1. Your latest major work to come out was "Other Stories’ and Other Stories through Satalyte publishing. What's currently in the works for you or what's engaged your interest(distracting you from writing)?
Yes, it was nice to release a collection; partly because I've long wanted to use that title; also because I got to write an original story with my daughter, Harriet - some say it's the best story in the book. My father was urging me to rerelease my short stories, and I dedicated the book to him for the sometimes anxious support he's given me over the years. One of the stories is now up on an audio magazine - might be there no longer by the time this is published - the one I wrote with Harriet will be there in August too: here's the link: http://farfetchedfables.com/ - also, we recorded some readings by Francis Greenslade - such an amazing actor.
Currently, I'm working on a book about the mid-19th Century christian mystic Jakob Lorber, illustrations and commentary on the animals and plants that he was given to know about by God, especially those that live on the planet Saturn. It's a chimeric book. The head is the introduction, some sort of dry arthropod, the body gets wobbly and ornate - a mollusc like one of those lurid nudibranchs - dunno about the hinder parts yet: I think there'll be hooves, but they're of the fabulous sort - belonging to a unicorn, maybe. (BTW, I learned the word for the unicorn's horn the other day - alicorn - salutary in ointment form against leprosy...) Thomas Edison features in the book too. I've wanted to write an Edisonade for a while. I stole quite a bit from Thomas Edison Conquers Mars, an unauthorised sequel to War of the Worlds.
Also working on a novel. Slowly. Sort of in the same universe as Pyrotechnicon, but set in the far future. On an otherworld Venice, the galaxy suffering a carnival plague. About 30000 words after more than 2 years.
3. What Australian works have you loved recently?
But always and above all it's Anna Tambour. She has an exquisite intelligence, a raw sensorium, a febrile imagination, a naturalist's eye and a Renaissance breadth of knowledge. One of her short stories once gave me the feeling that a new sulcus, if that's the word, was opening in my frontal lobes. A gaping not entirely pleasant vertiginous sense that an entirely new Category had been added to the world. Which sounds figurative and hyperbolic I know, but it's true. It was literally the case. Over my career as a reader of sf, there have been times when I've almost given up on it. PK Dick rescued me once. Gibson on another occasion. Tambour is my current saviour.
4. Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?
The Internet and Facebook have changed my reading patterns. I still read a lot but it's online stuff: the Web is a wunderkammer.
Adam Browne was born in 1963 and lives in Melbourne, Australia with his daughter, Harriet. His stories have been published widely. He received the Aurealis Award for best Australian short story in 2002, and the Chronos Award for best Victorian short story in 2009. His story ‘Space Operetta’ was adapted as an animated film, Adjustable Cosmos, in 2010.
His illustrations have been exhibited in Australian galleries. Pyrotechnicon (Being a True Account of Cyrano De Bergarac’s Further Adventures Among the States and Empires of the Stars) is his first novel and published through Coeur De Lion.
He has recently released ‘Other Stories’ and Other Stories. through Satalyte Publishing.
You can find Adam at his Blog.
You can find other interviews in this series at the links below:
- Tsana Dolichva
- Stephanie Gunn
- Kathryn Linge
- Elanor Matton-Johnson
- David McDonald
- Helen Merrick
- Ben Payne
- Alex Pierce
- Tansy Rayner Roberts
- Helen Stubbs
- Katharine Stubbs
- Tehani Wessely
- Sean Wright
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