The 2005 SnapshotAustralian Speculative Fiction
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The forty three interviews below were conducted over a one week period in April. There is just over forty thousand words all up. There was no grand plan with these interviews. Indeed, there was no plan. It began as a bit of fun, the idea coming from a five question interview meme that went round livejournal much like those annoying forwards you get from friends (to explain it to those of you who don't have a blog). The meme was simple: a person asked you to interview him/her, and you provided five questions that needed to be answered. Initially, I was looking to kill a bit of time, and so I did a few. The answers I got were casual, laid back, and honest, and I found myself enjoying the experience of digging out some questions to toss at people and see what they returned with. In addition to this, I got to indulge in one of my favourite past times, which was telling people how they would die and then finding out what they would say to God. A twist on that Actor's Studio question that was, by any rate, thought up by a French guy. After I'd done about five or so writers and editors I knew, I thought, You know what would be cool? If you could drag the entire Australian Speculative Fiction scene out here and interview them. That is, literally, how it began. I did the meme on Saturday afternoon, and by the night I had emailed a couple of writers and gotten to them to agree to take part, and then, on Sunday threw the doors of my blog open and told everyone that if they had something to pimp, that they should bring it down. I honestly didn't expect to have more than a dozen people agree to it, and I suspect that this would've been the case if Sean Williams, Cat Sparks, and Jonathan Strahan hadn't jumped on the idea from the start. Each one of them carries a level of credibility and respect that, when other people in the same scene hear they are taking place, realise that maybe the idea isn't ridiculous, and they should take part too. Without any of them, I don't think it would have worked. But with their presence, I had more than enough people to make my eyes bleed by Tuesday. Indeed, I ended up going over by a day. In the interviews below, you will find a nice mix of people in the Australian Speculative Fiction scene. High profile editors, popular fantasy authors, new authors starting with short fiction, publishers of the small press, authors with short story collections, editors at ezines, small press novelists... whatever your taste, there's something for you in the mix. Of course, with that said, it is a list of people operating in 2005 and it is, by no means, comprehensive. If another one of these was done in 2006, it would have different writers, different editors, different magazines, and different tastes. (If I did it again next week, I would have different people all together, I suspect.) That said, why should you read these interviews now? Well, to my mind, there are two reasons. The first is that it gives you a good idea of what is being produced in 2005, and if one of these books catches your fancy, you can go out and find it. The second, however, will be in the years to come, assuming, of course, that the Great Apocalypse doesn't come and destroy the internet for housing porn and illegal music. In a couple of years you (and if a couple of years has past, you can now) look at the people here and see what happened to them. Did Matthew Chrulew disappear in a haze of drugs and police enquiry like so many thought he would? Are the interviews of Ben Payne and Robert Hoge the early indication of the shootout they had in the wilds of Queensland just after one issue of Aurealis? Did K.J. Bishop get offered a shitload of money to write a clone of The Etched City, and now lives in a beautiful house in Venice, denying all knowledge of our existence? The important questions can only be answered with time, I guess. What you will find below are interviews that are, at various turns, honest, arrogant, dismissive, funny, and full of foul language. You'll like some, you'll dislike others, but not one of them is alike. There's even the sense that in each of them, the interview mask has slipped, and you're getting a glimpse of each author as a casual individual, telling you about their work, about the difficulties, the pleasures, and why they do it. From my point of view, that's what made the experience of interviewing forty three people in a week worth while. Ben Peek | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Editor of the Gastronomicon. | |
Author of The Divergence Tree. | |
Editor at TiconderogaOnline and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of The Etched City. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of Metal Sky. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Co-editor of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction. | |
Writer and co-editor of Shadowed Realms. | |
Author of Never Seen by Waking Eyes and Other Stories. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Editor and publisher of Orb Speculative Fiction. | |
Editor at TiconderogaOnline. | |
Author of Doorways for the Dispossessed. | |
Co-editor of Aurealis. | |
Co-editor of Daikaiju!. | |
Author of Reserved for Travelling Shows. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of Black Juice. | |
Author of Tales from the Crypto-System. | |
Editor in Chief/Publisher of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. | |
Author of Less Than Human. | |
Author of Odalisque. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of The Innocent Mage. | |
Co-editor of Aurealis. | |
Co-editor of Daikaiju!. | |
Editor of Superluminal 1. | |
Publisher of Xuan Xuan. | |
Publisher of Agog! Press. | |
Publisher of Altair Books. | |
Co-editor of The Locus Awards. | |
Author of Spotted Lily. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Publisher of Prime Books. | |
Author of short fiction. | |
Author of The Grinding House. | |
Editorial committee member at Borderlands. | |
Author of Giants of the Frost. | |
Author of The Blood Debt, Resurrected Man, and Geodesica: Ascent with Shane Dix. | |