Fiction
Perry worked for three years part-time on his first book, a fictional thriller, Program for a Puppet, which was first published in the UK by W. H. Allen in May 1979 and then Crown in US in 1980. Newgate Callendar in The New York Times called it ‘altogether an exciting story ...an exciting panorama.’ Publishers Weekly (US) said: ‘In a slick, convincing manner, Perry welds high-tech with espionage.’
In an interview on Sydney radio a decade after the publication of Program for a Puppet, Perry spoke about learning more from the negative reviews for his first fiction book than the good reviews: ‘Some were a bit cranky; some were patronising,’ he said, ‘but they were all in some way instructive. One thought the writing was “too high mileage.” Another spoke of a “staccato” style. I recall another mentioning that it was, at times, like a film script. One reviewer thought I had two good thrillers in one, which had merit. I did meld two big themes that may have been better separated. But you don’t really know what you are doing on a first fiction. I did all the heavy research, “forty ways to pick a lock,” that sort of thing.’
The author’s second novel, Blood is a Stranger was set in Australia's Arnhem Land and Indonesia. This covered the ‘issue’ of the misuse of uranium mining and dangers of nuclear weapons, a theme in Perry’s early writing and documentary film-making. Stephen Knight in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: Blood is a Stranger is a skilful and thoughtful thriller... with a busy plot and some interesting, unnerving speculations about what might be going on in the world of lasers, yellowcake (uranium mining and manufacture) and Asian politics—things that most people prefer to ignore in favour of more simple and familiar puzzles.’
Roland Perry returned to fiction and a pet theme—the evils of nuclear weapons—in his third novel Faces in the Rain (1990). Set mainly in Melbourne and Paris, he used the first person to expose the nefarious activities of the French in testing and developing nuclear weapons in the Pacific.
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Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing ...”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)