WEBVTT - Read This: James Bradley Thinks Kindness is a Superpower 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.599 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share 0:00:02.640 --> 0:00:06.880 another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.559 hosted by editor of The Monthly, Michael Williams. It features 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:13.920 conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.960 and around the world. In this episode, Michael is chatting 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.119 with Australian author and regular contributor to both The Monthly 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:26.400 and to the Saturday Paper, James Bradley. As always, Michael 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:27.840 is here to tell me a bit more about the 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:32.400 episode him Michael Ruby Jones. Hello, So, Michael, I wanted 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.440 to start by asking you a bit of a big question. 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:40.320 In times like this, times of global disquiet, when the 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.559 world feels like it's in a state of crisis, how 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.080 do you carve out time to read fiction? 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:50.120 Yeah? Ruby, that is more or less the question. It's 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.080 the one I think about all the time. It's very 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:58.840 hard not to occasionally worry that stories, even powerful, brilliant, angry, engaged, 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.880 stories that actively grapple with the present moment, are still 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.679 something of an indulgence. You know, people don't change their minds, 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.039 let alone their behavior. The most compelling writing in the 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.880 world still, by and large speaks only to the people 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.880 who are already primed to hear it, you know, like, 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:19.840 let's face it, how's a beautiful poem, or even an 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.760 incisive essay or a gripping page turner of a novel 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.840 any more than a flight of fancy. But I believe 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.720 that without great writing, without great reading, we're completely lost. 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:34.679 Books remind us of our humanity. They show us the truth. 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.480 They allow us the opportunity to conceive of an alternative 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.280 to the worst of times out there. To read is 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.120 to imagine and dream and empathize with others, if that's 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:49.480 not all too high minded. And a writer like James Bradley, 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.640 who on this occasion is writing a crime novel, is 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.639 someone who clearly grapples with these questions in the question 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.640 of producing work, not only overcoming kind of the anxiety 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.800 of self doubt or creative purpose or whatever. But why 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.120 does this matter now? Why should people give over the 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.760 time to read this book now? And James Bradley is 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:13.840 a writer who does that in spades. He's an incredible journalist. 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.720 He writes some amazing science writing. He brought out a 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.160 book last year called deep Water, which was a kind 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:24.200 of book length essay about their Oceans is really kind 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.639 of terrific and thoughtful. But if James Bradley says it's 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:29.359 time to read a crime novel, I'm inclined to listen. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:32.760 And James Bradley is one of those authors that doesn't 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.400 shy away from the more complicated issues that face us today, 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:39.880 and this is especially true of his latest novel, Landfall. 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.240 Right Yeah, So, Landfall's a crime novel that is set 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.440 in this volatile, climate destroyed future version of Sydney where 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.679 rising numbers of displaced people and refugees alongside rising sea 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.320 levels have created a world on the edge. So against 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:59.040 his backdrop, he has a missing girl and as is 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.400 the tradition and in person stories, in crime, time is 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.720 running out, a sensation that is only heightened by the 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:07.840 sense that it's happening on a planet and in a 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.800 city where time is running out in a range of ways. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.000 You know, how do you keep people safe? And that's 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.480 the thing. It's not only a gripping read, but it's 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:20.240 one that's grappling with themes and issues that are at 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.519 the forefront of collective consciousness. James Bradley knows what he's 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.919 doing and he really knocks this one out of the Park. 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.680 Coming up in just a moment, James Bradley thinks kindness 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:34.679 is a superpower. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:46.400 I wanted to start with the crime genre beats of landfall, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.920 rather than the climate or the speculative stuff. I wanted 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.120 to start with crime, and I wanted to ask you 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.240 whether you're a big reader of crime fiction. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:56.680 I am a reader of crime fiction, and I'm a 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:58.960 real admirer of it. I mean, I think that the 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.320 best of it is really I mean, it's really powerful writing, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.480 but it has a kind of capacity to, I guess, 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.520 dive into the kind of fault lines both in societies 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:14.880 and in human beings, which I think is really really interesting, 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:16.719 and it's one of the things I really wanted to 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.200 use when it came to this because seemed to me 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.600 a really interesting way of thinking about the world I 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:24.960 was trying to write about. But the only these things 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:28.520 I love about crime is it's an incredibly elastic genre. 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.240 So it's one of these kind of genres. It's incredibly various. 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.400 People use it to do all sorts of things, but 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:37.000 there's always that kind of social commentary kind of sitting 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:38.360 at the heart of the stuff that I find a 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:39.080 really interesting. 