Film Review - Caught Inside - Director Adam Blaiklock

A group of surfers travel to an island paradise on a ‘surfari’. One of the guests is a single beautiful girl which causes jealousy between the friends.

In Caught Inside Bull a local surf legend, snaps and crosses the line, he turns their dream vacation into a nightmare ordeal, with a fight for survival. Trapped on the boat there is nowhere to turn.

“A spectacularly unhinged lead performance by Ben Oxenbould” The Daily Telegraph

This movie has all the elements of a great thriller, with a powerful end. Anne

Book Review - Everything to Live for: The Inspirational Story of Turia Pitt by Turia Pitt with Libby Harkness

This is a story of extraordinary young women with a lot to live for. Turia Pitt, a 25yr old mining engineer working in far north Western Australia. She took part in an ultra marathon race where she got caught in a horrific grass fire and was left with burns to over half of her body. Through a long and harrowing rehabilitation, with the support of many people and her strong will and determination to live she has triumphed. She has made it one of her missions to encourage skin to be a more prominent organ for people to donate.

Everything to live for is a story of determination and resilience of the human spirit. I really enjoyed this story of resilience and strength, Turia is truly beautiful. The book inspired me with my own struggles, an example when you see how well Turia preserved with her physiotherapy to be extremely fit again. Anne.

Speculative Fiction....more than the undead.

It can be easy to dismiss speculative fiction as purely asteroids and "zombie lit" and while there is an element of that (and that is OK and very enjoyable!), there is oh so much more.

Speculative fiction encompasses not just the bio-engineering fuelled post apocalyptic nightmare that is found in Justin Cronin's The Passage but also the laugh out laugh universe of Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Asimov's robot riddled futures.

As a genre it is one I have returned to many times. In early high school while other young teenage girls were enjoying the Sweet Valley High Series (Bubblegum pulp) I was enamoured with Kelleher's Taronga, a post apocalyptic adventure set in Sydney's Zoo where the main character can communicate telepathically (thankyou to my high school English teacher for that one).

Later high school, saw my introduction to The Handmaids Tale, Atwoods exploration of female subjagation at the hands of a theocracy. Not only did it set of the biggest exam hissyfit in my academic life (I walked out as I hadn't prepared properly and didn't understand the question), it asked a 16 year old to examine doctorine, equal rights and the wisdom of using butter as moisturiser.


Over the ensuing decades (of which there have been a couple), I have enjoyed so many different sc-fi, paranormal, alternate history (some of the many genre's that seem to fit within this one) that it hard not to list them all. Sara Douglass and her twists on Greek mythology and time travel (The Troy Game) kept me thrilled right to the last page. Suzanne Collins Hunger Games made me cry (and quite possibly neglect my children "Shhhh, mummy's reading") and the Time Traveller's Wife was simply one of the best pieces of writing I have come across (just don't get me started on the movie).

Too many people presume that these books aren't literary, or are just for children. Other's think they should "grown up and read a proper book". I support wide reading.  I support reading outside your comfort zone. i also support reading whatever you like, and with so many different themes in speculative fiction, there is alot to like.

So give me vampires, zombies, robots and cyborgs, take me to worlds where war never happens or is never ending and let me indulge in my fantasies of what the world would be like if time travel was possible.
And don't ever tell me (or your kids, spouse or next door neighbour) , that what I read isn't educational, interesting or literary.

(Oh, and if you do enjoy "zombie lit" check out our blog supporting the Narella Zombie Apocalypse.! )

Narellan Zombie Apocalypse  - April 13 2013

Stacey

Book Review - The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

We begin with Grace, meeting with her solicitors..

"We'd better present her as sane….They laughed and poked their cigarettes in the air and talked about me as if I wasn't there as we walked back to the courthouse where, along with two other women… I was to stand trial for my life."

Part story of the trial and part flashback to the events that take place as passengers and crew from a sunken ship try to stay alive in a lifeboat adrift for many days, The Lifeboat brings us into the mind of Grace. We learn her back-story, just married to wealthy Henry who has surely not survived the sinking. Grace is a survivor but will this current trial be too much for her to overcome? Beautifully evocative writing details the lifeboat's occupants grappling with religion, morality and ethics as life and death choices need to be made on the open ocean. I didn't expect to be as gripped by the story as I was, nor as fascinated by the inevitable 'What would I do?' speculations the book engenders.

Wendy