Former Redland Times/Bayside Bulletin editor, Mike Sullivan, is launching the futuristic novel, Breather, at a Cleveland Library Author in Action talk from 10.30am to 11.30am on September 1.
The book features a Redland agronomist whose ‘breather’ plants take over the world.
“It’s a bit of fun that should raise a few questions about how the Redland area is developing … and whether a persistently innovative fellow with a revolutionary idea to propagate a new plant species – which solves world air pollution problems while mitigating carbon dioxide – really can end up dominating world financial markets,” Mr Sullivan said.
“The basic storyline is that a mysterious – and extremely ugly – plant keeps resurfacing near the tailpipes of the young Jerrod Beljum’s Pontiac Laurentian, back in the early 1980s, in his family’s bare-earth barn at Childers. Whenever he spends time tuning and running the engine, Jerrod notices this plant thrives – and is steadily joined by others of its ilk – sprouting ever closer to the Pontiac’s exhaust pipes.
“After a great deal of testing and plant splicing, he steadily comprehends that this plant is an entirely new – or, at least, unrecognised – species. This peculiar plant apparently draws in carbon monoxide and the oxides of nitrogen – exhaust gases – to produce oxygen,” Mr Sullivan said.
“So where can an orphaned, financially-challenged Chinese-Australian youth take such a discovery? Well, he must start in the Redlands as he discovers the region’s iron-rich red soil is critical to this plant species’ development. But we also find that in 1980s Australia, it is more than an uphill battle – it’s an inconvenient and generally unbelievable innovation. And, as it turns out, breathers soon become a geo-politically dangerous commodity.”
The book is an unusual narrative treatment, ‘edited’ by Mike Sullivan but written by (his nom-de-plume) Michael Quillen with the hindsight of its 2042 publication date.
“The reason for that is Michael Quillen is a character in the book as well, drawing from his stories on the breather species and Jerrod Beljum’s journey as featured in The Redland Times and Bayside Bulletin and through to Quillen’s freelance investigations with Time magazine,” Mr Sullivan said.
Mr Sullivan said he particularly enjoyed the economic twists that developed towards the novel’s conclusion in the 2030s when Breather Corporation, based on a specially reclaimed island near Redland Bay, started buying back and demolishing the modern suburbs built on former farmland throughout the Redlands.
“They are reclaimed as breather plant farms because the red soil of this region is so vital for the propagation of these world-mandated breather types,” Mr Sullivan said.
“They even buy out Cleveland Industrial Estate to turn it over to breather plantations. The Redlands, once world-famous for its flowers and strawberries, returns to its roots, so to speak.”
The local launch’ of Breather is a chance for Mr Sullivan to return to his roots as well. He completed his journalism cadetship on The Redland Times in the late 1970s and departed as managing editor from what had transitioned from the late John Fowler’s Redland Publishers into a Rural Press company in late 1988 – for an international business editor’s role based in Hong Kong.
“It was a career path choice for me, but I was fortunate to be able to hand the reins on. Now, one of the other unusual features of Breather is how we have treated the ‘historical’ Redland Times newspaper articles as cut-outs dropped into the book at appropriate junctures.
Talk bookings are free on redland.qld.gov.au/info/20157/libraries/308/whats_on_at_your_library#/?i=2