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:41.599 Yeah, No, I think that's something I like about it 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.320 to I remember in an old interview aar rank And 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.520 talking about being able to take his character from a 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:49.760 mansion or an opening gala in one scene to a 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.880 commission flab in the next scene and not being incongruous 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.120 when you're writing in crime, that you actually get the 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.520 chance to cut through that cross section of a society 0:04:58.720 --> 0:04:59.960 in ways that are really useful. 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:02.480 And yes, and then that is exactly what I wanted 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:03.520 this to be able to do. So I wanted to 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:07.880 write a book which kind of put a larger society 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:09.640 at the center of it, which also allowed you to 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:11.839 go from you know, the world of the rich to 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:13.600 the world of the very poor, from the world of 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:15.320 displaced to the world of the people who are doing 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:20.320 really well, and also to kind of pull in stories 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.000 because one of the great things about crime is it's 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:26.520 not just diving into kind of the social worlds, it's 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.320 diving into kind of people's psychology in a really deep 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.240 kind of way. I mean, there's that wonderful line which 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.880 I thought was Chandler, but I must say I looked 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.120 up recently and I couldn't find it. But this person 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:39.920 who may have been Chandler talked about, you know, crime 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:41.880 being the poetry of the city, and I kind of 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:43.080 always loved that idea. 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.840 There is also something about the police procedure, or the 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:50.279 category into which your book falls that is also you know, 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.480 there's something about the psychology of people who are responsible 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:59.880 for implementing the social strictures of the day. And increasingly, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:01.919 you know, as we've seen, the crime genre have to 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:06.840 adapt to perhaps a more complex understanding of the challenges 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.240 of modern policing and the ways in which it goes wrong. 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.400 By having a protagonist whose job is to enforce the 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:17.080 status quo, you manage to bring in tremendous complexity. 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.159 Absolutely, and there was actually something I thought about a 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.799 lot when I was writing it. I mean, I did 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.520 worry a little bit about kind of inhabiting that side 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.320 of the argument. I mean that kind of sense that 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.760 you know, you wonder about the kind of ethics of 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.160 writing from somebody you know who's a cop basically. But 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:40.040 at the same time, as you say, there is a 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.120 kind of complexity that brings to bear and I think 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.200 that's absolutely present in the novel. I mean, one of 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.360 the things that the novel does is the main character, 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.279 someone who has ended up on the wrong side of 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:52.320 a whole series of those questions. You know, she's been 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.760 the subject of harassment, she has gotten herself into trouble 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.599 with other officers, and is someone who is very aware 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.960 of the clim deficiencies I guess of the organization that 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:04.960 she works for and the kinds of work that she does, 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:07.960 but also wants to do the right thing. 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.680 How conscious are you when writing into a genre space 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:16.800 of how useful the familiar or expected beats are that 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.600 you can get away with certain shorthands or certain things 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.920 because you know that a readership is well conditioned in 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.200 the conventions into which you're writing. I'm thinking, for example, 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.320 you know your protagonist has a new partner who she's 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.040 meeting for the first time at the start of the book. 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.800 That's such a classic crime genre trope that rather than 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.320 an established partnership, you get their unease and the distrust 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:43.680 and the working out can they be a team or 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.920 are they going to be at odds? Is that part 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:48.760 of the fun of writing into genre to be able 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.200 to go, Okay, I know what these beats look like, 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.400 and then I can subvert them or embrace them as 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:55.000 I see fit. 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:57.960 I think people often think about genre as a kind 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.520 of box that you put things into, and I never 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:02.280 see it like that. I always see genre as a 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.120 kind of toolkit, you know, that you can kind of say, look, 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.280 here's this thing that will be really interesting, here's this 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.080 thing that will be really useful for the kind of 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:11.280 story that I want to tell, and then you can 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.680 take that and use it. You know. You talk about 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:15.440 those kind of established beats, but one of the things 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.920 that those beats do is they let readers understand what 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.560 kind of story it is. You know, They kind of, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:22.120 as you say, they do quite a lot of the 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:26.280 work for you immediately, and there is something very pleasurable 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:28.840 about hitting those beats that kind of sense there's this 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.560 kind of sturdy genre of shape there that you're working 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.160 with that will take you somewhere, which can also then 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:37.440 subvert and play with in different kinds of ways, you know. 