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Sunday, March 29, 2015

Women's History Month - Spare Post

Some weeks ago, my friend Gillian Polack, historian extraordinaire and novelist, kindly invited me to do a post for Women's History Month on her Livejournal blog (and, as I discovered, her offical web site). The brief was to write about something that happened to yourself or a woman you know, and I wrote a post about my sister, who went from a secretary with a manual typewriter to a writer of articles published all over, and a delight in the Internet. After reading some other posts I concluded that I must have got it wrong; they all seemed to be about the author of the post. So I wrote another post and offered that. As it happened, Gillian ended up publishing my original post, so I have a spare I thought I might publish here before Women's History Month is quite over!

I'd only sold one story, a short, humorous fantasy tale, to Family Circle, via its annual competition, when I sold my first book.

I was at Richmond Girls Secondary College when this began. My previous school, Flemington Secondary College, had been closed down by the new Tory government, so that they could sell it to the Victoria Racing Club, which had lusted after the site for a long time, to turn it into a jockey school. I'd been there for eight years and was working with two wonderful people in the library. We had a delightful relationship. And then a new government, led by a man not unlike the current Australian PM, was in power, and was selling anything not nailed down.

Suddenly, my library was stripped bare and I was without a workplace. You can imagine how I felt.

Towards the end of January I was relieved to receive an offer from Richmond Girls'. My new library turned out to be old and shabby and had been a sewing room in the old days. But it was mine. I did have an offsider, a Vietnamese gentleman who taught maths and was hardly ever in the library. There was a technician who, for some reason, didn't like being in the library and was off socialising most of the time.

So it was up to me to do something to make the library worth visiting and looking at. My colleagues on staff were pretty helpful, one of them bringing in her Year 8 class to move the shelves around to let in some light. Then I started the displays. I wrote things to put up on the wall to go with them. History, science, SF, whatever the occasion called for.

And then I had a phone call from my friend Natalie Prior, who had started to sell quite a lot and is, to this day, one of the few writers I know in this country who can make a living out of it(and, unlike many of the others I know, managed to get going without being married at the time and having a partner to pay the bills so she could write full time). Natalie had been writing for Allen and Unwin and had rung to tell me that they had a new series beginning, True Stories, which was non fiction for children.

"I've told them about you, here's the name and number," she finished. I asked myself if I could even do non fiction, then looked at the library walls and thought, yes, I've done this. I can.

I phoned and made an appointment to see Beth Dolan, who was doing the series. Deciding to give myself the best chance I could, I researched a few things that interested me to make sure they were possible and prepared a list of potential book themes. When I met Beth, I invited her to choose a topic for me to write up as a proposal. She chose monsters.

That was my first book sale. It was in the very early days of the Internet; any Internet research I did had to be done at one of the few Internet cafes that had begun to turn up in the suburbs. It was at the end of a long tram ride, and cost $12 an hour. I limited it to once a week. The rest of my research was done in the State Library, two nights a week.

I didn't eat well, of course, buying my dinner as takeaway and eating quickly before my research session. It told on my body after a while, so when I eventually did another book I was more careful.

It was the first of several books and quite a few articles I wrote and I had quite a lot of work in those days, before publishers decided that children's non fiction didn't sell and stopped publishing it. These days there's only education publishing to do non fiction books and some published by museums to go with exhibitions. I did manage to sell to the education industry before my publisher suddenly left and was replaced by a gentleman who indicated he simply wasn't interested, despite the fact that my books for his company are still selling in the thousands, after twelve years. He told me in his last email that he has a stable of writers and doesn't want any more.

So, in recent years, I've gone back to fiction, mostly short stories, but I'll never forget that it was non fiction that made me a professional writer and taught me a lot. 

Thursday, March 26, 2015

The Warlock's Child by Paul Collins and Sean McMullen. Books 1 and 2. Melbourne: Ford Street, 2015.


The Burning Sea and Dragonfall Mountain are books 1 and 2 of a new children's fantasy series by veteran Australian spec fic writers Paul Collins and Sean McMullen. There are to be six, one published each month.





I say series, but it feels more like a single novel broken up into parts, with a cliffhanger at the end of each. This isn't the first time I've come across this in recent months. It might be argued that handing a child a thick book to read all at once might be off-putting. Or maybe it might be more off-putting to have the novel break off in the middle of a scene. At least the young readers won't have to wait long for the next one.

