunders through the Big Syd’s traps like a kangaroo on ice.
Finally, after a taste of slavery, he escapes and finds the people of the ‘outback’ of this limitless world, and there comes to grips with what uplift actually means. It’s coming of age story, a satire, and, well, a romp through a sea of ideas.
Freer, the author of twenty-five books mostly published in the US has his greatest strength in making complex ideas accessible and entertaining – like Prometheus, a trickster who steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity. And, like Prometheus again, he feels books need to kindle hope in the hearts of readers. In this book he combines the fierce passion of the new Australian for his adopted country.
– Dave Freer, Flinders Island
Commonwealth Games
If no Australian city or region hosts the 2026 Commonwealth Games, will we be denied an opportunity to whinge about being left off the map? This is most concerning.
– Marianne Freeman, Huon Valley
Francesca and Anthony, the two Albaneses
PM Albanese, who has stalled on his pre-election commitment to recognise Palestinian statehood, should take a leaf out of the book of another Albanese, a Francesca who is UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in Palestine. She says Palestinians living under Israeli occupation do need protection, whether it be from the brutality of illegal settlers or the army and she goes further in saying it will not stop with mere words of meaningless condemnation.
The fox is in charge of the hen house in the occupied West Bank with Jewish settler supremacist, Ben-Gvir, appointed as National Security Minister which is overseeing the ethnic cleansing of Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to make way for the expansion of Jewish only settlements. The settler pogroms are sweeping the West Bank, as they set fire to homes, shops, vehicles, fields and olive groves and random killing of anyone who resists is frequently described in mainstream media as a terrorist. If settler and Israeli state violence is not considered terrorism then the word has lost its meaning. Minister Smotrich has brazenly called for the Palestinian village of Huwwara to be ‘wiped out’. In the past six months alone, Israel has approved the construction of 13,000 new settlement units on Palestinian territory. This egregious violation of international law shamefully passes with hardly a murmur by western leaders including our own.
The upcoming ALP national conference in August will be an opportunity to instigate recognition of Palestinian statehood and a condemnation of Israel’s serial escalating violations of international law. Former Foreign Minister of Australia, Gareth Evans, in his recent parliamentary address organised by the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine reaffirmed the importance and significance of Australia recognising Palestinian statehood, without delay, presenting legal, political and moral arguments.
– Jo Errey, South Hobart
Einstein Says …
As Albert Einstein, I would say that any decision regarding a significant infrastructure project, such as a stadium, must be based on solid research, careful planning, and consultation with key stakeholders, including the local community. Approving such a project without a comprehensive business case, a clear plan, a well-thought-out design, and adequate consultation is highly irresponsible and poor governance. Such actions could lead to waste of public resources, social unrest, and environmental problems, among others. Therefore, I would urge decision-makers to take the time to gather all relevant information and work collaboratively with stakeholders to come up with a well-informed decision that considers all aspects of the proposal.
– Albert Einstein*
*Editor’s note: we asked an Albert Einstein AI chatbot about the Macquarie Point stadium proposal. Because … why not?!
Boutique Hotel Disguised as Airbnb
Local residents and Clarence councillors are outraged by the conversion of a Roches Beach house into a virtual ‘tourist hotel’. The proposal did not come before the council but was approved under delegation by staff. A proposal to turn a Roches Beach house into a virtual hotel resort has been approved by delegation without debate in council.
Several councillors did not agree with the officer’s decision due to the size of the house and its facilities which turns it into a defacto resort. Several of us would have voted against it if we’d been given the chance. I call on the state government to amend the planning scheme to provide more time for councillor consideration and to deal with uncontrolled expansion of short stay accommodation.
– Tony Mulder, Clarence City Councillor
The cost of peaceful protest
The jailing of an environmentalist serves to expose the flaws in our justice system. The logging practices by the forestry industry have been controversial for decades. Logging our native forests is even more controversial. It’s also poor business practice since global markets only now want timber sourced from plantation forests. Why else has native forest logging ceased elsewhere in the country? It should also cease in Tasmania. Logging our ancient forests is a known contributor to our rapidly changing climate.
And anyone who doubts man-made climate change is happening all around us nowadays cannot have been paying attention. The evidence is there for all to see every evening on our TV screens. Extreme heat in the northern hemisphere, extreme flooding in parts of Asia, and melting Poles – in both the Arctic and Antarctic. None of these extreme events are ‘normal’. Nor are they one-off events. They are occurring every year, and more frequently. Yet when an environmentalist who has campaigned for years to highlight the risks we all face if governments continue to ignore them, and actively chooses to still support the industries that exacerbate these risks, she’s sentenced to three months in prison. Shame on a government, and a legal system, that has enabled such a travesty to be possible.
– Anne Layton-Bennett, Swan Bay
Pro-stadium mob are a disgrace
I get that some people want a football team in the AFL. I get that they believe Tasmania deserves it. What I don’t get is that they put that ahead of a just and fair process to achieve a team. The secret negotiations, the deception about a stadium being part of the bid, the committing of a huge sum of public money for a project that’s had no consultation at all, whose business case is Swiss cheese left out in the sun … all this is the exact opposite of good governance. Is your football team really worth it? Would you in other aspects of your life nonchalantly accept ill-gotten gains? Those cheerleading the pie-in-the-you-know-where stadium who conveniently disregard the abysmal process by which funds appear to have been committed are a disgrace. They are so unTasmanian that by definition they don’t deserve a team.
– Ronald Gorrie, Somerset
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