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:39.480 And I find I actually find that, as you say, 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.720 really enjoyable about being able to say, look, this is 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.280 going to work like this, because I know that that 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:46.400 kind of thing works. 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:49.480 It seems to me one of the underpinning things of 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.760 crime fiction is a crime occurs. In the case of 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.200 this book, a child goes missing, and that's a disruption 0:08:57.320 --> 0:08:59.360 to the natural order of things. And so then what 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:05.240 we want is detective protagonist to somehow restore peace and 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.880 restore harmony and let the world keep ticking over without 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.120 this fracture of this terrible act. But of course, if 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:16.959 you set your crime novel in a climate apocalyptic future 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:21.760 where the natural order is already completely destroyed, completely disturbed 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.120 as a reader, that immediately unsettles. We're not restoring the 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.880 status quo. We're just trying to hang on to whatever 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:29.559 can be left. 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:32.400 Yeah, I think that's a really good way of encapsulating 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:33.880 what the book's trying to do. I mean, what I 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.720 wanted to do was to kind of push those things 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:38.560 up against each other. That sense that you have a 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.000 world that is profoundly out of balance already, and then 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.320 this other thing happens in it. There's not a sense 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:47.320 that world can get put back together. I mean, one 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:49.960 of things I found really interesting about writing it was 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.719 when I wrote Clade, which is probably you know, it's 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.240 probably nearly fifteen years ago now, there wasn't much fiction 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.800 in that kind of climate space, and one of the 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.520 things I was doing, quite self consciously was trying to 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.800 work out what kind of story you could tell that 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.160 would let you talk about climate, because climate is such 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.360 an amorphous and difficult thing to kind of write about. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:15.760 You know, the tools of the novelists are essentially kind 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:20.680 of social tools around character and setting and things like that, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.800 and climate doesn't resolve into those things. You know, it's 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:28.080 a kind of global messy thing. And you know, I 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.240 came up with a kind of series of solutions to 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.400 that problem, which were about kind of as I think 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.719 other people did, about kind of developing different sorts of 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.000 narrative shapes that could kind of hold that story. And 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:41.640 what's kind of fascinating to me, is it ten years 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:43.079 down the track you can say it none to write 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.800 a crime story in that space, Like there's something about 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.800 that sense that that space has altered, that the world 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.040 has altered around us in ways it emidst telling stories 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.720 in that space that are in a sense more conventionally shaped, 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.400 but which don't fear you'll you know, climate's a really 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:04.360 big part of this novel. It's kind of right at 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.720 the center of it. But in a sense, it's not 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.440 the subject of the novel. It's the context of the novel. 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.760 It's the world of the novel lives in, And I 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:14.560 guess there's something really interesting to me about the way 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:16.720 that we've gone from having to develop these shapes to 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.440 be able to just position it within our world. That 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.240 says something about how much the kind of process of 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.920 climate change has moved over that decade or decade and 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:26.400 a half. 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.600 You talked about the ways in which the context, the timing, 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:35.000 the place, the geopolitical and climate realities of this book 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:38.000 are not the subject, but they're the world. Tell me 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.319 how much world building you did before you dropped your 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.800 story into the middle of it. Did you begin with 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.080 an idea? Did you begin because I know you're a 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:51.280 great reader and writer of science journalism of different sorts. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:57.720 Did you project a particular path for the world before 0:11:57.720 --> 0:11:59.720 you started telling the story or did that kind of 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:01.520 become clearly as he went along. 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:05.160 Look, I think that both, to be honest. I mean, 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.240 I think my initial idea was that I wanted to 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:12.120 find a way of writing something which put kind of 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.280 climate migration at the center. Like I'd already written several 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:19.160 books with kind of climate in them, but I wanted 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:22.120 one that was more explicitly engaged with kind of questions 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:27.760 of justice and questions of dislocation and you know, refugees, 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.640 those kinds of issues. And I guess what I thought 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:35.120 to myself was something along the lines of it's you know, 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:38.360 it's maybe a generation from now, thirty years And then 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.360 I thought, so, what's happened? It's much hotter, and water, 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:44.280 I knew was a really big part of the novel. 