And this is definitely a children's book, despite the hero's age, fourteen. He thinks like a child and is, in fact, working as a cabin boy on board one of the ships of the Dravinian fleet, on its way to conquer the Kingdom of Savaria. He wishes he didn't have to be there. His father, the warlock of the title, (battle warlock), had insisted on having both of his children with him, so Dantar and his sister Velza have jobs on board. Velza is an officer, a fire shapecaster, and a stickler for the rules. The two of them don't get on, needless to say.

In this world, humans used to be able to produce wizards who could control all four elements - earth, air, fire, water - until they stuffed it up a thousand years ago. The dragons, who have control of all four magics, stopped this and broke it up so that each person who can do magic can only do one kind. Using magic in this way - as opposed to the far more powerful magic of Dantar and Velza's father - is fairly ordinary; each ship has specialists to produce fogs, arm the weapons, etc. And the enemy can do the same. But they can also use mirror technology to set ships on fire, the cads! 

And the dragons are interested in the fleet. Somewhere on board one of them there's a dragon chick. And Dantar has noticed that anyone who tries to harm him ends up as a pile of ashes...

There's enough humour in these two books to keep the tone light. There's certainly enough action to keep young readers continuing on, wanting to know what happens next. Dantar is a bit of a whiner, but will hopefully improve over the next few volumes; meanwhile, his understandable terror of being burned or drowned in the next few minutes adds to the humour. 

Some words are a bit hard for younger readers, but they are more or less explained by the "show, don't tell" bits surrounding them.

The cover art, by the wonderful Marc McBride, is gorgeous, reminiscent of the style of the Quentaris books(I think he may have done some or all of those too). 

Recommended for children ten years and up.

Buy the series from April on in all good bookshops or check it out here

Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Norma K Hemming Awards 2015: A Guest Post By Bill Wright




According to the trophy designer, graphic artist Sarah Xu, 

The award trophy consists of a mounted glass plate with a boab tree-hydra design motif. The circular  design represents the yonic (in contrast to so many phallic representations)   and the boab symbolises  the Australian speculative fiction landscape, the boab being uniquely fantastical in itselfand the hydra reminding us of diversity within that.”

 


Compared with a lot of other science fiction awards the Norma K Hemmings are quite new, having only started in about 2010. This year's will be presented at Swancon in only a couple of weeks. I've posted this on the ASIM blog, but as a fan, thought it might be nice to make this guest post available here as well.

Take it away, Bill!


The Norma K Hemming Award sponsored by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation

 

Contributed by Bill Wright, ASFF awards administrator on 21 March 2015.

 

What is the Australian Science Fiction Foundation and what is it for?

 

The Foundations website at: www.asff.org.au says its main purpose is to sponsor and encourage the creation and appreciation of science fiction in Australia.

 

It does that through the sponsorship and administration of writing workshops and short story competitions, seed loans to national conventions, and the publication of its newsletter, The Instrumentality. The Foundation has, since its inception, been a resource centre for everyone involved in science fiction in Australia.

 

The Australian Science Fiction Foundation runs two jury awards, viz.

 

       The A. Bertram Chandler Award for outstanding achievement in science fiction, established in 1992, where the winner is selected from eminent achievers nominated by Australian science fiction fans; and

 

        The Norma K Hemming Award for excellence in the in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability:

 

What is the Norma K Hemming Award, why is it given, and who is Norma K Hemming?

 

Established at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne in August 2010, the Norma K Hemming Award is given by the  ASFF for excellence in the in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability:

         in the form of science fiction and fantasy or related artwork or media.

         produced either in Australia or by Australian citizens;.

         first published, released or presented in the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is given.

 

The Norma K Hemming Award is gaining in prestige. Its gestation was foreshadowed in the late 1990s when academic researchers Van Ikin, Russell Blackford, Sean McMullen and Paul Collins uncovered works by pioneer Australian feminist science fiction writer and playwright Norma Kathleen Hemming.

 

Norma wrote in the 1950s, throughout the decade  before her death from breast cancer in July 1960. She was 33 years young.

 

Her writing fizzes with potential. The science was not always sound but it was on a par with the majority of science fiction writers of her day.

 

Most of her stories, but only two of her five plays, have survived.

