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A little about me... Someone once told me that all books, deep or frivolous, funny or tragic are really about what it means to be human. Like one of the main characters in “Behind the Sun”, I fell for linguistics and have always wondered why humans were the only species to develop speech (or so we think). But we were not always alone – see the article by Ian Tattersall originally published in the Scientific American January 2000. This started me thinking; what it would have been like if some of those other species had survived? “Behind the Sun” is the result, although it is not their story. I love to travel; no great wonder considering I spent several months of my early childhood on ocean liners between New Zealand and England. I was born in London, England, moved to New Zealand when I was four, and took off to Australia when I was twenty, on my way to see the world; my most exciting trip was overland in a double-decker bus from Singapore to Europe, traveling through Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. I wrote “Behind the Sun” mainly to go on yet another adventure, this time to a place which I am unlikely to travel to in real life! But also to explore some ideas about why we are the way we are, using my beloved science fiction genre to tell a tale. I returned to Australia and have stayed, married thirty-five years to a Dane and have two daughters. My grandson is profoundly deaf, so now my interest in language has taken another turn. Learning Auslan has taught me to pay more attention to the visual world, and this wonderful sign language plays a significant role in my big adventure story. Language
and information go together. I have a Ph.D. in Information Systems
and have worked and taught in the Information Technology Industry
for almost thirty years. Currently I am adjunct Senior Research
Fellow with the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems
at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. I am also co-founder
of the WinIT (Women
in IT) research group which investigates female participation
in IT and teaches related courses in gender and IT. ******** |
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