Some Salvage washing up on the interwebs:
news regurgitation
Blake’s 7 remake: liberating, or a Federation of dunces?
No sooner had we just finished watching the last episode of Blake’s 7 than the announcement hit the interwebs that an American outfit was interesting in remaking the cult British television show. First thought: this could be wicked, what with modern special effects and all. Second thought: another UK show mangled by Americans missing the point. Verdict: torn.
I loved Blake’s 7 as a kid; the 1978-81 show offered something different. A crew who were together by desperate convenience, who weren’t jumping each other’s bones but rather each other’s nerves, and who could lose just as easily as win. And, as io9 points out, led by someone who might just be a zealot dangerous to all around him.
The villain wears white … Servalan
Add in some bold decisions: killing off a cast member mid-season, dropping the titular character for two seasons, destroying the uber-starship Liberator and replacing it with a far less ostentatious and well kitted out ship… Indeed, by the end of the final, fourth season, only two original cast members remain on the bridge. And then there’s the conclusion, of course: it’s hard to imagine an American television show in which the heroes totally and utterly lose.
If it does get up, it will be interesting to see in which direction the remake goes. Let’s just hope it doesn’t poke science fiction in the eye the way the remade Battlestar Galactica did.
Salvage in the Sunshine Coast Daily
Queensland newspaper The Sunshine Coast Daily has today published an article about Salvage, which is most gratifying. Here it is:
The author pic is by Kim Thomsen of Thomsen’s Photographic Gallery, Maryborough.
Anna Funder on her Miles Franklin win and the power of fiction
Anna Funder’s acceptance speech, delivered by video, on winning the Miles Franklin award for All That I Am has received a lot of coverage of varying degrees, thanks in part to her sideswipe at Queensland Premier Campbell Newman’s cancellation of the state’s literary awards. She says,
Prizes like this one are important to writers, but they are not necessary: we would keep writing without them, as writers do in many countries where they are banned. But prizes are very important to the nation. They show that free speech is alive and unbeholden to government, or to media barons. And they provide signposts as to quality when it can be hard, in a bewildering topography of culture—high and low, in print and on-screen and in the fractured online world—to sort the enlightening and soul-feeding from the 50 Shades of momentarily gratifying.
Hear, hear.
You can read the full transcript here.
Meanwhile, Newman continues his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to Queensland’s social fabric, trying it appease the religious fanatics and arch neanderthals typified by Bob Katter’s turn-back-the-clock party while holding some thread of decency. The changes to the same-sex marriage laws and surrogacy laws he’s enacted are ludicrous and insulting and worthy of derison, the semantic game being played highlighting Funder’s point about the importance of literacy in a free-thinking society. A ‘registered relationship’ has overtones of vileness; the ACL need to understand their definition of marriage is neither exclusive nor universal, nor even accurate, nor even logical. A vocal minority should not be dictating government policy that has absolutely no impact on their quality of life. Newman has been praised for standing up to vocal minorities in the past; what a shame he didn’t have the fortitude to do the same here.
Neither logic nor compassion seem to have much of a home in Queensland these days. Maybe those wielding the stupid stick need to read more, and read more widely. As Funder says,
This fusing of mind and soul with strangers is what fiction, the art form that is most personal, most interior permits us. Fiction helps us understand what it might be like to be another. It makes us understand that we are different. And also, that we are the same.
Meanwhile, the non-government supported Queensland Literary Awards have secured some funding from CAL and UQP and will be held on September 5.
Seaside cupcakes for Salvage
My seaside Gothic Salvage was launched in a combined party held by the publisher, Twelfth Planet Press, at Continuum earlier in June, and as part of the celebration, Terri took it upon herself to make cupcakes for certain of the press’s titles: I think 13 all up. Terri lives in Perth. The convention was in Melbourne. She spent the best part of 12 hours in a hotel room decorating some 400 cupcakes. That’s not including the ones she left behind…
The madcap but ultimately delicious exercise is detailed at her blog, at which she details how to decorate a cupcake, or indeed a shortbread, with a beach theme fitting of a seaside Gothic. Coconut is the key!
Writerly round-up: a new book, an award, a farewell
It’s the afternoon after the four days that came before, and what a grand four days Continuum 8 offered. Held at Rydges in Carlton, where the bartenders were, as usual, outgunned by demand, the convention pulled together writers, publishers, readers and knitters (!) from around the country for the celebration of all things fantastical.