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:49.840 I wanted that sense of rising water, of rain or flooding, 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:52.400 of all of those kinds of things kind of intruding 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.840 into the book. I also generally have a view that 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:01.040 with this kind of fiction, you don't want to put 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.880 that stuff at the center. I mean, generally, we don't 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:06.760 talk about the things that are the fabric of our world. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:08.840 They're just there, you know. We don't talk about the 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:13.440 phones that we carry around. We don't talk about the weather, 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:15.720 you know, like it's just part of the fabric of 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:17.440 the world. So what I wanted to do was have 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.319 that sense that you're in a world and then you 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:22.840 kind of glimpse the structure of it in the background. 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:28.240 I guess when we return, James discusses the creation of 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.960 his lead characters and reveals by kindness is so important 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:35.559 both in his novel and in the world. We'll be 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:48.719 right back. I want to get to your protagonist and 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.360 her family in a moment, but before we get to them, 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:54.520 i'd love it if you could talk a little bit 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:59.160 about Tassin as a character, because he's incredibly important to 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:03.520 the book and is very resonant with a number of 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:05.800 your previous novels. He's the kind of character that I 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.880 think of as a quintessentially James Bradley's creation. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.000 Oh that's really interesting. So to see Hm as a 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:17.480 young Indonesian guy. He's about sixteen, and he has left 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.160 Indonesia because Indonesia is a complete disaster. You know, there 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.160 are storms, there are heat waves, and his mother and 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.200 his sister dying one of these heat waves, and so 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.880 he kind of makes his way to Australia on a 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.200 boat and ends up in detention and then eventually leaves 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.080 detention and in the course of the novel finds himself 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.920 stumbling across this crime as it happens and is trying 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:41.960 to find the missing girl at the same time as 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:46.560 the as the detective is, and he is he's a 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:48.840 character I felt a lot of kind of affection for 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:55.800 He's this bright, kind kid who's trying to get by, 0:14:55.960 --> 0:15:00.880 but is also bearing this kind of massive wave of trauma. 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.040 His story in any ways, carries a lot of the 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.920 kind of thematic weight of the novel. I think, you know, 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.560 because although he is now in this city that's half flooded, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.720 you know, he's kind of bearing that stuff around, but 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:18.680 he has this goodness about him. You know, he's someone 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:22.080 who is actually trying to do this thing, trying to 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.680 find this kid, and not because he has to do it, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.040 because he thinks he needs to, you know, in a 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:28.920 world that has not helped him to. 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:34.080 Sim embodies that sense of common humanity in the face 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.680 of kind of no reason to maintain faith in those things, 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.240 no reason to feel a responsibility to them or to 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.920 be driven by that in any way. And yet he 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:50.560 just almost unthinkingly identifies a space where he's required to help, 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.360 and he puts himself into that role. And I think 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.560 in a story set against climate catastrophe, that's kind of 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.080 the human question is how does a single missing child, 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.040 How does a small scale, in many ways small scale 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:10.680 crime story have weight in the context of global disaster. 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.440 Yeah, And I mean, in fact, that sense of kindness 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.720 of doing the right thing is really kind of central 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:20.000 to the novel. I mean, it's a novel that at 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:21.920 one level is quite bleak, you know. I mean it's 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.080 set in this kind of ruined world, but you have 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:28.160 people in it trying to do the right thing, and 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:30.240 there are kind of random acts of kindness at various 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.800 points in the book. And I actually think that's really important. 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.640 I mean, I think that we we live in a 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.600 world which does a series of things. One of them 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:43.160 is that it tells us that in bad situations, people 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:46.000 behave badly, and in fact, the evidence is that that's 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:47.800 not the case. I mean, you only have to look 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.320 at what happened up in the floods a couple of 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.280 years ago, the Northern Rivers, you know, the government failed 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:55.160 to turn up, and people went out in their tinees 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.960 and kind of rescued their neighbors and looked after each other. 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.440 But also because I I think we live in a 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:07.080 cultural moment where there is this notion that somehow kindness 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:11.040 is weakness and that cruelty is strength, I think actually 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.680 pushing back on that's really really important because I don't 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:15.600 think that's true at all. I mean, I actually think 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.400 kindness is a kind of superpower. 