Winton, Tim
Entry updated 21 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1960- ) Australian author, active from 1960; almost all his fiction – despite some extreme venues, and an abiding concern with Ecological issues – has been nonfantastic. In the Winter Dark (1988) is set in a Zone called The Sink, whose deeply isolated inhabitants are tormented by a creature who may be no more (or less) than a fatal vibration of the psychic stresses of the community. Blueback: A Fable for All Ages (1997), ostensibly meant for the younger Young Adult reader, describes a boy's relationship with the eponymous fish in terms seemingly ignorant of age expectations for its readers.
Winton is of sf interest primarily for his twelfth novel, Juice (2024), presenting a vision of the Ruined Earth landscape that dominates distant Near Future Australia, due to Climate Change and other forms of planet destruction; the venue and pacing are evocative of Mad Max (1979) directed by George Miller and its Survivalist Fiction sequels; that the narrative is seen and heard from the perspective of a child evokes Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006). Readers familiar with Australian speculative fiction may also be reminded of topoi found in writers like Terry Dowling and Sean McMullen. The protagonist of the tale, which he narrates overnight within a restricted Club Story frame, has worked as an operative for a paramilitary organization known as The Service; his function has been to participate in revenge attacks against the Keeps of the rich.The nature of revenge is examined intently. [JC]
Timothy John Winton
born Subiaco, near Perth, Western Australia: 4 August 1960
works (highly selected)
- In the Winter Dark (Carlton, Victoria: McPhee Gribble, 1988) [hb/]
- Blueback: A Fable for All Ages (Sydney, New South Wales: Pan Macmillan Australia, 1997)
- Juice (Sydney, New South Wales: Hamish Hamilton, 2024) [hb/]
links
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