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An Unusual Angle
He is the world’s greatest film director. His characters, his scenery, his costumes―all are authentic, zestful, artistic, artful.
But nobody knows he is the world’s greatest film director. Maybe nobody ever will. For all of his masterpieces are stored in an impregnable canister: the head of the film-maker. Inside his brain, nestling safely, reel upon reel of film, magnificently photographed, brilliantly edited, not a frame of it accessible to the viewing public.
An Unusual Angle is about the making of this great film. It is also the film itself. Here is a blazing epic of stupendous events: four years of an ordinary Australian secondary school. Few would have suspected before that an ‘ordinary’ school could provide the material of rich humour, zany lunacy and near tragedy.
Greg Egan was born in Perth in 1961. He was educated at the University of Western Australia. He has worked for mercifully brief periods as a kitchen hand, a milk-vendor’s runner, and as a public servant. Meanwhile, his real efforts have been directed towards writing novels and short stories (four novels and a book of short stories written so far) and making amateur films (a 65-minute, 16 mm film completed recently).
But nobody knows he is the world’s greatest film director. Maybe nobody ever will. For all of his masterpieces are stored in an impregnable canister: the head of the film-maker. Inside his brain, nestling safely, reel upon reel of film, magnificently photographed, brilliantly edited, not a frame of it accessible to the viewing public.
An Unusual Angle is about the making of this great film. It is also the film itself. Here is a blazing epic of stupendous events: four years of an ordinary Australian secondary school. Few would have suspected before that an ‘ordinary’ school could provide the material of rich humour, zany lunacy and near tragedy.
Greg Egan was born in Perth in 1961. He was educated at the University of Western Australia. He has worked for mercifully brief periods as a kitchen hand, a milk-vendor’s runner, and as a public servant. Meanwhile, his real efforts have been directed towards writing novels and short stories (four novels and a book of short stories written so far) and making amateur films (a 65-minute, 16 mm film completed recently).
- GenresScience FictionFiction
200 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1983
1 person is currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Greg Egan
266 books2,779 followersGreg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), and has also won the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Some of his earlier short stories feature strong elements of supernatural horror, while due to his more popular science fiction he is known within the genre for his tendency to deal with complex and highly technical material (including inventive new physics and epistemology) in an unapologetically thorough manner.
Egan is a famously reclusive author when it comes to public appearances, he doesn't attend science fiction conventions, doesn't sign books and there are no photos available of him on the web.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 17, 2021
4.5★
"For the benefit of those readers who have no idea what the book is about - most of them, I hope - An Unusual Angle is a kind of eccentric teenage loner story with surreal elements. The narrator literally has a movie camera inside his skull. I wrote it when I was sixteen, although I revised it slightly just before it was published, six years later.
It was very big-hearted of Norstrilia Press to publish it, but it didn't do them, or me, much good. They blew their money. I laboured under the mistaken impression that I could now write publishable fiction; it took me a while to realise that that simply wasn't true. Quarantine is the eighth novel I've written, and the first publishable one. That An Unusual Angle was published at all was really just a glitch." (An excerpt from the 1993 Eidolon-Interview)
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If that doesn't convince you to drop everything and pick this up, nothing will. Here are my two cents anyway:
This is a very self-conscious satire disguised and misrepresented(by its plot synopsis) as Sci-Fi. Anyone remotely familiar with Egan is bound to be disappointed if they are looking for a hard-science fiction story rich with mind-boggling ideas that the author has become so synonymous with. There's none here.
However, if that's not an issue, then you are in for a treat as this book very accurately and very cynically describes the subjective observations of the narrator as he tries to survive four years(5?) of high school and all the absurdities that come along with it. (It's so much better than my yawn-inducing review makes it sound. It's Egan FFS)
⩨NFO
⩐ Read Via Moon+ReaderPro Android-AsusXOOTD
⩨FootNotes/Remarks:
-I am not surprised by the number of reviews and ratings this has(even by the Obscure-Egan Standards) given that this has been out of print for so long and even the e-book is hard to find without sailing the high-seas.(Ahem!) It deserves better than this.
-I initially had this mental image of Egan where he is a sherlock-ish savant based on some short stories of his I had previously read. However, in hindsight, I couldn't have been so wrong. I mean who knew Egan was such a savagely sarcastic cinephile with very very very dark humor.
"For the benefit of those readers who have no idea what the book is about - most of them, I hope - An Unusual Angle is a kind of eccentric teenage loner story with surreal elements. The narrator literally has a movie camera inside his skull. I wrote it when I was sixteen, although I revised it slightly just before it was published, six years later.
It was very big-hearted of Norstrilia Press to publish it, but it didn't do them, or me, much good. They blew their money. I laboured under the mistaken impression that I could now write publishable fiction; it took me a while to realise that that simply wasn't true. Quarantine is the eighth novel I've written, and the first publishable one. That An Unusual Angle was published at all was really just a glitch." (An excerpt from the 1993 Eidolon-Interview)
--------------------------------------------------
If that doesn't convince you to drop everything and pick this up, nothing will. Here are my two cents anyway:
This is a very self-conscious satire disguised and misrepresented(by its plot synopsis) as Sci-Fi. Anyone remotely familiar with Egan is bound to be disappointed if they are looking for a hard-science fiction story rich with mind-boggling ideas that the author has become so synonymous with. There's none here.
However, if that's not an issue, then you are in for a treat as this book very accurately and very cynically describes the subjective observations of the narrator as he tries to survive four years(5?) of high school and all the absurdities that come along with it. (It's so much better than my yawn-inducing review makes it sound. It's Egan FFS)
⩨NFO
⩐ Read Via Moon+ReaderPro Android-AsusXOOTD
⩨FootNotes/Remarks:
-I am not surprised by the number of reviews and ratings this has(even by the Obscure-Egan Standards) given that this has been out of print for so long and even the e-book is hard to find without sailing the high-seas.(Ahem!) It deserves better than this.
-I initially had this mental image of Egan where he is a sherlock-ish savant based on some short stories of his I had previously read. However, in hindsight, I couldn't have been so wrong. I mean who knew Egan was such a savagely sarcastic cinephile with very very very dark humor.
February 2, 2020
Disappointing compared to Egan's later works, but then it was his first novel. Quite self-conscious at time, reminiscent in its better moments of Vonnegut or Dick in their weakests, and I mean that as a compliment.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews