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Information about Terry Dowling

Terry Dowling
Born:21 March, 1947
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation:Writer, freelance journalist, award-winning critic, editor, game designer and reviewer
Nationality:Australian
Genres:Science Fiction
Website:Official Website


Terence William (Terry) Dowling (21 March 1947, Sydney, New South Wales), is an Australian writer, freelance journalist, award-winning critic, editor, game designer and reviewer. He writes speculative fiction and dark fantasy. He has a MA (Hons) and a BA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Sydney. His Masters thesis discussed J. G. Ballard and Surrealism. He was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia in 2006 for his mystery/dark fantasy/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.

Dowling’s fiction has been compared to that of Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe and Frank Herbert, Dennis Etchison and Peter Straub, as well as South American writers like Borges and Cortazar.

Dowling appeared as a musician and songwriter in regular guest appearances on the long-running Australian Broadcasting Corporation children's television program Mr Squiggle and Friends from 1979-1982.[1] He has been genre reviewer for The Weekend Australian newspaper for the past seventeen years.

Critical Reception

Critical regard for Dowling's work is extensive. Locus magazine (Nov 1999) said: “Who’s the writer who can produce horror as powerful and witty as the best of Peter Straub, SF as wondrously Byzantine and baroque as anything by Gene Wolfe, near-mainstream subtly tinged with the fantastic like some tales by Powers or Lansdale? Why Terry Dowling, of course.” It also regards his first book Rynosseros as placing him “among the masters of the field” (August 1990).

In The Year’s Best Science Fiction 21 (reprinting Dowling’s story “Flashmen”), twelve-time Hugo Awardwinning US editor Gardner Dozois called him: “One of the best-known and most celebrated of Australian writers in any genre”, while in the Year’s Best Fantasy 4 (reprinting “One Thing About the Night”), editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer described him as a “master craftsman” and “one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy.”

Dowling has also been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, and “Australia’s premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows (February 2004). The late leading Australian SF personality Peter McNamara (on his SF Review radio show on Adelaide’s 5EBI-FM, 23 June 2000) called him “Australia’s premier fantasist.”For the US edition of Rynosseros (1993), multi-award-winning US Grand Master Harlan Ellison said of Terry: “Here is Jack Vance, Cordwainer Smith, and Tiptree/Sheldon come again, reborn in one wonderful talent. If you lament the chicanery and boredom of so much of today’s shopworn sf, then like those of us who’ve been reading his award-winning stories for a few years now, you’ll purr and growl with delight at your great discovery of the remarkable, brilliant Terry Dowling. He comes from Downunder, and he knows how to stand you on your head with story.”

Published Works

Novels

  • Clowns at Midnight (2006)

Collections

The Tom Rynosseros/Tom Tyson saga
  • Rynosseros (Aphelion, 1990)
  • Blue Tyson (Aphelion, 1992)
  • Twilight Beach (Aphelion, 1993)
  • Rynemonn (Coeur de Lion, 2007)
Other Chapbooks
  • "The Mars You Have in Me" (Eidolon, 2000). Limited to 200 copies for subscribers.

Works Edited

  • The Essential Ellison (Nemo Press/Morpheus 1987,2000) Note: The 1987 edition is a '35-year retrospective' of Ellison's short fiction; the 2000 edition is much expanded '50-year retrospective'.
  • (Coronet, 1993) (with Dr Van Ikin)
  • The Jack Vance Treasury (Subterranean Press 2007) (with Jonathan Strahan)

Computer Games authored

  • (2001)(aka US )
  • (2003) (aka US )
  • (2004) (aka Realms of Illusion).

Anthology & Magazine Appearances

As well as appearances in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Year’s Best SF, The Mammoth Book of Best New SF, The Year’s Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (a record eight times; he is the only author to have had two stories in the 2002 volume, one chosen by each editor), his work has appeared in such major anthologies as Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction, The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing,The Dark, Dreaming Down Under, Gathering the Bones and The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories and in such diverse publications as the prestigious SciFiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Oceans of the Mind, Ténèbres, Ikarie, Japan’s SF and Russia’s Game.Exe. His fiction has been translated into many languages and has been used in a course in forensic psychology in the US.

Awards

Dowling has won the two American small press Readercon Awards, the Ditmar Award for fiction eleven times,[2] as well as three Aurealis Awards, a Prix Wolkenstein, and earned himself two World Fantasy Award nominations in 2001. The horror collection Basic Black (2006) was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award (from the Horror Writers Association) and an International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection; the story "Cheat Light" was also nominated for an IHG Award for best horror Short Story of 2006. [1]

Work in Progress

Future projects include
  • 'a novel in the Wormwood mythos.

Note

References

  • Mike Ashley & William G. Contento. The Supernatural Index: A Listing of Fantasy, Supernatural, Occult, Weird and Horror Anthologies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995, p. 215
  • Attebery, Brian. "Aboriginality in Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies, 96 (= Volume 32, Part 2)(July 2005).
  • Russell Blackford, Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, eds Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999, pp. 164-68.
  • Leigh Blackmore. "Terry [Terence William] Dowling" in S.T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemianowicz (eds). Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 350-51.
  • Leigh Blackmore and Dr Van Ikin, The Eternal Yes: The Affirmations of Terry Dowling (forthcoming).
  • Leigh Blackmore Terry Dowling: Virtuoso of the Fantastic (R'lyeh Texts, 2005). An abridged version was published earlier in the Conflux 2 Program Book (2005).
  • Leigh Blackmore, Ellison/Dowling/Dann: A Bibliographic Checklist (R'lyeh Texts, 1996).
  • John Clute. Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: DK Adult, 1995.
  • Paul Collins. The MUP Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Melbourne, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1998, pp. 54-55.
  • Van Ikin. "Terry Dowling" in Jay P. Pederson (ed) St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. Detroit, MI: St James Press, (4th ed), 1996, pp. 266-67.
  • Van Ikin. "Utopian Elements in Terry Dowling's Tom Rynosseros Fiction". Paper delivered at 'Antipodean Utopias' conference, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 7 Dec 2001.
  • Peter Nicholls. "Terry Dowling" in John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction London: Orbit/Little Brown (2nd ed)1993, page 351.
  • David Pringle The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Carlton Books, 1997, p. 195.
  • Brian Stableford. The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places. NY: Fireside, 1999. Includes an entry on Dowling's 'Twilight Beach' milieu.
  • Biographical and bibliographical data is provided at the author's homepage at www.terrydowling.com. Interviews with Dowling have appeared in publications such as Aurealis, Eidolon,Interzone, Locus, Men's Journal Quarterly & Sirius. .

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