Terry Dowling
Terence William 'Dowling', is an Australian writer and journalist.
He is primarily a writer of speculative fiction but refers to himself as an "imagier" – one who imagines, a term which liberates his writing from the constraints of specific genres. He has been called "among the best-loved local writers and most-awarded in and out of Australia, a writer who stubbornly hews his own path."
Biography
Early life and work
Dowling was educated at Boronia Park Public School, Sydney, 1952–59; Hunters Hill High School, Sydney, 1960–64; and Sydney Teachers' College, 1965–66, following which he was conscripted for national service as an infantryman and admin clerk during the Vietnam War. During these years Dowling wrote poetry and songs and some fiction. Dowling began buying science fiction magazines in the early 1960s and was influenced early by writers such as J. G. Ballard, Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, Cordwainer Smith and the Horwitz horror anthologies edited by Charles Higham. He was also highly influenced by the Surrealist painters, particularly Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico.After teaching for a year at Horsley Park Primary School in Sydney, Dowling matriculated to Sydney University, where he won a scholarship to complete his BA in English Literature and Archaeology, then won a research award via which he completed his M.A. in English Literature. His Masters thesis discussed J. G. Ballard and Surrealism.
During his nine-year stint at university he continued songwriting and performing with rock band The Many Moods of Albert, worked as an actor and songwriter with Sydney's Pact Theatre, made appearances on Australia's national broadcaster ABC television on some children's programs in the late 1970s and then appeared in an eight-year stint as a musician and songwriter in regular guest appearances on the long-running Australian Broadcasting Corporation children's television program Mr. Squiggle and Friends.
The ABC also financed production of seven of his songs for Amberjack, a musical about a stranded time-traveller, with musicians including Doug Ashdown. The songs are "Glencoe", "The Lure of Legendary Ladies", "Ithaca", "Bermudas", "The Blue Marlin Whore", 'Gantry Jack", and "Minotaur". They were broadcast in 1977 on the ABC/2FC radio program "Talking Point". Dowling has performed these and other songs live at science fiction conventions over the years. Sections of the lyrics from Amberjack are included as linking pieces between the stories in Dowling's 2009 collection Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder, including lyrics to songs which were not part of the ABC broadcast.
Dowling's earliest published stories were "Illusion of Motion" and "Oriental on the Murder Express", both published in Enigma, the magazine of SUSFA, the Sydney University SF Society, and "Shade of Encounter" in the second issue of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature, on which Dowling became assistant editor and short-notice book-reviewer and eventually co-editor. Dowling did critical work and continued to play with bands – Temenos ; Gestalt after taking a teaching position at a Sydney business college. At least one of his rock bands used to play for the patients at a mental hospital at Bedlam Point, near his home – a source for 'Cape Bedlam', location of the Madhouse in the Tom Rynosseros cycle.
The 1980s
He wrote a science fiction play called "The Tunnel", and eventually sold his first professional story to Omega Science Digest.In the 1980s Dowling met Jack Vance after doing critical work on his oeuvre ; Fritz Leiber; and Harlan Ellison, with whom he travelled in the Australian outback. Dowling went on to co-edit Ellison's large single-author collection The Essential Ellison.
Some of Dowling's reviews and critical pieces which first appeared in Science Fiction magazine in the 1980s have seen reprint, including "Catharsis Among the Byzantines: Delany's Driftglass" and the long essay "The Lever of life: Cordwainer Smith as Ethical Pragmatist".
Dowling began to publish short stories prolifically in the 1980s and was soon recognised as one of Australia's most talented science fiction writers, winning the Ditmar Award multiple times.
The 1990s: The 'Rynosseros Cycle'
During the 1990s Dowling wrote his four-volume series featuring the hero Tom Tyson, set in a far-future Australia. The first volume, Rynosseros, collected short stories written up to 1990. Further stories of Tyson were written in the early 1990s, with two further volumes of Tyson's adventures appearing in 1992 and 1993. The 'Rynosseros Cycle' would not conclude until publication of the fourth volume in 2007, but stands amongst Dowling's most important work. While reviewing Blue Tyson for SF Commentary, critic and author Damien Broderick concluded: "Australian speculative fiction is rewriting the map of our continent, and Dowling is one of its most accomplished cartographers."The 'Rynosseros Cycle' is set in a far future Australia where great sandships roam the outback, and the Ab'O tribes control hi-tech and set protocols which restrict the movements of the "Nationals". In this future Australia, high technology and mysticism co-exist, and piracy and an intricate social order breed a new kind of hero. Tom Tyson, an Everyman figure who has echoes of the Fool of the Tarot, Tom o'Bedlam, the Green Man and other mythic figures, has emerged amnesiac from an Ab'O punishment place known as the Madhouse, with three images that may provide the key to his identity – a Ship, a Star and a woman's Face. Tyson becomes one of the "Coloured Captains" – seven Nationals permitted by the Ab'O to cross the landscape – and wins his ship Rynosseros in a lottery, thereafter becoming known as "Blue Tyson".
