Category: fiction

Yesterday and Tomorrow

personby Gillian Polack
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When I need a break from the very bad news that wants to control my life and eat my brain, I watch old TV. The series I’m watching right now is the original The Tomorrow People. There is a reason for this. Not a very sensible reason. I’m not watching it because it’s primary fodder for my research (though if something comes up, I keep that something in mind): I’m watching it because it is the TV series that matched my age and interests when I was a teen. I needed to discover some parts of my past. Re-visiting the past is particularly useful when the present isn’t as easy as it could be.

Australia was a lot less USA-like in the 1970s, and The Tomorrow People is a classic science fiction show targeted at teens, and I was a classic SF tragic when I was a teen, and… let me get back to the beginning.

The Tomorrow People was shown from 1973 until 1979.

If I were to ask you to to take a wild guess as to when I began high school I hope that you would say ‘1973’ without hesitation. I was eleven-going-on-twelve. I was a science nerd and a history nerd but we had no words to describe that. The science didn’t need a term to help it fit into my life, because my mother was a science teacher. The history I had to argue for and persuade people that museums were worth visiting.

“You have half an hour” I was told when we went caravanning. Five minutes if it was a monument, half an hour if it was a museum. I found ways of spinning out that half hour. When I found a display of diamonds that had been found in streams (it was the goldfields, of course diamonds were found in streams, though in my case I found a few minuscule rubies and garnets, some gold and a vast amount of cassiterite) the whole family came in to investigate them. We understood rocks. All of us. Rocks and food. And, for me, baby clothes and irons from a century ago, and anything written or printed from before I was born and…

I’ve wanted to understand the whole world around me since I was about two. I was told “It will get boring” and it never has. A friend gave me an Australian cookbook from 1968 just this week, as an early birthday present (when things are difficult friends give early birthday presents, I suspect) and I cannot put it away until it has been thoroughly explored and my relationship with each and every recipe has been re-established… I knew this book when it first came out, you see. I was seven. I loved it then and, now, at 62, I have my own copy and life is suddenly so happy I needed to rewatch The Tomorrow People.

I am quite possibly, a failure, but I’m a failure who developed an early love of science fiction. SF and food are two of my happy places.

When I was heading for my teens, I read SF magazines from the US and watched a few TV series from the US but mostly, in the 70s, it was Doctor Who and Blake’s Seven and The Tomorrow People. For me it was, anyhow. The Tomorrow People was the one with children like me, who didn’t fit in. I couldn’t do telepathy, but I liked the TV series so very much that an aunt gave me Franklin’s ESP (a board game for incipient telepaths) for my birthday. I could try to be a Tomorrow Person. I could write stories about it. That need to write stories stuck, but my need to teleport did not.

My favourite actor on the series was Elizabeth Adare. I discovered today that this was because her acting style channels my inner teacher. I wanted to meet her. The actress, not the character. I probably still do. She was the right public person when I was the right age to pay attention. The series of The Tomorrow People where she was absent felt a little bereft. Why is this so? (A totally misplaced quote from an Australian science TV show, also from my childhood.) It’s because The Tomorrow People finished just when I left school and went to university. It lasted just the right amount of time. There was an adult woman on the television who was permitted to be intent and interesting and intelligent and when the actress was interviewed she was even more interesting and intelligent. We all need role models: I was very lucky to have that one at that precise and difficult time.

And now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have books to see and TV to meet.

The Future of Science Fiction

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I am not one of those people who think of science fiction as belonging to an in-crowd of geeky people, much less someone who wants to gate keep for the field. While I have frequently been annoyed by those in literary fields who refuse to treat SF with respect, my approach has always been to try to encourage such people to read in the genre and discover what it can do.

I do admit to being appalled by the way many of the rich and powerful people in tech seem to have read satirical and even dystopic science fiction and taken it as a manual for the future instead of a warning. And even though I worked at Grok Books (the predecessor to Bookpeople, a large and successful bookstore) in Austin lo these many years ago, I am somewhat mystified by the fact that a section called “Grok” has appeared on Twitter.

