The Official Matthew Reilly Homepage

Hey there! Matthew Reilly here again. Sorry I missed updating you all in August (first time I've missed a whole month), but I was flying up and down the east coast of Australia like a human yo-yo doing speeches and festivals and in any spare moments I had, I was finishing (yes finishing) my new book - so I didn't get a chance.

For some reason, my reading habits of late have been directed at World War II. I'm not sure, but there could be some subconscious research going on here.

This book, by the author of Stalingrad, recounts what to me was one of the most fascinating parts of that WWII: its European ending; the race between the Soviets and the Americans to get to Berlin. And let me tell you, the Soviets wanted Berlin bad.

In short, Berlin is just incredible. It deftly switches between the brutal fighting (and atrocities) at the front and the relative peace back at the headquarters of both Hitler and Stalin.

This part of World War II was a battle between two ruthless totalitarian regimes. As such, it was a fight like no other. When the Germans had pushed into the USSR earlier in the war they had wreaked hideous atrocities on the Soviet peoples (rape, murder, looting). But by 1945, it was the Soviets who were doing the advancing, and when it came time for them to pay back the Germans for their previous sins, they didn't hold back. They killed and raped and looted with a ferocity never before witnessed.

The strangest thing I found though was this comment: that when the Soviet troops entered Germany and saw its orderly gardens and paved roads they asked themselves, "When they had all this, why on earth did these prosperous Germans ever want to invade the Soviet Union?" Such is war. A great read, but not for the weak of stomach.

I always love it when the TV throws up some quality viewing and these two shows have certainly raised the bar.

Of course, American audiences have already seen them both a fair while ago (I had an American friend tell me about 24 ages ago), but they've just come out here in Australia.

24 - I particularly love the split-screen stuff. I think it really provides a "third angle" to television. Unfortunately (and this is the both show's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness), I missed a couple of episodes and am now trying to slot myself back into the story.

As for Band of Brothers - wow. Never seen anything like it on television. It is everything Steven Spielberg couldn't put into Saving Private Ryan. I must say, I think Spielberg changed war movies forever with his "colour-drained, rapid shutter speed" shooting on that movie (a technique also used in B of B). The image is firstly, drained of colour, and secondly, when an explosion hits, we see every grain of flying dirt - achieved using a fast shutter speed on the film camera - it recreates that hypersensitivity of soldiers under fire.

Band of Brothers is some of the best TV I've ever seen. For sheer "horrors of war" feelings, the parachute drop into Normandy in Part 2 almost matched the D-Day landings in Saving Private Ryan - I loved the moment when the planes dropped out of the relative quiet of the cloud layer into a night sky filled with waves of tracer bullets and flak.

I was invited to the Melbourne Writers Festival in August. I have to say, the organisers in Melbourne always put on a great show. I had a marvellous time.

And I got to meet a fantastic British writer named China Mieville (author of the novels, The Scar, Perdido Street Station and King Rat). Not only was China a hit with the audiences, but he was also just a great guy who really loves books. He seemed to really love sci-fi with the same attention to history and detail that I enjoy action.

This is the most common question I am being asked these days, both in emails and at speeches: am I planning to write a sequel to Temple?

The answer is: I have an idea for a new novel featuring William Race and a split-story, but having just written two sequels (Area 7 and Schofield III), I am keen to write a wholly new book, with a wholly new hero.

Over the last year, I think we have all dealt with this terrible event in our own personal ways. I wish the TV stations would let it be, rather than advertise that they are showing "the definitive September 11 retrospective." They are starting to cross the line between remembering the dead and exploiting the dead.

Well, time to go. Have to do a polish on that new book now. Take care, and as always, keep reading.

P.S. The Full Tossers are returning to the (indoor cricket) field... next Monday. The indoor cricket world holds its breath!