Guest Blog 1
Gillian Polack joins Samjoko Magazine today to discuss an anthology she compiled and edited. Read her blog below.
Gillian Polack
We all have obsessions.
Mine is with how we carry our cultures. Some years ago, a publisher asked me “What is your dream anthology?” I replied, “I would love to edit an anthology about Australian cultural baggage. A speculative fiction anthology. I know exactly which authors I would invite.” Sharyn Lilley, the editor, said to me “Invite them then, for I want to read that book.”
I had two lists of dream writers for this perfect anthology, but I never reached the second because acceptances from the first list filled the volume. We called it Baggage. It was seen and loved and sold out of its print run very, very quickly.
A US publisher took the baton for it when the Borders’ collapse took Baggage out of print. It’s been available in the US since 2014. Available but not visible. No-one was talking about it, because no-one knew it was back in print. They also didn’t know how amazing the stories were. Each and every author took my idea and turned it into something special. Such an amazing set of stories should not be invisible, which is why it’s the subject of today’s post. Let me introduce you to each of the stories, in the order they appear in the book.
The authors are some of Australia’s best. I’m very, very fortunate to have worked with them.
How do I explain K. J. Bishop’s fiction without referring to The Etched City? I can’t. How can I explain The Etched City? I also can’t. Her story “Vision Splendid” in Baggage is the far end of the science fictional spectrum to The Etched City, in any case. It’s about the beauty in small things, and the shape of a human life..
Jack Dann is best known for a prize-winning novel, The Memory Cathedral. I love that novel so much that no-one may borrow my copy of it. Not ever. When I asked him for something about cultural baggage he said, “I have a very special poem.” He had permission to write about the experience that’s at the heart of the poem. A rare moment of his life telescoped into a poem.
Kaaron Warren is one of the world’s best horror writers. Whenever anyone asks me to explain her writing, I have a bad habit of saying, “Imagine that the protective outer layer of your skin has been peeled off, and that a bad wind blows over it, cold and chill and dangerous.”
My favourite editing experience was when I worked with Yaritji Green. All the stories in the volume draw on the writer’s cultural background and so Yaritji drew on her mother’s Yankunytjatjara culture. The writing and editing took on a very special shape as the story was approved by Elders at every stage. It’s another small story that is big, about what death means and how important respect can be.
Janeen Webb wrote me a story called “Manifest Destiny.” Janeen is an historian as well as a fiction writer and she is such a wordsmith that, when I read the first draft of her tale, it felt seamlessly nineteenth century. It tells us of explorers and settlers and dreams and nightmares.
A New Zealand glacier is one of Lucy Sussex’s characters in “Albert & Victoria/Slow dreams”. It’s another of the clever and thoughtful stories in this volume that undercut assumptions that European-origin people carry with us into places that are not, were not ever really European.
Most readers know Jennifer Fallon for her exciting trilogies. Much adventure. Fascinating characters. Big fat fantasy or science fantasy at its very best. The story she wrote me is entirely different. “Macreadie v The Love Machine” is sardonic and sarcastic and a bit sly. It’s set in Sydney in the near future and has a famous actor at its heart. This story mocks the Australia we all think we know.
Maxine McArthur has slipped out of view recently, but, before then, she wrote some of the best Australian hard SF around. Her fictional spaceship felt so real that someone built it. “A Pearling Tale” is, however, more of a ghost story, set in our far north. It feels no less real. Every time I read it, I grip the desk at a particular point, just to remind myself that I’m at my desk and not on a dangerous voyage.
In every good volume, there’s a story that takes off the safety harness and roams into places that no-one has ever gone. Tessa Kum wrote that story for Baggage. “Acception” is about multiculturalism torn apart and people’s lives destroyed. It hurts to read and it’s impossible to stop reading. It’s brilliant.
I followed “Acception” by a story full of heart, because “Acception” is so full of hurt. Laura E. Goodin’s “An Ear for Home” tells us of sound and light and being impossibly far from home.
Deborah Biancotti’s “Home Turf” is all about the legacy of war, and about Sydney. I haven't been to Sydney in far too long because of perpetual lockdowns. “Home Turf” is an embattled Sydney and perfect reading for right now.
Monica Carroll is a Canberra author and not well-known outside Canberra. This is a great pity. She’s a literary writer, who embeds the fantastic deeply into her tale. “Archives, space, shame, love” itself is about memory and life and paper and dreams.
The last story is by Simon Brown. He’s a good novelist but an amazing short story writer. This is why he has the last word.
Gillian Polack bio:
Dr Gillian Polack is an award-winning Australian writer and editor. She was recently awarded the A Bertram Chandler Award, for lifetime achievement. Her most recent novels are The Green Children Help Out, Borderlanders, and Poison and Light. Her novels are mostly science fiction and contemporary fantasy, which is a bit odd, for she is an ethnohistorian. Her hobbies include cooking, researching cultures and reading. She claims to have a collection of select and very attractive fans.
Visit her website here.