Twelfth Planet Press launched new titles by Kaaron Warren — a printing error has meant a recall for those who have already snaffled the enticing collection — and Margo Lanagan (officially hitting the shelves in August) and my novella Salvage (yay!). Keep an ear out for a podcast recorded at the beautifully laid out Embiggen Books(timber shelves! ladders! SECRET DOOR!) about the Twelve Planets series of collections. [update: the podcast is now available here]
Twelve Planets podcast at Embiggen Books
There were panels on vampires, e-books, Australian writing and many other things; launches; parties; costumes; crafts; dinners on Lygon St; the nearest Japanese restaurant would’ve seen a pleasing surge in income. And there were awards, with Paul Haines and Sara Douglass both receiving posthumous accolades. A further highlight of the Ditmars was the squeaking octopii, given out as stand-ins when the actual awards failed to arrive in time.
Also awarded were the Chronos awards, recognising achievements by Victorian writers, artists and fans, and how pleasing it was to receive one for ‘best fan writer’. A lovely acknowledgement of my new address! And Kirstyn and co-host Ian Mond landed Ditmar and Chronos awards for their podcast, The Writer and the Critic. The awards lists are below.
So amidst the catching up, the memorials and general frivolity, a bittersweet announcement has been made: my wonderful boss, Kate Eltham, is leaving the Queensland Writers Centre to take the reins at next year’s Brisbane Writers Festival. Kate is a dynamic woman and talented writer who has made the QWC such an active organisation, reaching out across the state and the nation and overseas through various programs all aimed at not just keeping writers of all ilks in the loop but helping them to be part of the loops. It’ll be interesting to see what new ideas she brings to the BWF. This is great news for Kate and a real shift of gears, but I confess that I will sure miss her. Good luck with it, mate!
Kirstyn and Ian host the awards ceremony
Ditmar Award winners:
Peter McNamara Award: Bill Congreve
A. Bertram Chandler Award:Richard Harland
Norma K Hemming Award, TIE: Anita (AA) Bell for Hindsight; Sara Douglass for The Devil’s Diadem
And a new award, the Infinity:Merv Binns
Best Novel
- WINNER: The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)
- Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)
- Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres (Random House Australia)
- The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins)
- Mistification, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot)
Best Novella or Novelette
- WINNER: ‘The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt’, Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga)
- ‘And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living’, Deborah Biancotti (Ishtar)
- ‘Above’, Stephanie Campisi (Above/Below)
- ‘Below’, Ben Peek (Above/Below)
- ‘Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary’, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk)
- ‘The Sleeping and the Dead’, Cat Sparks (Ishtar)
Best Short Story
- WINNER: ‘The Patrician’, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk)
- ‘Bad Power’, Deborah Biancotti (Bad Power)
- ‘Breaking the Ice’, Thoraiya Dyer (Cosmos 37)
- ‘The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker’, Martin Livings & Talie Helene (More Scary Kisses)
- ‘Alchemy’, Lucy Sussex (Thief of Lives)
- ‘All You Can Do Is Breathe’, Kaaron Warren (Blood and Other Cravings)
Best Collected Work
- WINNER: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Paul Haines (Brimstone)
- Bad Power, Deborah Biancotti (Twelfth Planet)
- Nightsiders, Sue Isle (Twelfth Planet)
- Ishtar, Amanda Pillar & KV Taylor, eds. (Gilgamesh)
- Love and Romanpunk, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet)
Best Artwork
- WINNER: ‘Finishing School’, Kathleen Jennings, in Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick)
- Cover art for The Freedom Maze (Small Beer), Kathleen Jennings
Best Fan Writer
- WINNER: Robin Pen, for The Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar’
- Bruce Gillespie, for body of work including The Golden Age of Fanzines is Now’, and SF Commentary 81 & 82
- Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex
- Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, and Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth
- Sean Wright, for body of work including ‘Authors and Social Media’ series in Adventures of a Bookonaut
Best Fan Artist
- WINNER: Kathleen Jennings, for work in Errantry, including ‘The Dalek Game’
- Rebecca Ing, for work in Scape
- Dick Jenssen, for body of work including work in IRS, Steam Engine Time, SF Commentary, and Scratchpad
- Lisa Rye, for Steampunk Portal series
- Rhianna Williams, for work in Nullas Anxietas Convention Program Book
Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
- WINNER: The Writer and the Critic podcast, Kirstyn McDermott & Ian Mond
- SF Commentary, Bruce Gillespie, ed.
