Climbing Mount Implausible: the Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer

"The unknown is where we are headed, climbing into the future up the green or icy slopes of Mount Implausible. I live out the destiny of a kid who disliked homework and now does it all the time, pouring out articles and reviews and short stories and books instead of school essays. How did that happen? Just lucky." Formidably talented, a prose stylist and polymath, Damien Broderick has long been at the leading edge of science fiction in his native Australia-and in the USA as well. His fiction can be enjoyed for its extraordinary adventures, for Broderick's ever-deepening personal philosophy, and for his gift of humor. He keeps renewing his central themes-travels in space and time, paradoxes of time travel, parallel or altered realities. Versatility marks his work, which is remarkable for its many techniques and voices. Climbing Mount Implausible showcases a writer's growth through nearly fifty years of questing into the future. It includes his first published stories, plus detailed notes on his own evolution as a writer in a genre that itself has altered many times, his recent Philip K. Dick tribute, "Dead Air," and an outrageously funny collaboration with Paul Di Filippo, "Cockroach Love." "Broderick's recent stories have been riffing on past masters of SF, such as Roger Zelazny and Cordwainer Smith, and in 'Dead Air' he takes on Philip K. Dick, with a pretty much pitch perfect pastiche."-Rich Horton, Locus