 

Readers can visit Norma K Hemmings Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_K._Hemming for her biography, her bibliography, and how to purchase a collection of her works by Dr Toby Burrows, Principal Librarian, Scholars' Centre, University of Western Australia Library (M209).

 

One of Normas plays, 'The Matriarchy of Renok, in which a cast of formidable and at times vulnerable women wrest control of the galaxy from the depredations of alpha-males, was read over two successive Swancons (peak WA sf conventions) in the mid-noughties.

 

The Matriarchy of Renok was again performed at Aussiecon 4 (the 68th Worldcon) in Melbourne in August 2010) as a staged reading produced by Sean McMullen, with overhead space opera storyboard projections by Katoomba-based artist and digital image pioneer Lewis P Morley.

 

Besides being a powerful drama with lots of interpersonal tension, the play is a work of unalloyed, joy that is fun to read, fun to act in, and fun to watch. I cant understand why an enterprising movie mogul hasnt picked it up for global release.

 

Given the patriarchal and, by todays standards, sexist mores of the fifties, it was more that a tad courageous of Norma and her troupe, which she named The Acturians, to expose their parts to varying degrees of hostile response from science fiction fans. Male chauvinist denizens of the Sydney Futuran Society staged a mock auction where they sold he off to the highest bidder. Such was the excitement if thats the word for it that they are rumoured to have accidently set her hair on fire. She fared better in Melbourne, where she and her troupe were welcomed by members of the Melbourne  Science Fiction Club at their conventions. 

 

Gestation of the Norma K Hemming Award

 

The two Swancon readings were so popular that the Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation thought of instituting an award in Norma Hemmings memory, However, they soon realised that her importance as the pioneer feminist science fiction writer in Australials post-WWII history indicated a national focus. So their spokesperson, Emma Hawkes, referred the proposed award to the Australian Science Fiction Foundation for implementation.

 

At the time, in mid-2007, I had just been appointed to the ASFF board, taking over the position of A. Bertram Chandler Award administrator from Julian Warner who was, and still is, a tireless effectuator acrpss a wide range of activities in Melbournes science fiction community. Needless to say, my job description was upgraded forthwith. With no experience in awards administration and no small press contacts (except from being part of the audience at panel discussions at science fiction conventions) I was thrown in at the  deep end and told to set up from scratch an ASFF-sponsored Norma K Hemming Award with a national focus.

 

I quickly discovered that an ASFF board member had access to a vast array of resources, most of them human, chief among whom was the Foundations academic representative Van1kin.

 

Van Ikin the Icon

 

Van Ikin is an academic and science fiction writer and editor. He was, until his retirement in 2015, a Professor in English at the University of Western Australia, where he acted as supervisor for a number of Australian writers completing their post-graduate degrees and doctorates. They include such literary luminaries as science fiction and fantasy writers Terry Dowling, Stephen Dedman and Dave Luckett. In 2000, he received the University of Western Australia's Excellence in Teaching Award for Postgraduate Research Supervision.

 

He has reviewed science fiction and fantasy for The Sydney Morning Herald since 1984, but he is best known in the Australian science fiction community for his editorship of the long-running critical journal Science Fiction - A Review of Speculative Fiction.

 

Van was the inaugural winner of ASFFs prestigious A. Bertram Chandler Award for outstanding achievement in science fiction in 1992.

 

With Van smoothing contacts in academia and my awesome title giving me the clout to negotiate program space with with peak State and National convention organisers, I spent the next three years hobnobbing with my intellectual betters in the academic streams of those conventions. Taking our cue from the feminist bias in Normas stories, Gender was an obvious criterion for the award. Universities being hotbeds of disputation on social issues, my academic collaborators sought to identify additional criteria in that milieu.

 

The Eureka moment came when I suggested they look for skify elements in their search. Being possessed of minds of power that, for all I knew, might have been stable at the third level of stress (ref. Gray Lensman by E. E. Smith Ph D. first published in book form in 1951 by Fantasy Press),  they ascended into realms of abstraction inaccessible to mortals of lesser degree.

 

Coming down from on high, they evinced humorous `literary allusions that were opaque to me. Venturing to intrude where Angels fear to tread, I sought to enter the conversation with an observation to the effect that their gestalt was passing strange. Suddenly I was in there, informed by past reading from Weird Tales and Face in the Abyss by A. E. Merritt and wrestling with postmodernism  with the best of them.