- Galactic Chat podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts & Sean Wright
- Galactic Suburbia podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayer Roberts, & Alex Pierce
- The Coode Street podcast, Gary K. Wolfe & Jonathan Strahan
Best New Talent
- WINNER: Joanne Anderton
- Alan Baxter
- Steve Cameron
William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review
- WINNER: Alexandra Pierce & Tehani Wessely, for reviews of The Vorkosigan Saga, in Randomly Yours, Alex
- Russell Blackford, for ‘Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke’, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
- Damien Broderick & Van Ikin, for editing Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature
- Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene, for ‘2010: The Year in Review’, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010
- David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts & Tehani Wessely, for ‘Reviewing New Who’ series, in A Conversational Life
Chronos Awards
Best Long Fiction: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Paul Haines (Brimstone Press)
Best Short Fiction: ‘The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt’, Paul Haines (in The Last Days of Kali Yuga)
Best Fan Writer: Jason Nahrung
Best Fan Artist: Rachel Holkner
Best Fan Written Work: ‘Tiptree, and a collection of her short stories’, Alexandra Pierce (in Randomly Yours, Alex)
Best Fan Artwork: Blue Locks, Rebecca Ing (Scape 2)
Best Fan Publication: The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond
Best Achievement: Conquilt, Rachel Holkner and Jeanette Holkner (Continuum 7)
* It’s possible there might be a photo of me with a bottle of wine and a glass: I was pouring for other people. Honest.
The Australian ‘right’ club strikes again
Another day, another nose at the Australian newspaper stuck up the arse of Queensland’s new autocrat, Campbell Newman. Those boys are really enjoying Newman’s slaying of the literary dragon, in his cancellation of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.
This time (in yesterday’s Weekend Australian) it’s Ross Fitzgerald sinking the boot, lambasting writing festivals — or at least a selection of them — for not paying attention to the nation’s up-and-comers; for not selling enough books; for making those garretted writers get out and talk about their work to the faintly curious, non-buying masses.
There are good points he makes about how writers are perceived to have to operate to make a buck. Some enjoy meeting readers, some do not; some like rubbing shoulders with their peers, others do not. Are festivals a cost-effective way to invest in a country’s literary industry? But he’s taken the Newman approach to a problem: if it’s not working, or perceived to be working, don’t fix it; axe it. That’ll learn’em!
If the Australian‘s editor, Chris Mitchell, is right, none of it matters anyway for the young, emerging writers: if they’re ‘good’ enough, those young guns will find their market. Ta-dah!
Fitzgerald wails about a ‘sloppy’ schedule at the Sydney Writers Festival that means he can’t see two people he’d like to — unfortunate, but, you know, diddums. I think he’s right, though, to question the audience the marquee festivals target — he could’ve also mentioned the prices most marquee festivals charge for admission that must impact on the money people are willing to spend on books, for instance, and indeed how many panels and events they can attend.
He questions the validity of foreign writers on the program, but that’s more problematic. Should no one here be interested in how others perceive the world — one of the reasons people read, one would think; those who don’t read selectively to have their world view reinforced, at least. Bob Katter’s book should sell well up Queensland way, for both reasons.
Fitzerald decries the Sydney festival giving Katter and Kevin Rudd a platform — we’ve heard enough from them surely, he suggests. Thing is, maybe we haven’t. Maybe the people who buy their books are looking for something behind the media veneer and pointed headlines. Maybe these pollies have just the same right for consideration to have their written opinions heard and discussed as any other scribe. Maybe.
Fitzgerald doesn’t talk about the Emerging Writers Festival, or the National Young Writers Festival. Genre events don’t get a look in. As Fitzgerald notes, being on a festival program is one of few ways a writer might hope to attract some mainstream media attention, but even then, good luck with that: unless you are someone like Katter, or Rudd, or maybe an award winner, say, a Vogel award winner.
Fitzgerald doesn’t note that the marquee festivals spread their net widely, relying on the headliners to draw an audience that, one hopes, will stay for a taste of the up-and-comers also on the program — a program that, again, hopefully, will work to provide them with that hard-to-get exposure. Exposure by osmosis, not just in front of an audience but in the green room, too.
A recent lit fest I attended was Adelaide Writers Week: I came away with a bag of books and knowledge of two Aussie debut novelists I’d never heard of before; one has just been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award. A connection has been made. The festival panels were free; grazing was encouraged. Schmoozing was enabled. The signing queues were long. One book I wanted to get had sold out.