I gather that Elon Musk has been reading Heinlein, but I’m not going to click on “Grok” to find out where he’s going with it. I have seen a recent reference to Stranger in a Strange Land as “creepy” and I suspect I would share that feeling if I tried to read it today. (The hippie overtones were more appealing 50 years ago.)

My own preference is for written science fiction (and fantasy, for that matter). There have been some good SF movies and even better television – I got hooked on Doctor Who during the Tom Baker years and am fond of Star Trek – but my love for the genre comes from what really good writers can do with ideas and imagination.

That said, I do recall that when Star Wars first came out, I was thrilled by the way it changed movies. I do wish that shift had ended up being something more than really good special effects. Movies are not living up to their potential.

Stories and novels, on the other hand, often transcend theirs.

I was sent down this train of thought because I learned that during the recent WorldCon held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, Chinese companies signed deals worth over 1 billion dollars (8 billion yuan) related to 21 science fiction projects involving films, parks, and immersive experiences and other deals involving melodramas, games, and the metaverse.

The only mention of books I saw in the article describing the deals was this:

“Chinese science fiction is evolving from a solely text-based medium to a diverse range of formats encompassing comics, movies, games, VR, XR, toys, and film merchandise,” said Ji Shaoting, the founder and CEO of the sci-fi cultural company Future Affairs Administration.

Of course, this should be a boon for some Chinese SF writers, because all those projects are going to need writers for the games and movies and so forth, not to mention books and stories to mine for ideas.

But I must say, this is not the science fiction future some of us were looking for.

Continue reading “The Future of Science Fiction”…

Australian Gothic

personby Gillian Polack
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This week is just a small post, because I’m a bit pressed for time. When I am less pressed for time and when things are able to be announced, all will become clear. While you wait, you might want to think about the Middle Ages and about the Blue Mountains, not far from Sydney. Or you could ponder my published writing from last year, in the hopes that thinking about it will stave off new published work. Keeping peril at bay…

A friend and I talk about Australian Gothic as a style of story quite frequently (she’s an academic who specialises in Australian fiction, and it’s always loads of fun to chat with her) and she happened to mention a story of mine in relation to it. The story is “Ignore the Dead Bodies, Please” and it’s in the Narrelle Harris and Katya de Becerra anthology This Fresh Hell. Australian Gothic goes back to the nineteenth century, when local writers discovered they could create a whole new sub-genre by simply writing about the everyday. Australia is not the same as other continents, and for people whose ancestors are from Europe, it’s very easy to turn this not-sameness into something subtly creepy or even outright terrifying. On some days, a kangaroo looking straight at you is sufficient to create gentle nightmares.

Today’s question was whether my story is Australian Gothic? Or is it a satire of traditional sorrow? Actually, it’s both. And neither.

The forest setting I used is typical of an Australian Gothic setting. Trees are not uncommon in the sub-genre. The fact that the forest is a real one where murders actually happened is very much Australian Gothic, but the fact that it’s a forest specifically grown for tree harvesting is not. The fact that I brought the two together was me seeing what would happen if I included at least two variants on each and every theme. I did this the whole way through. It should be possible, if I’ve done my job right, to read the story from at least three directions. The first reading, however, should be for fun and for the frisson.

There are otherworldly beings in the story, of course, but I’ve kept them just a fraction away from the Australian Gothic… on purpose. I’ve given too much information for some and too little for others and been really rude about the worship of dark forces.

All this is quite intentional. Narrelle and Katya wanted stories that turned tropes around. I hate stories about certain types of bigotry, so of course I wrote one. I love Australian Gothic, so of course I wrote that, too. Mostly, however, I followed paths that were not very respectful and made a story that is its own. If you want a real horror story, look into the actual history of Belanglo Forest.

Boldly going…

personby Gillian Polack
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This week, I’m torn between writing about Thomas of Ercildoune and the wet weather. Let me find a third topic, instead.

In stories of all types, the general push of the tale help explain the impact of the words. Something that I encounter time after time in my research is that changing a single word to reflect contemporary understandings of hate speech does not by itself negate bias. It hides it a bit, that’s all until the underlying story doesn’t reflect that bias. If only the main character is given a place and a plot and everyone else is secondary to that character, then the story is about that character, for example.