 

Strange carved out of mind space by science fiction is acknowledged as its sovereign territory. Strange is the key word. Look for Strange in the human condition. Gender is strange, Sexuality is strange. Class differences are strange. The concept of Race as applied to human beings is very strange. Engulfed in a tide of memories long suppressed, I fought for stability on a mental plane of utter desolation contemplating the isolation of people in our midst whom many regard as strange.

 

Such was the gestation of the Norma K Hemming Award for race, class, gender and sexuality in speculative fiction  Disability was added as an additional category for the 2011 competition.

 

Establishment of the Norma K Hemming Award at Aussiecon 4

 

Despite its aforementioned careful gestation with inputs from the academic community at every turn, the inaugural Norma K Hemming Award presentation at Aussiecon 4 came at speculative fiction writers, editors and publishers from left field, so to speak. No other award encourages writers to have something worthwhile to say about all categories of otherness in the human condition. Isolated minorities have been have been ignored or characterised in negative stereotypes too often, and it is time to redress that.

 

Anyone who doubts the efficacy of having such an award to set standards for speculative fiction writers has only to read the 2013 winning entry, Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan, to be convinced that ASFFs full on approach works. In her novel, Margo shines fresh light on what it is like to be a man, what it is like to be a woman, what it is like to be human.

 

Parallel initiatives on the way to establishing the Norma K Hemming Award

 

As mentioned earlier, In the late 1990s a small number of fannish scholars including Van Ikin, Russell Blackford, Sean McMullen and Paul Collins researched the life and times of pioneer Australian feminist sf author and playwright Norma Kathleen Hemming (September 1928 - July 1960) whom a few surviving oldies such as Doug Nicholson (Sydney) and Mervyn Binns (Melbourne) knew well. Among publications arising from that research was a biography of Norma K Hemming in Strange Constellations : A History of Science Fiction by Russell Blackford, Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, published 1999 in the USA by Greenwood Press.

 

Dr Helen Merrick is co-editor, with Tess Williams, of Women of Other Worlds: Excursions through Science Fiction and Feminism (University of Western Australia Press, 1999) in which the contribution of the feminist fan community to science fiction is strongly acknowledged. This scholarly and informative publication makes the point that Australian SF fandom, in tandem with American fandom, has over the last 40 years moved to include issues of racial, sexual and cultural diversity and has contributed to major feminist fan movements such as slash fiction and the femmefan movement of the 1970s.

 

In a contribution to the work, Helen recalls that trailblazing Canadian femmefan Susan Wood visited Australia in 1975 for the first Aussiecon, meeting with and being strongly influenced by principal Guest of Honour Ursula Le Guin who ran the seminal writers workshop at that first Australian Wordcon. A year later Susan ran the first identity-oriented panel at a SF convention, entitled Women and Science Fiction. The following year WisCon (the feminist Worldcon in Madison, Wisconsin) was established as an annual event.  Obviously, Australian fandom benefited from these influences. Today, women are involved in Australian science fiction as authors, editors, publishers and fans at all levels.

 

Interestingly, Helen Merricks co-author, Tess Williams, is one of the four distinguished permanent Jurors for the Norma K Hemming Award.

 

The 2015 Norma K Hemming Award

 

The 2015 Norma K Hemming Award will be presented to the winner at Swancon 40, the 54th Australian National Science Fiction Convention in Perth on 2-6 April 2015. The judges, writer and editor Russell Blackford; editor Sarah Endacott; writer, editor and publisher Rob Gerrand; and writer Tess Williams, have released their shortlist:

 

Collection: The Female Factory by Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter published by

         Twelfth Planet Press in November 2014

 

Novel:         ‘Nil By Mouth by LynC published by Satalyte Publishing in June 2014

 

Novel:         ‘North Star Guide Me Home by Jo Spurrier published by

          HarperVoyager in May 2014

 

Novel:         ‘Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier published by Allen and Unwin in

         July 2014

 

Novel:         ‘The Wonders by Paddy OReilly published by Affirm Press in July 2014

 

Why is there is no cash prize for the Norma K Hemming Awards?

 

The Norma K Hemming Award has no cash prize because it is a fan award. Fan activity is much the same all over the world, conforming to traditions of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated entity described in its Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcon#World_Science_Fiction_Society.