Fitzgerald and others decry the rewards given to established writers who, apparently, don’t deserve them, having already made their mark and achieved, presumably, some kind of self-sufficiency, and call for greater focus on the emerging writers — hear hear! — but yet fail to acknowledge that Newman’s applauded stroke has taken out two valuable, career-starting awards for emerging Queensland writers. And surely a university professor like Fitzgerald would have some opinion on Newman scratching the nation’s only prize for science writing. Nah.
Few have talked about the way in which Newman raced to kill off the awards, leaving Queensland the only state without such a program. A unilateral decision that left his Arts minster blowing in the wind like a dag on a sheep’s arse, her standing in tatters before she’d even been sworn in.
Unhappy with last year’s awards decisions, looking to save a buck, Newman’s answer was to scratch the whole thing. Not cut back on the cash, or maybe roll some awards together, which given the economic times most folks would’ve understood. Just kill’em off, taking with them the emerging writers manuscript prize and the David Unaipon award: two rare opportunities for starting writers (not necessarily young ones, mind!) to get a leg up.
How important is an award, really? Well, yesterday at the Williamstown Literary Festival, a panelist speaking to a packed room on ‘the path to publication’ told how she had been shortlisted — shortlisted, not won — for the Vogel award. The award is, ironically, supported by the Australian: yes, the paper celebrates the death of two such awards while sponsoring another, age-restricted one — the word you’re looking for is hypocrisy. Anyway, this writer was shortlisted for the Vogel and it was, combined with her CV of short stories and articles, sufficient springboard to establish a fledgling career in the literary industry.
Anyhow, the Queensland Literary Awards, set up by the writing community to replace the government’s, has extended its submission deadline until May 20. University of Queensland Press has continued its support of the emerging writers and Unaipon prize. A leg up for those with the ‘right’ stuff.
Pre-order Epilogue – tales of hope after the apocalypse
FableCroft has opened pre-orders on Epilogue, an anthology of stories about finding hope in the aftermath of the apocalypse. It’s exciting to read that the anthology is to be launched at Continuum in June, where Twelfth Planet Press should also be letting my Australian Gothic Salvage loose on the public as well.
Another title being launched at Continuum is Bread and Circuses (also available for pre-order), an anthology by the inimitable Felicity Dowker. Nom nom nom!
There are some old hands and new chums in the table of contents of Epilogue, which should make for some interesting and perhaps atypical reading for stories in this setting. Epilogue costs $20 including postage.
Also worth pointing out is that FableCroft has put After the Rain on special for $15 inc postage; it includes my cyberpunk yarn ‘Wet Work’.
And here’s a clue to one of the themes of my ‘Epilogue’ story, ‘Mornington Ride’:
Ditmar shortlists announced
The shortlists for the Ditmar awards, fan nominated and fan voted, have been announced. Interesting to note that, outside of the novel realm, small press dominate almost exclusively, and that fan publications has four podcasts to one paper newsletter; the Atheling, too, is heavy on the blogs. Hilarious and also exemplary is that Robin Penn’s ‘Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar’ is in there, summarising pointedly yet with tongue in cheek a stoush in the community about, wonderfully, the Ditmars. The novels show a wide spread of genres and the novellas are particularly strong, showing perhaps a resurgence in the form. With e-publishing’s growth, I’d expect that to continue. The winners will be announced at Continuum 8 in Melbourne in June. Here’s the shortlist:
Best Novel
(HarperCollins)
Best Novella or Novelette
of Kali Yuga (Brimstone Press)
Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)
Best Short Story
More Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications)
Cravings (Tor)
Planet Press)
Best Collected Work
(Brimstone Press)
Press)
Planet Press)
Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Best Artwork
Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick Press)
Best Fan Writer
Speculative Fiction in Focus! and Not If You Were The Last Short Story
On Earth
Speculative Fiction in Focus!, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On
Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex
series in Adventures of a Bookonaut
Fanzines is Now”, and SF Commentary 81 & 82
Best Fan Artist
Time, SF Commentary and Scratchpad
including “The Dalek Game”
Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
Pierce
Best New Talent
William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (Ticonderoga Publications)
Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature (Borgo Press)
New Who” series, in A Conversational Life
in Randomly Yours, Alex
Norrell by Susanna Clarke”, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Deb Biancotti on Shirley Jackson Award shortlist