In some circumstances the change itself can work very nicely alongside the bias and reinforce it. My current example of this is the change of “where no man” to “where no-one” in some Star Trek TV. “No-one’ opens the door to a wider sense of gendering, which is a good thing. The change, however, is in the TV prologue of Strange New Worlds, and Strange New Worlds is all abut discovery. The concept underlying the show reminds me every time someone says those words, that historically, European discoveries of new worlds (including the Americas and Australia) were mainly to exploit them (convert whole populations, make much money, populate with both the free and not-free– that kind of thing). Why does it remind me of that? All the non-human populations that experience First Contact in any Star Trek picture or TV show already know their own world. They are seldom watching out for strangers. How can they live in a place where no-one has gone before?

Also, the brilliance of the crew makes for neat plots of the ‘we can pull the wizard out of a hat – most people can only pull rabbits’ kind. These amazing folks are designed to be celebrated. Their very existence validates the right to discover and to settle. The newer shows are more likely to have scenes where what the discovered actually want, but these are not universal. What is universal is the sense of destiny and of empire building. That ‘no-one’ becomes rather important in this context. The language shared is that some people (mostly human or very close to human in many of the key culminating scenes) have discovery rights that trump the ancient peoples who own a land.

I will still watch Star Trek, but I will watch it and explain the bias to myself. There are other shows I wont watch at all. Reinforcing a bias isn’t nearly as bad as helping people hate, you see. But that’s a topic for another day.

Sultana’s Dream and other matters

personby Gillian Polack
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I nearly let my purple sparkly sorting hat decide what I would talk about this week. If I’d had just a little more energy, I’d have written a list of all the subjects (I’m thinking about so many things right now, ranging from whether I should write a vampire cookbook to how to deal with silencing in the current political environment) and chosen one at random. This is the first day in two weeks where the morning began with merely moderate pain, however, and fatigue is ever-present, so I played Solitaire. This was entirely the right thing to do.

The postie just rang my doorbell and she had a little package for me. In the package was something I’ve been after for a long, long time. Let me tell you about it.

The book is by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. It’s two novellas, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag. Hossain wrote Sultana’s Dream in 1905. Padmarag was translated in 1924, but Hossain wrote it in Bengali. Hossain was a feminist bilingual writer of speculative fiction, how could I not want to read her work? And it’s the hundredth year of the publication of Padmarag very, very soon. I shall celebrate, with food, music and with a reading. Whether that reading is for myself alone or online to share depends. If you’re reading this and would like to be a part of it, let me know!

One last note. It’s Mizrachi Heritage Month right now. Reading the writing of Mizrachi Jews or cooking delicious Mizrachi food doesn’t mean you support what Netanyahu’s doing. It does, however, help us understand a bit about the cultures are of the those Jews who never left the Middle East. Last year I read (here’s a list in case this appeals to you), and this year it’s all about the food. Next year it will probably be both. Right now, though, I’m playing the music of Ofra Haza: my favourite song (“Kirya”) changes the rhythm of my typing.

My background is mostly from Ashkenaz, with a bit of Sephardi. That’s different music and different food. Now, if you will please excuse me, I’m very excited about finally getting a copy of Hossain’s works and I need to read them at once!

Remembering Michael Bishop

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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photo of Michael Bishop

One of the things I always liked best about Michael Bishop is that he came across as so supremely ordinary. A slender guy with glasses, short-haired, wearing button-down shirts, who ate tuna-fish sandwiches for lunch and was politely friendly to strangers.

Looking at him, you might not guess that he had an outrageous imagination or the gift of writing effectively about the darker sides of human life. And you definitely wouldn’t know of his wicked gift for satire, one that came through in most of his books.

You might not also guess just how much courage he had, but that was something else he displayed in the same quiet way he did most things.

Most of the remembrances I’ve seen of Michael, who died November 13, mention what a good human being he was, and that was very true. But if you’ve read his fiction, you are aware that there was nothing naive about his goodness. He knew the darkness of the world and was good anyway.

