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In 1999 I decided to attempt writing fiction and,
on the advice of a writer friend, looked around for a good Internet
writers' group to join. It happened that the best group I located was
dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. With a few wonderful
exceptions, I'd always found horror stories depressing and fantasy stories
boring, but I remembered being quite fond of science fiction when I was a
kid. So, what the heck, I joined Andrew Burt's Critters and started
reading and writing science fiction.
The White Abacus was the first of Damien
Broderick's books I read, and I discovered it in the following manner. I
was taking part in an animated discussion on the Extropians email list of the relative merits of
various science fiction books and films and complained that the characters
in far-future sf all thought and acted very much like the people I see
around me in this day and age. I received an off-list comment from
Damien: "Try reading DIASPORA by Greg Egan."
I thanked him for the recommendation and mentioned that I had tried to
find his own book, but that it didn't seem to be available in the United States.
"Which book?" he wanted to know, and he listed several works of
fiction that had been published in the States. Oh! I said back, I didn't
know you wrote fiction. I'd heard of his nonfiction book The Spike, because there was a review
of it on the Extropians web site. I asked if he could recommend any of his
fiction in particular, and he suggested The White Abacus. "You might
hate it though," he wrote. "It's rather...strange."
Strange, huh? Sounded as though it might be my kind of book. I took a look
at the reviews on amazon.com. One of them mentioned, with some contempt,
that the book included a scene with a giant chicken piloting a space
craft. At that moment, I knew I had to read this book. I wrote back to
Damien that I was especially looking forward to reading about the avian aviator, and he responded, "That would be Cap'n Arthur C. Chicken.
<cluck>."
Cap'n Chicken was
indeed a wonderful character, as were Ratio and Telmah, Rozz and Gil, and
even the villainous Uncle Feng. I had expected to be entertained and possibly
even moved by The White Abacus. What I hadn't
expected, was amazed and delighted to find, was Broderick's rich use of
the English language. He writes simultaneously at several levels, so that a
reader can re-read one of his books a number of times and discover something new
each time. That he recommended Egan's book without mentioning his own
is typical of his modesty.
The second Broderick novel I got my hands on was The
Judas Mandala, written in the 1970's, and containing ideas that were
later to be seen in The Matrix and Tipler's Physics of
Immortality. Then Broderick's non-science fiction novel Transmitters,
set in late 1960's through early 1980's Australia but so poignantly reminiscent
of America during the same time period. I laughed and cried, listened to
60's music and relived my own past. Some of Broderick's short
stories and a novella are now available on line at www.fictionwise.com.
Broderick's non-fiction is as rewarding to
read as his fiction, and I'm very happy that a newly updated edition of The
Spike has been published in the United States by Forge Books. Besides
being fascinating reading, The Spike asks some crucial questions
about the future. I made this web site hoping to introduce Broderick's
books, and The Spike in particular, to everyone, but especially to
my fellow Americans. 
Barbara
Lamar
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