Paul Voermans

Paul Voermans (born 4 June 1960) is a science fiction 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, Australia, of Indo ancestry. Brought up in Melbourne, he attended a Clarion Workshop-style, writing course at Monash University at the age of 16 and his first story appeared in "The View from the Edge" (George Turner, ed.) shortly afterwards.

In 1978 he left a drama/media course to found a community theatre company, B'Spell, which utilized Commedia dell'arte, puppetry and cabaret 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, taught mime at the Victorian College of the Arts, performed at Adelaide Festival and Sydney Festival and acted in film and TV projects, including a lead role (with Wendy Harmer, Robert Forza and Linda Gibson) in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation'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 providers, Vicnet, 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".

Fiction

"And Disregards the Rest" is the story of a theatrical production of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", set in the Australian outback. Its twin themes of insanity and colonialism 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.

"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'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, 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 and the Ditmar, and was published in German by Heyne.

External links

* [http://pv.rumspringe.org.au/ Paul Voermans's blog] - Blog about his work at Rumspringe Cooperative website.
* [http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=0312295480 "Tempests After Shakespeare" - Publisher] Book by Chantal Zabus examining "And Disregards the Rest", amongst others.
* [http://www.acd.lepso.de/extras/rezis/rezi-v01.htm "Die letzte Vorstellung"] review of German edition of "Disregards".
* [http://www.acd.lepso.de/extras/rezis/rezi-v04.htm "Der Quantenfisch"] review of German edition of "Weird Colonial Boy".