Probing the possibilities

Much loved public characters who venture into fiction in their mature years are, of course, on a hiding to nothing. Their apprenticeship, their experiences, their intuitions have all been spent or deployed elsewhere. In the case of Robyn Williams, these were as a distinguished science reporter and analyst for the ABC. The knowledge and opinions that he gathered there have been brought to the making of his pre-apocalyptic first novel, 2007. This is, the cover warns, ‘a true story, waiting to happen’. Williams’s mentor in fiction is George Orwell, who is quoted with approval by a cashiered and bibulous former Cambridge don, Cyril, now exiled to a weather station at Cape Grim in north-western Tasmania (site of the world’s purest air, as it happens). Orwell advocated ‘retaining one’s childhood love’ of the things of the natural world, toads not least. The alternative was ‘hatred and leader worship’.