Cirrus@Austlit

Author, screenwriter.

David Boutland's parents John George Boutland, an electrical mechanic, and Gertrude Helen (nee Lucas), immigrated to Australia with their three children in 1951 under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme. After completing his schooling Boutland pursued a career as a freelance writer, and in 1960 returned to England with his wife Shirley. It was here that his science fiction short stories, written under the pseudonym 'David Rome', began to appear in such magazines as Science Fantasy, New Worlds Science Fiction, Pocket Man, Amazing, Galaxy and Science Fiction Adventures. Boutland's first story to be published in the UK was 'Time of Arrival' (New Worlds April 1961).

In addition to having his works published in science fiction magazines, Boutland also began submitting stories to a number of early 1960s anthologies, notably New Writings in SF, New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural, and The Second Pacific Book of Science Fiction. Steve Holland records in his Bear Alley blog that two of Boutland's stories were also selected by Judith Merril for her Annual of the Year's Best S-F anthologies. One of these, 'Parky,' first published in Science Fantasy in 1961, was later reprinted in The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing: A Fifty Year Collection (q.v.). Between 1964 and 1968 Boutland also contributed more than twenty storylines to the Commando, War Picture Library and Battle Picture Library comics.

Sometime around 1963/1964 Boutland returned to Australia and began writing pulp fiction novels, still under the David Rome pseudonym, for Sydney-based publisher Horwitz, including its Scripts imprint (qq.v.). The first Boutland/Rome novel to be published by Horwitz was Squat: Sexual Adventures on Other Planets in 1964. Squat was later awarded runner-up status at the third Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards after being re-issued in 1971 by Scripts

While Boutland's output for Horwitz/Scripts as David Rome was largely popular fiction, he nevertheless continued to have his science fiction short stories published in such magazines as Man, Man Junior, Adam, Vision of Tomorrow and Galaxy Science Fiction. These appeared under the names David Rome or Richard Ansvar. In 1972, under his real name, he also wrote The Professional, a work on prostitution conceived and produced by Ron Smith.

By the early to mid-1970s Boutland had begun to turn his attention more towards writing for television, a career move which saw him contribute numerous scripts under his birth name during the next three decades. Among the best known series for which he contributed material are Homicide (1968-75), Division 4 (1969), Ryan (1973-74), Matlock Police (q.v., 1972-76), Rush (1974-76), Tandarra (1976), A County Practice (q.v., 1981-85), The Flying Doctors (1988), G.P. (1990-93), Halifax F.P. (1995-97), Stingers (1999), MDA (2002) and Blue Heelers (q.v., 1997-2003). Although he ended his fulltime career as a freelance television scriptwriter in the early to mid-2000s, David Boutland continues to write in his retirement.

[Some information in this entry has been sourced from Steve Holland].