 

Fan activity includes convention running, encouraging sf small press enterprises, and writer and reader education at conventions, writing groups and workshops - all run on a not-for-profit basis  by volunteers drawn from, and trained within, our ranks.

 

Within socially acceptable parameters of passion and dispassion, we capture the young and imprint them with a sense of wonder, respect for science and the scientific method, and an appreciation of good story telling in literature, art and theatre.  That community of interests breeds talent.

 

It is why there is no cash prize for the Norma K Hemming Award, and why ASFF cannot afford to cover competition winners travel expenses.  It is also why we go out of our way at conventions to have high profile luminaries in Literature and the Arts on tap to represent award winners when they cant be present to receive their trophies.

 

In conclusion, I wish to make the observation that ASFS does  not have an exclusive patent on Norma Kathleen Hemming. She belongs to all of us. There is nothing to prevent any fannish institution, e.g. the Canberra Speculative Fiction Group (CSFG), setting up, say, the Norma K Hemming Medallion for Romance of Science in Science Fiction, under criteria that support respect for science and the scientific method in storytelling.

 

Norma Hemming confronted gender issues head on. For its own purposes ASFF added additional categories of otherness in its award. Peak fannish institutions in each State may take different approaches.

 

It has been a privilege to have been entrusted with the development of the Norma K Hemming Award under the auspices of the Australian Science Fiction Foundation and it has been a  pleasure as its administrator to have developed the award to its present stature.

 

Health issues in old age may force me to pass the baton to a younger administrator. Or ASFF might have a succession plan. In either event, having fought the good fight and won, I am content.

 

Bill Wright                                                          Australian Science Fiction Foundation (ASFF)

ASFF awards administrator                                 Website:  http://asff.org.au/,

                                                                                                                                   21st March 2015

 

 
                             

The Ditmar Awards 2015 - The Short List!

Good grief, how did I forget to post this?

Listed below are this year's shortlisted books for the Ditmar Awards. Unlike the Aurealises, these are nominated and voted for by readers. For readers outside Australia, the Ditmars are our answer to the Hugo Awards. I read on Twitter this morning that the biting period has been extended by a week, so if you're a member of this year's Natcon or have a voting membership, you still have a few days to send your vote. There is a voting form here:  


There's an interesting analysis of the list on Michelle Goldsmith's web site, here:


While assuring her readers that this is a reader thing and they have nominated stuff they love, she points out, as a bookseller, that it's more likely to end up on the shortlist if a lot of people had the chance to read it, so distribution...

Anyway, have a look and do vote if you can.

Best Novel

The Lascar's Dagger, Glenda Larke (Hachette)
Bound (Alex Caine 1), Alan Baxter (Voyager)
Clariel, Garth Nix (HarperCollins)
Thief's Magic (Millennium's Rule 1), Trudi Canavan (Hachette Australia)
The Godless (Children 1), Ben Peek (Tor UK)

Best Novella or Novelette

"The Ghost of Hephaestus", Charlotte Nash, in Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing)
"The Legend Trap", Sean Williams, in Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press)
"The Darkness in Clara", Alan Baxter, in SQ Mag 14 (IFWG Publishing Australia)
"St Dymphna's School for Poison Girls", Angela Slatter, in Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 9, Issue 3 (Review of Australian Fiction)
"The Female Factory", Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter, in The Female Factory (Twelfth Planet Press)
"Escapement", Stephanie Gunn, in Kisses by Clockwork (Ticonderoga Publications)


Best Short Story

"Bahamut", Thoraiya Dyer, in Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing)
"Vanilla", Dirk Flinthart, in Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press)
"Cookie Cutter Superhero", Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press)
"The Seventh Relic", Cat Sparks, in Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing)
"Signature", Faith Mudge, in Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press)


Best Collected Work

Kaleidoscope, Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios (Twelfth Planet Press)
The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013, Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)
Phantazein, Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)


Best Artwork

Illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, in Black-Winged Angels (Ticonderoga Publications)
Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, of Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing)
Illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, in The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings (Tartarus Press)

Kethleen Jennings is a terrific artist, but I have to admit to being disappointed, here, that the wonderful Eleanor Clarke cover for ASIM 60 didn't make it to the shortlist. 


Best Fan Writer

Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work
Tsana Dolichva, for body of work
Bruce Gillespie, for body of work
Katharine Stubbs, for body of work
Alexandra Pierce for body of work
Grant Watson, for body of work
Sean Wright, for body of work