Past Programs
Identity - 2008
Fan fiction - the creative and legal pitfalls
21/07/2008
The adulatory, and sometimes legally risky, world of fan fiction, where readers who can't get enough of their favourite books, TV series and movies, create new stories and take the characters to new places.
The beginnings of fan fiction are strongly identified with Star Trek in the 1960s when fans started writing their own episodes of the series. It's a case of fans having a creative response to stories with which they identify. Fans have also written back with Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter and even with Of Mice and Men.
What are the literary precedents for fan fiction and, because it is so derivative, are there copyright issues Australian fansters need to know about?
Writing, procrastination and creativity Read Transcript
11/07/2008
Today we ride the pendulum of creativity that swings between writer's block and hypergraphia. Writer's block and procrastination have been the trusty companions of writers from Joseph Conrad to Franz Kafka.
And then some writers suffered from hypergraphia, like Dostoevsky, who for his suffering wrote 19 novels as well as other works. But for other writers like John Updike, writer's block is as foreign as an empty page.
Geoff Dyer and Alice Flaherty have both swung on this pendulum. Geoff Dyer set out to write a serious study of his literary idol DH Lawrence but instead he ended up writing Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of DH Lawrence which is an exhilarating and excruciating journey through the twists and turns of his procrastination about not writing about DH Lawrence.
Alice Flaherty is a neurologist who has written a book that investigates the link between creativity, the brain and emotion. It's called The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writers Block and the Creative Brain.
The Endangered List by Brian Westlake (review) Read Transcript
07/07/2008
After Steve Irwin died from a stingray spear through his heart, academic and commentator Germain Greer said that 'The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin'. She was broadly criticised for these comments. Perhaps that's why the author of The Endangered List -- a parody of Irwin, his family and Australia Zoo -- chose to write under a pseudonym. He called himself Brian Westlake, which is actually the name of a crocodile and it's the name of the main character in this book.
For the Book Show Voiceworks editor Ryan Paine read The Endangered List.
The phenomenon of mobile phone novels
17/03/2008
The New York Times and The Japan Times recently reported that half of the best selling novels in Japan last year were originally composed on mobile phones. That tiny device is apparently responsible for books that are outselling everything else, including a recent Japanese translation of Dostoevsky's classic The Brothers Karamazov. Is it a fad or is it a revolution?
