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A journey through Garry’s galaxy.
You’re ten years old, sitting on the couch in your pyjamas, microwave popcorn bag in hand and a sci-fi movie playing on the TV for the first time. You feel your heart skip a beat when the ship shifts into hyper speed and narrowly misses an alien attack. You hold your breath when the air lock malfunctions and sucks half the crew out into the abyss. Everyone has an earth shattering memory from childhood that makes you question life as you know it.
For longstanding Guide Dogs Client Garry Dean, that memory was looking up at the night sky through a telescope and seeing the universe through a tiny lens. As kids, Garry and his best friend Dave would sometimes stay up all night looking at the stars, and he has been a self-proclaimed “space nut” ever since. Garry now writes about time travel, space colonialism and post-apocalyptic worlds – your science fiction bread and butter.
If you have been in the Guide Dogs community for a while, you may recognise Garry’s work in some of our old publications, including his short story ‘Roll of the Dice’, which appeared in the July 2016 edition of the Soundtracks newsletter and detailed what it was like to come to terms with living with Choroideremia (CHM).
CHM is a rare genetic eye disorder Garry inherited from his mother. There was a 50/50 chance he would develop the condition and according to Garry he “lost the bet.”
Being a creative at heart with a passion for visual arts, from painting with acrylics to pursuing a career in photography, it came as a shock when Garry’s sight worsened due to CHM.
“Back in the day when I discovered I had this eye condition, I didn’t want to know about it,” Garry says.
When Garry initially connected with Guide Dogs, he learned the skills he needed to move around with his white cane, but he was too embarrassed to use it in public.
“I didn’t want to be different than anyone else. I hadn’t accepted the fact I was legally blind,” Garry says. Working through the emotions that came up when his life changed dramatically was tough, especially when he still had some partial peripheral vision.
“It’s always a tragedy and it’s a struggle but it teaches you things like resilience, patience and perseverance,” Garry says.
As Garry’s sight progressively worsened, he jumped in a van and travelled around Australia to see as much as he could, but he realised he missed being creative.
“I was looking for something to do, and it was my friend Trace that suggested writing,” Garry says. “I wrote a short story called ‘The Visitor’, submitted it to the Antipodean Science Fiction Magazine and it was accepted! That set me off.”
From then on, Garry funneled his creativity into writing, his biggest passion in life second to playing guitar. Always being drawn to technology as a kid and building his own computers from scratch, it was easy for him to embrace the latest Assistive Technology (AT) to help him write throughout the years. Garry uses a bluetooth keyboard that resembles an old typewriter to traverse through universes and jump between planets. Garry touch types into Word and uses the Windows Narrator to read back what he writes. He also uses Artificial Intelligence screen readers to read his stories to his writing group, where he is critiqued and given feedback.
“It really is a game changer. I encourage people to try and embrace technology if they can,” Garry says.
As a sci-fi enthusiast, advances in AT also offer no shortage of writing prompts for Garry, who is always adding to his creative diary of short stories and published work.
