'The Director and the Daemon follows the director of a big budget Australian sci-fi TV show grappling with the dilemma of corporate sponsorship, and their infatuation with their beautiful but selfish lead star, Kit; and an unnamed young radical struggling to find themselves as their political movement―and the found family derived from it―implodes around them. The two characters’ worlds become increasingly interconnected as they’re forced to make big decisions, and take action, in the face of civil unrest.
'The Director and the Daemon is a character-driven novel of ideas that is beautiful, funny, provocative, and deeply felt. It pokes fun at the arts industry, even as it values creativity and art-making, while asking difficult questions about action without ideology and ideology without action. It challenges all of us to think about how we can move from passivity to change, especially in the face of climate change.' (Publication summary)
'The Director and the Daemon is the right book for a time when the world is both unbearably grotesque and slapstick. A TV director is offered funding for another season by a company that runs Australia’s off-shore detention centres. The director is in love with their inscrutable star who won’t stick around if there’s no new season. An activist group stalks and bashes fossil fuel associates. The daemon (an activist) is getting wrecked by intra-group politics, with state violence circling ever closer. But author Pitaya Chin moves too quickly to linger in smug cleverness; everything smashes together in a big smear. The problem of climate fiction is solved because it’s climate realism now, baby! Scores of people die in a ‘wet-bulb event’. The western suburbs are cordoned off so its inhabitants can’t seek cooler pastures in high heat, and a centrist politician asks why a military cordon wasn’t instated sooner. Does this remind you of anything?'(Introduction)
'The Director and the Daemon is the right book for a time when the world is both unbearably grotesque and slapstick. A TV director is offered funding for another season by a company that runs Australia’s off-shore detention centres. The director is in love with their inscrutable star who won’t stick around if there’s no new season. An activist group stalks and bashes fossil fuel associates. The daemon (an activist) is getting wrecked by intra-group politics, with state violence circling ever closer. But author Pitaya Chin moves too quickly to linger in smug cleverness; everything smashes together in a big smear. The problem of climate fiction is solved because it’s climate realism now, baby! Scores of people die in a ‘wet-bulb event’. The western suburbs are cordoned off so its inhabitants can’t seek cooler pastures in high heat, and a centrist politician asks why a military cordon wasn’t instated sooner. Does this remind you of anything?'(Introduction)
