Paul Voermans is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author, community internetwork activist and performer. A strong stream of his art is comic, though dark and surreal at times. His writing is characterised by its off-the-wall invention, naturalistic dialogue and strong Australian character.

Biography

Paul Voermans was born in Traralgon, Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, of Indo ancestry. Brought up in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, he attended a Clarion Workshop

Clarion Workshop

Clarion is a six-week workshop for new and aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers. Originally an outgrowth of Knight and Wilhelm's Milford Writers' Conference, held at their home in Milford, Pennsylvania, USA, it was founded in 1968 by Robin Scott Wilson at Clarion State College in...

-style, writing course at Monash University

Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

 at the age of 16 and his first story appeared in The View from the Edge (George Turner

George Turner (writer)

George Reginald Turner was an Australian writer and critic, best known for the science fiction novels written in the later part of his career. He was notable for being a "late bloomer" in science fiction . His first SF story and novel appeared in 1978, when he was in his early sixties...

, ed.) shortly afterwards.

In 1978 he left a drama/media course to found a community theatre

Community theatre

Community theatre refers to theatrical performance made in relation to particular communities—its usage includes theatre made by, with, and for a community...

 company, B'Spell, which utilized Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...

, puppetry

Puppetry

Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...

 and cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 to produce theatre for unions, festivals, schools and clubs.

During his theatrical career, Paul Voermans exhibited puppets and masks at the National Gallery of Victoria

National Gallery of Victoria

The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...

, taught mime

Mime artist

A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...

 at the Victorian College of the Arts

Victorian College of the Arts

The Faculty of the VCA and Music is a faculty of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria . VCAM is located near the Melbourne central business district, on two campuses, one - the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - on the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, and the other - the...

, performed at Adelaide Festival and Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features around 80 events including contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks...

 and acted in film and TV projects, including a lead role (with Wendy Harmer

Wendy Harmer

Wendy Harmer is an Australian author, writer, radio show host, and comedienne.-Early life and career:...

, Robert Forza

Robert Forza

Robert Forza is an Australian actor. He has had guest roles in Homicide and Prisoner . He currently has a recurring role as Rocco Cammeniti in Neighbours....

 and Linda Gibson) in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

's TV series Trapp, Winkle and Box.

In 1987 he moved to Europe, where he wrote his first two novels, both set in Australia, and following his return to Australia in 1992 he established his skills as a programmer before helping found one of the country's first Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s, Vicnet

Vicnet

Vicnet began in 1993 as a joint State Library of Victoria and RMIT University project to investigate the impact of the internet and online information on public libraries and the broader community in Victoria...

, still one of the country's largest community websites and facilitator of free net access via libraries and community groups.

In 2003 he returned to writing and is apparently at work "on a large political SF novel with the radical historian Jill Sparrow

Jill Sparrow

Jill Sparrow , has been active as a socialist in Melbourne since 1991. She helped organise protests against the Gulf War and was involved in free education campaigns throughout the early 1990s, as well as participating in nearly every left-wing political cause over the past decade .-Biography:Having...

".

Fiction

And Disregards the Rest is the story of a theatrical production of Shakespeare's The Tempest

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

, set in the Australian outback. Its twin themes of insanity

Insanity

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...

 and colonialism

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 combine with science fictional elements and Voermans's production experience in the form of two narrative streams: Martin Leywood's self-published rant Charms All O'erthrown, a first person account of the ill-fated outback show by one who was driven mad by the incidents around it; and a third-person account of the weird consequences of Leywood's Tempest, featuring one of the other actors, Kevin Gore, who begins to hear voices.

The title derives from a lyric from Simon & Garfunkel's song 'The Boxer' : "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Disregards has been characterised in Tempests After Shakespeare by Chantal Zabus as: "...hinting at recent cross-breeding of postmodernism and sci-fi in its cyberpunk dimension." She goes on:

The fact that Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) is mentioned (p.28) in a rather encomiastic way for its maximal apocalypicism shows that Voermans is aware of the intertext that merged, in the 1980s, strata from sci-fi texts and "high art" postmodernist fiction. Whether "postmodernized" sci-fi or "science-fictionized postmodernism," And Disregards the Rest indubitably draws on the cyberpunk repertoire.

And Disregards the Rest was shortlisted for the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award, the Ditmar Award

Ditmar Award

The Ditmar Award has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction and science fiction fandom...

, and was published in German by Heyne-Verlag.

The Weird Colonial Boy is a parallel universe novel set in 1970s Australia. An early example of SF which harks back to that era and an indirect fable of political slapstick, Voermans uses SF tropes as an excuse to tell the story of the hapless Nigel Donohoe, a suburban fish-loving clod without a purpose, and his trip into a much harsher Australia than he is used to. The combination of ridiculous rebellion against convictism, excremental humour, naturalism and strong Australian language have produced extreme reactions both for and against the book. Without heavy scientific element, this work could be considered slipstream fiction written from the "inside" of the field.

The Weird Colonial Boy was also shortlisted for the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award, the Ditmar Award

Ditmar Award

The Ditmar Award has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction and science fiction fandom...

, and was published in German by Heyne.

External links

• Paul Voermans's blog - Blog about his work at Rumspringe Cooperative website.
• Tempests After Shakespeare - Publisher Book by Chantal Zabus examining And Disregards the Rest, amongst others.
• Die letzte Vorstellung review of German edition of Disregards.
• Der Quantenfisch review of German edition of Weird Colonial Boy.