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.359 I think one of the key tools in any novel. 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:27.120 But in this novel, you're protagonist, Senior Detective Azad Sada, 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.280 and in particular, I'm thinking about her relationship with her father, AmAm, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:37.480 which is incredibly moving, and Amaan is in a rapidly 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:42.080 deteriorating state, suffering from dementia, and so you have this 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:46.399 kind of very real illustration of that sense of loss, 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:50.120 that sense of things slipping away, and that sense of 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.119 not being at home in this new reality. Can you 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:57.280 talk a bit about your conception of Sada and her 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.800 relationship with her father at the heart of this book. 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:02.280 Yeah, it's interesting you say that about him, because one 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:04.240 of the things I very much wanted Aman to be 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.399 is he's someone who's kind of losing his memory, and 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:09.639 he is a literal example of this sense of the 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:11.760 slipping away of a kind of past, that kind of 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.600 sense that you're now lost in this new reality. So 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.359 she is the studio, is the daughter of an Australian 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.800 mother and of Aman, who's a Bangladeshi. She was born 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:26.480 in Bangladesh. They came to Australia after the melt where 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.200 there's this kind of catastrophic rise in sea levels after 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:34.840 lots of Antarctica collapses, and she's kind of grown up here, 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.159 but she, in the same way that Tasimas is carrying 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:41.919 a lot of trauma and a lot of past, and 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:44.920 the two of them are together in this quite complicated 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.919 kind of way. She's now caring for him. They've clearly 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:51.760 had quite a complicated relationship over the years. But that 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.720 sense of her trying to juggle, trying to juggle these 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:57.520 two things, trying to juggle this kind of job as 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.640 a police detective and this job of caring for someone 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.879 who's in such a such a difficult state, is something 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:05.840 that I felt I really wanted for her, that kind 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:07.920 of sense that she's someone who's been pulled in multiple 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:08.800 directions at once. 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:11.879 Before I let you go, I have to ask the 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.200 ways in which the climate elements of this imagined future playout. 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.159 Please tell me they're entirely imagine and not the basis 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.600 of kind of very credible research you've done in a 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.919 likely scenario for five years, ten years. Hence, James Bradley, 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:29.959 tell me you made loll up. Tell me it's all pretend. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.200 I mean, I think that the world of the book 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:34.440 is a kind of extrapolation from where we are, it's 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.880 not a particularly unreasonable one. I don't think. I think, 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.680 on the track that we're on, it's a pretty reasonable one. 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.000 At the moment. I thought a lot over the last 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.040 you know, year or two about where we are with climate, 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:49.240 and if you'd ask me ten years ago, I would 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:53.199 have said that I thought that there will come a 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:59.080 moment where the dissonance between what's happening in our lack 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:00.879 of action will become so great that there'll be a 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:05.200 kind of shift in public sentiment, that we will move 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:11.240 from denial to panic. And I don't know that I 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:13.199 think that's true anymore. I mean, I think half of 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.840 LA burned down a few months ago and people looked 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:18.520 at it and said that's because of diversity policies in 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.280 the LA Fire Department. So that kind of sense that 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:24.480 there's going to be this kind of sea change in opinion, 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:26.679 I don't think that's there. And I mean I look 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.640 at our political leadership in Australia and it's profound lack 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:32.639 of action on a series of things that are happening. 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.760 You know, we're still opening fossil fuel projects. You know, 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.399 we're still I mean in Sydney around the corner. For me, 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.040 there's a new block of Flatch, which one of the 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.080 advertisements for it, you know, boasts that it's got gas 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:44.560 connections all through it. I mean this kind of sense 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.040 that we're not even doing the kind of basic stuff 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:52.000 that we need to do, and I think increasingly for 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:53.800 the lesson we need to take from that is that 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:56.800 you know, nobody is coming to save us. You know, 0:20:56.840 --> 0:20:58.360 at the end of the day, it's actually up to us. 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:00.159 Our governments are not going to save us, and this 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:05.679 kind of handing over of responsibility to other people can't continue. 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:08.320 Like we actually have to start saying to ourselves, they're 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:10.720 not going to save us, these guys are actually the problem, 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:13.119 and start asking some hard questions about what we do 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:13.560 about that. 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.760 James Bradley's latest novel, Landfall, is available at all good 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.280 bookstores now, and a reminder that work of nonfiction from 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:25.920 last year is called deep Water. 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:27.360 It's also terrific. 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.160 I recommend you get both. 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.240