John Birmingham in conversation

John Birmingham is the author of the cult classic He Died With a Falafel in His Hand; the award-winning history Leviathan; the Axis of Time series and the Disappearance trilogy. He contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Brisbane Times and The Monthly on topics as diverse as the future of coal (and media) as well as national security. He began his working life as a research officer with the Defence Department's Office of Special Clearances and Records. In 2015 he's taken the radical step of publishing the three Dave Hooper books all at once (none of this business of waiting around for a year for the sequel with Mr Birmingham). The starting point for these books is our insatiable thirst for energy… out in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil rigs are working overtime. One of them (Deepwater Horizon, if you like) has drilled too deep. But what they’ve released isn’t oil, it’s all the monsters of mythology, and I mean all of them, spewing out of holes broken through the wall between the worlds. Fortunately, or perhaps not, one of the things that emerged has got itself killed by Dave Hooper, the balding, overweight, over-sexed safety manager on the rig, and, in the moment of dying, has transferred its nature and power to him. The three novels (which Birmingham coyly states, get better with altitude) Emergence, Resistance and Ascendance follow the journey Dave has to make to save humanity, and himself. The thing about Birmingham is that he has no, or few, pretensions. This extravagant scenario becomes, in his hands, a witty, clever, incredibly fast-paced re-working of the super-hero save-the-world-action genre.