He was our first teacher at Clarion West in 1997, an excellent choice to ease us into that intense experience. That’s where I first saw his courage, because he not only challenged us all to write a flash fiction that week, he wrote one himself and let all of us read and comment on it.

That seems a small example compared to the way he spoke out against gun violence after his son Jamie was murdered in the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. He spoke to people who had the nerve to say to his face that his son would still be alive if he’d been armed.

I am not surprised that some people think that way, but I am still appalled that anyone would say something like that to a human being grieving such a loss. That Michael persevered in the face of such evil — and I have no other word for it — is yet another testimony to his courage.

He was, of course, a brilliant writer. I think Brittle Innings is my favorite of his books. That book combines his love of baseball — and he did love baseball — with his deep understanding of U.S. culture and, of course, with Mary Shelley.

There are very few people who could combine all those things, I think. I once wrote a flash fiction in which he was hired as the general manager of a flailing Atlanta baseball team, one that referenced the book. I think he appreciated it.

To me, he was a teacher, mentor, colleague, friend. He blurbed my first novel and later on asked me to blurb one of his books — a greater compliment.

He leaves behind a legacy of written words and an example of a life well-lived.

But he also leaves a hole in the lives of many of us. This is not new to me, now. One of the realities of getting older yourself is that you lose people and the number of losses gets larger every year.

This isn’t going to change.

All we can do is appreciate people and be supremely grateful for all the things they’ve given us.

Michael Bishop gave us a lot. We’ve all got a lot of work to do to live up to his example.

Ghosts

personby Gillian Polack
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(2008-02-23 19:10)

My mind is dwelling in deep places today. I’m thinking about issues of trust and how far you can let someone into your life before expecting them to take some responsibility for their actions in relation to you. It struck me that this is something I need to write about and it might belong with my ghosts. This is either going to be a very funny novel or a deeply pensive one. It might end up both.

I’ve been on the verge of writing it for over a year. I’ve done most of my worldbuilding (all those map-thoughts for Canberra, exploring cinema food in the 40s – all that stuff) but even when I had a good idea of my characters’ lives, they hadn’t come alive for me. When that happens I sit back and I wait.

The first thing that happened when I sat back this time was that I changed one of the main point of view characters. I need someone with ghosts for a whole part of the narrative stream, otherwise the ghosts my characters meet are only interesting supernatural beings and are in danger of being plot devices. I need ghosts to resonate more deeply than that.

We all carry particular burdens and some people carry the burdens of the deaths of others. I don’t mean that these people are murderers, I mean that they live with a constant feeling of work unfinished, or of missing someone, or of not having done something when the time was right, or of being observers at a time when distance hurt. I think the only ghost I carry of someone who I was able to say a proper goodbye to is that of my father. This is why I want to write about ghosts, to be honest: I need to understand my own.

The trust thing is a different matter, but it is most definitely related to the fears that bring forth ghosts for some people. As you have probably realised, I’ve been thinking for a long time about racism and sexism and how the disabled can be victimised or made helpless, and how people with mental health conditions are often excluded from perfectly normal decision-making and activities. One of the big barriers for any of these groups (and for a bunch of others) is trust. How much can they tell people about who they are, and still be treated as themselves and as full human beings? Think of Showboat, and the complete change to a couple’s existence when the woman has to admit to being of mixed race.

Trust honoured and used well is one of the biggest gifts a human being can give another, and trust abused is one of the most frightening.

That trust abused doesn’t have to be on a grand scale to be frightening. It can be someone making a decision for someone else because of an unexamined assumption that the person isn’t capable because they’re in a wheelchair or on medication. I see that a lot in my work. I get it a bit from my health conditions. At the heart of it is an assumption about what society is and how people ought to work together. When societies become scared, this type of trust is one of the first victims.

One of the reasons I have done the activism thing is, in fact, because of the biggest cause of fear and hurt in society usually being trust abused. I feel very strongly that it’s the responsibility of each and every one of us to find out where we’re going wrong and to deal fairly with others. A higher level of trust in a society means a lower level of fear and hatred. It’s that simple.

