Damien Broderick

Damien Broderick
Born	22 April 1944
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Australian
Genres	Science Fiction & Popular Science

Damien Francis Broderick (born 22 April 1944) is an Australian science fiction and popular science writer. His science fiction novel The Judas Mandala is sometimes credited with the first appearance of the term "virtual reality," and his 1997 popular science book The Spike was the first to investigate the technological Singularity in detail.

Broderick holds a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from Deakin University, Australia, with a dissertation relating to the comparative semiotics of scientific, literary and science fictional textuality. He is a Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Broderick lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, tax attorney Barbara Lamar. He was the founding science fiction editor of the Australian popular-science magazine Cosmos from mid-2005 to December 2010.

Career

Five of Broderick's books have won Ditmar Awards (including the non-SF Transmitters, which was given a special award); the first, The Dreaming Dragons, was runner-up for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. He has also won the Aurealis award four times. In November 2003, Broderick was awarded a grant for 2004-05 by the Australia Council to write fiction exploring the technological singularity. In 2005 he received the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. In 2010, he tied for second place in the juried Theodore Sturgeon Award for best sf short story of 2009, and at the World Science Fiction Convention received the A. Bertram Chandler Memorial Award for 2010.

Broderick's best-known works as a futurist and science writer are The Spike (1997; revised 2001), a nonfiction book about the technological singularity; The Last Mortal Generation (1999) on the prospect of radically extended youthful longevity; and Outside the Gates of Science, on the scientific evidence for some anomalous or paranormal phenomena (2007).

His most recent critical studies, x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction (2004) and Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment (2005) were released by a small US press, Wildside. Several of his books feature cover art by Swedish transhumanist Anders Sandberg, including Earth is but a Star (2001), Broderick's anthology of science fiction stories, and thematically related critical discussions, concerned with the far future.

His most recent novels are the diptych Godplayers (2005) (selected in the annual Recommended Reading List from Locus), and K-Machines (2006) (winner of the 2007 Aurealis Award for year's best sf novel), and, with Rory Barnes, a comic noir crime novel, I'm Dying Here: A Comedy of Bad Manners (2009), first released in very limited numbers as I Suppose a Root's Out of the Question? (2007). With his wife, Barbara Lamar, he wrote the near-future sf thriller Post Mortal Syndrome, serialized on line by Cosmos magazine (2007). He edited a book of original essays on the far future, Year Million (2008), which was favorably reviewed by Nature, the Wall Street Journal, etc. In 2010 Climbing Mount Implausible, a collection of mostly early stories, interspersed with memoir commentary, appeared from Borgo/Wildside Books, as did (in 2011) Embarrass My Dog, a collection of mostly early articles on sex, religion, and politics, framed by commentary recalling life in the 1960s and 1970s.

Broderick has also written radio plays, both adaptations of his own stories (including a 90-minute version of Transmitters) and original works. His commissioned drama Schrödinger's Dog, first broadcast in 1995, was Australia's entry in the Prix Italia; and his novella adaptation of the radio play, published the following year, was selected for Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction collection for that year. His work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Russian.

In 2009, he returned to short fiction, with five stories published in Asimov's magazine, one online at Tor.com, and several others elsewhere. Two of these stories were selected for three 2010 Year's Best anthologies. Another has been chosen for five 2011 Year's Best anthologies.

Bibliography

Novels

• Sorcerer's World (1970)
  • revised and expanded: The Black Grail (1986)
• The Dreaming Dragons (1980) - Ditmar Award 1981, runner-up John W. Campbell Memorial Award 1981
  • revised edition: The Dreaming (2001, 2009)
• The Judas Mandala (1982, revised 2002)
• Valencies (1983)—with Rory Barnes
• Transmitters (1984) - special Ditmar Award 1985
  • revised/reimagined edition: Quipu (2009)
• Striped Holes (1988) - Ditmar Award 1989
• The Sea's Furthest End (1993)
• The White Abacus (1997) - Ditmar Award 1998, Aurealis award 1998
• Zones (1997)—with Rory Barnes
• Stuck in Fast Forward (1999)—with Rory Barnes
  • Expanded in 2003 as The Hunger of Time
• The Book of Revelation (1999)—with Rory Barnes
  • first US edition: Dark Gray (2010)
• Transcension (2002) - Aurealis award 2002

• Godplayers (2005)
• K-Machines (2006) - Aurealis award 2006
• Post Mortal Syndrome (2007); on-line serialization, no longer available for download from Cosmos Magazine—with Barbara Lamar
  • first print edition (2011)
• I'm Dying Here (2009)—with Rory Barnes
• Human's Burden (2010)—with Rory Barnes

Children's books

• Jack and the Aliens (2002)
• Jack and the Skyhook (2003)

Short story collections

• A Man Returned (1965)
• The Dark Between the Stars (1991)
• Uncle Bones: Four Science Fiction Novellas (2009)
• Climbing Mount Implausible: The Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer (2010)
• The Qualia Engine: Science Fiction Stories (2011)

Edited science fiction anthologies

• The Zeitgeist Machine: A New Anthology of Science Fiction (1977)
• Strange Attractors: Original Australian Speculative Fiction (1985)
• Matilda at the Speed of Light: A New Anthology of Australian Science Fiction (1988)
• Not the Only Planet: Science Fiction Travel Stories (1998)
• Centaurus: Best of Australian Science Fiction (1999)—with David G. Hartwell
• Earth is But a Star: Excursions through Science Fiction to the Far Future (2001)- Ditmar Award 2002

Edited nonfiction anthologies

• Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge (2008)
• Chained to the Alien: The Best of Australian Science Fiction Review (Second Series) (2009)
• Skiffy and Mimesis: More Best of Australian Science Fiction Review (Second Series) (2010)
• Warriors of the Tao —with Van Ikin (2011)

Nonfiction

• The Lotto Effect: Towards a Technology of the Paranormal (1992)
• The Architecture of Babel: Discourses of Literature and Science (1994)
• Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction (1995)
• Theory and Its Discontents (1997)
• The Spike: How Our Lives are being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technology (1997) (revised 2001)
• The Last Mortal Generation (1999)
• Transrealist Fiction (2000), about Transrealism
• x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction (2004)
• Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment (2005)
• "Cultural Dominants and Differential MNT Uptake" Essay at Wise Nano
• Outside the Gates of Science: Why It's Time for the Paranormal to Come In From The Cold (2007)
• Unleashing the Strange: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction Literature (2009)
• Embarrass My Dog: The Way We Were, the Things We Thought (2011)
• Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels, 1985-2010—with Paul Di Filippo (forthcoming, 2012)
• Building New Worlds: New Worlds Science Fiction: The Carnell Era, Volume One—with John Boston (forthcoming, 2012)
• Before the New Wave: New Worlds Science Fiction: The Carnell Era, Volume Two —with John Boston (forthcoming, 2012)
• Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy—with John Boston (forthcoming, 2012)

Uncollected short fiction

• "The Womb" (1998) in Dreaming Down-Under (ed. Jack Dann, Janeen Webb)

External links

• Damien Broderick's Unofficial Homepage—maintained by Broderick's wife, Barbara Lamar
• Cosmos magazine
• Damien Broderick at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Damien Broderick interviewed on Missions Unknown

Persondata
Name	Broderick, Damien
Alternative names
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Date of birth	22 April 1944
Place of birth
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