To quote Van Ikin, "In this future Australia, the coastal cities, home of white Australians, are urbanely cosmopolitan centres of culture, while in the interior, around an inland sea, the Ab'O states represent the emancipation of the Aboriginal race whose heritage is both its past and its future destiny. Ab'O Princes use satellites to spy on tribal conflicts, and graceful wind-propelled sand-ships roll across the deserts, giving its symbol of freedom and inquiry." Dowling has attributed part of the inspiration for the Tom Tyson character to Blue Tyson, a character from one of his high school story fragments, and to the song lyric "Loving Mad Tom", which was drawn to his attention by co-founder of Norstrilia Press, Carey Handfield in 1982.
Compiled works of the Rynosseros Cycle include:
- Rynosseros
- Blue Tyson
- Twilight Beach
- Rynemonn.
Notes: Three linked Tom Tyson stories - "Marmodesse", "The Library" and "First Matter" - were originally written to form a Tyson novel, Malgre, but Dowling abandoned this idea. Two of the stories have been published elsewhere - an abridged edition of "Marmodesse" appeared in Omega Science Digest Jan/Feb 1987). "The Library" was published in Keith Stevenson, ed, X-6, coeur de lion publishing and in Dowling's collection Amberjack. "First Matter" remains unpublished. "Marmodesse" and "The Library" were reprinted in The Complete Rynosseros.
An edition of The Complete Rynosseros has been published by PS Publishing, UK. The three volumes include all previously published Rynosseros stories, together with nearly 30,000 words of supplementary writing on the series and its origins written by Dowling.
"The Only Bird in Her Name”, a story from Rynosseros, was dramatised in 1999 by Hollywood Theatre of the Ear. Adapted for radio by Yuri Rasovsky. Hosted by Harlan Ellison. Narrated by Peter Dennis & Kaitlin Hopkins. Available as a paid download from www.audible.com
A long-uncollected Tom Tyson story, "Down Flowers" was published in Orb. This appears in The Complete Rynosseros.
During the same decade, Dowling published the collection An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, in which stories are linked by a framework narrative. The protagonists are himself and a character called Ray, an outpatient from a mental hospital who calls Dowling late at night to talk of synchronicities and to exchange stories. Some critics saw this linking material as 'contrived' but it was praised by others.
Dowling also published the collection of linked science fiction stories Wormwood.
21st century
Dowling spent the first several years of the 2000s authoring the scenarios for several PC adventure games published by the Polish video game developer Detalion.He also expanded The Essential Ellison: "To celebrate the golden anniversary of Harlan Ellison's half a century of storytelling, Morpheus International, publishers of The Essential Ellison: a 35-Year Retrospective, commissioned the book's primary editor, award-winning Australian writer and critic Terry Dowling, to expand Ellison's three-and-a-half decade collection into a 50-year retrospective. Mr. Dowling went through fifteen years of new stories and essays to pick what he thought were the most representative to be included in this 1000+ page collection."
Dowling was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia in 2006 for his horror novel, Clowns at Midnight, and accompanying dissertation The Interactive Landscape: New Modes of Narrative in Science Fiction, in which he examined the computer adventure game as an important new area of storytelling. Clowns at Midnight has been compared to the novel The Magus by John Fowles.
Dowling holds the distinction of having more stories than any other single writer selected for the anthology series Year's Best Horror and Fantasy during its twenty-year run from 1988 to 2008.
Dowling retired in 2013 from his position as lecturer at the June Dally Watkins Finishing School. He continues to run writing courses at the University of Sydney – the introductory "Magic Highways" workshops and the more advanced "Dream Castles" workshops.