There are ways in which abuse can be minimised – through education, through legislation, through enough money to provide neutral assistance for people with physical disabilities so they’re not dependent on friends or neighbours for everyday needs. I know I retired from all this because of my health, but I keep thinking that the issues are too important and that one day I’m going to have to go back. Maybe this novel is the beginning of me going back.

Right now, though, I want to examine those issues at a very personal level. Not my personal: my characters’. What happens after divorce, or instance? Do the changes in life you experience when you retire mean you have to learn how to defend yourself against well-meaning invaders of your quiet places? What happens to a 12 year old girl when she is thrust out of the family circle of caring? When can you admit to being different without friends thrusting you away or making decisions for you or reading the life you’ve always led as suddenly unstable?

Trust issues at a personal level lead to judgements. We all make judgements. How far do we let people into our lives? How far can an individual abuse that acceptance into our lives without doing anything they feel is wrong?

I don’t want to go down the heavy racism path. I want to think about less well-trodden ground. I won’t go into it here – I need to work out just how far any character will let anyone else into their life and what the effects are. I feel incredibly mean, because this is going to hurt them. The ghosts are going to be fun and delight by comparison with death by a thousand needling doubts.

So I have my stable of ghosts. And I have some very big issues for my main characters to deal with. Now I have to be patient and let it all come together. I can’t write until it has all come together. If I do, then the book will be all about issues and not about telling a story. Waiting – for me – is what shines enough light in the deep places so I can find the stories there.

Where the past comes to my aid…

personby Gillian Polack
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I’ve had my COVID update jab today. This means I’ll be clear in a few weeks and can maybe be a bit social. Unfortunately, I’m also one of those people who are COVID-vulnerable and who has a charming long and painful reaction to the vaccine.

Instead of a real post this week (and maybe next week and the week after, it depends on how long it takes to get through this) I thought you might like something from my past. Three things, in fact. If you scratch below the surface you’ll see a suggestion about how I approach the terrible things happening this month. The posts aren’t about that, however. The posts are about what I was thinking 15-16 years ago. The novels I was writing then were “The Time of the Ghosts” and “Poison and Light.” Both of them are still in print (“The Time of the Ghosts in its umpteenth edition, and “Poison and Light in its first) and the cover of “Poison and Light” contains artwork by Lewis Morley, who entirely understood my thoughts and dreams about the world of the novel. For a change, instead of saying “This book may be out one day, if I’m lucky” I can send you to the exact stories I wrote about, way back then. There aren’t many advantages to getting significantly older, but this is one of them…

(2007-11-26 21:45)

I need to tell you a story.

Once upon a time I was still active in the Jewish Community. At work on Friday afternoon I answered the phone and at the other end was a frantic community leader. “Gillian, you have to come to synagogue tomorrow, it’s very important.” He couldn’t tell me why. All he knew was that he had received a phone call from a well-known Melbourne rabbi (who had never met me) saying that Gillian Polack had to be at synagogue on Saturday morning. The rabbi knew I didn’t usually go to Shul, too, and he had said very firmly to “make sure she’s there”.

I couldn’t arrange a lift, so I hopped on my two busses very early and walked the half mile or so at the other end and found the Progressive Service and looked around for any reason I might have been summoned.

In front of me was a visiting cantor (but visiting from overseas – no links with me or mine), the backs of heads of the usual congregants, and about thirty aging pates. The usual congregants kept sneaking back to me to find out why I was there “Is there something happening this afternoon that wasn’t advertised?”

I whispered a question about the thirty heads to one of them and he whispered back “visitors from Melbourne, doing a tour – nothing to do with the cantor.” Somewhere in that crowd of heads probably lay my answer.

The service ended. Everyone stood up. The visiting group turned round to survey the back of the hall. I heard a woman’s voice cry, “There she is,” and one elderly lady ploughed out of the mob and towards me. The others all followed, like sheep. Some of them knew me, most of them were simply following their natural leader.

Valda is a friend. Except that it’s now “Valda was a friend”. I don’t believe it yet. Mum told me about her funeral just fifteen minutes ago.

She was nearly ninety and we just got on well. We snarked together at conferences and we stirred her kid brother (a close friend of my father’s and another friend of mine – the two of us have stood to the side at parties and brought down the tone of the proceedings since I was a teen) and we did a lot of very good volunteer work together. She died in her sleep, her life a resounding success.

I will miss Valda for a very very long time. And I will always remember how many people went into operation to make sure we got to chat when she was in Canberra. She could have rung me or she could have told my mother, but Valda simply told everyone she wanted to see me and – because it was Valda and we all loved her – everyone made sure it happened.

I will also never ever forget that horde of touring retirees descending on me. I was a whistle-stop for the Canberra part of their bus trip. And I bet Valda knew this when she called out “There she is.”

For the record, the questions were mostly about my Melbourne family. Also for the record, I asked in response “You’ve been away for a week and you miss them?” Valda hasn’t even been away a week and already there’s a hole in my life.

Foxes

personby Gillian Polack
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I’ve started writing this week’s post too many times, and each time it’s had a different topic. This is partly because life is a bit complex right now. It’s also because I am ranging intellectually from my normal research (the craft of writers in fairy tale retellings) to all kinds of other subjects because this is the Month of the Science Fiction Convention. Normally I also have an historical fiction convention but this year I had to make difficult choices. I haven’t missed the history, because I enjoy talking about it so much that people keep asking me.

What I’m thinking about right now (in this current hour, to be precise) are Medieval versions of the various stories about Renard/Renaut the Fox. I’ve decided to give one of my characters a name in his honour. The character will be a werewolf, and his name will be Reinhard Fuchs. This is how I continue gently with my fiction even when I have no time or energy to write.

Most of the things I’m checking up right now won’t enter into the Fox panel at the World Fantasy conference this week, at all. It’s a panel of writers, not a series of papers by Medievalists, after all, but me, I need to know the relationship between the different Medieval texts and how they fit with Jewish fox fables and Aesop and… I’m tracing a cultural trail for the fox stories in Europe. I have until my medical appointment. My medical appointment is late, which is why I have this luxury time to do fun things.

I’m sorry/not sorry that this post is so short. Tracing manuscript transmission and cultural connections is one of my favourite things and it’s giving me a happy hour in the middle of the afternoon. When I’ve reported into the doctor and he’s sorted me out, then I have to return to real research. I would dream of Renard, but… he’s not a great character to dream of. In fact, he’s a very good character to avoid.

Nicola Griffith’s Menewood

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Cover of Menewood, a novel by Nicola Griffith, showing Hild.I have been waiting to read Nicola Griffith’s Menewood since I finished Hild not long after it first came out in 2013. I grabbed Menewood as soon as my bookstore got it in this month and I read all 700+ pages (including notes) over about five days despite a long things-to-do list.

It was worth the wait. Not only that, reading it makes it clear that writing a book that is so deep and complex takes time. I’m not at all sure it could have been written any faster. It’s a sequel, and for that reason it works best if you read Hild first, but it isn’t like so many book series where each one is constructed in the same pattern.

The two books are historical fiction based on the very real St. Hilda of Whitby.  Griffith has written a woman — and in fact, a number of women — with agency while still writing a book that is very much embedded in its times.

This is a book set in 7th century England which shows all the ways that women of that time mattered.

Two things in particular struck me while reading: the writing and some undercurrents about power.

First the writing. I should say that I read every sentence, every word — no rushing over paragraphs of description to get to the action as I am wont to do, especially when reading historical fiction or big fat fantasy. This book repays that kind of attention, because there is something important in all those words, something that advances the story.

Griffith wrote an essay recently on writing immersive historical fiction that makes clear how she approached this book. In that essay, she says:

As a writer, I bring the reader into my fictional world through the characters’ physical, embodied experience. What a character feels, what they notice of their world—and how they feel about it—tells the reader a vast amount, and it creates empathy.

She does exactly that. Pleasure, daily chores, injury, hard labor, death — all are vivid in this book.

But that physicality is woven in with the politics, the wars, and the work of making sure everyone was clothed and fed and housed in a time long before the industrial tools that made some of that labor easy.

And all of that is woven into what is known of the history, so that even though this is a fictional story, it does not swear at the things we know of the past. Continue reading “Nicola Griffith’s Menewood“…