Australian Science Fiction

by Van Ikin, Van Iken (Editor)

Ikin, Van, ed., Australian Science Fiction

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Justin Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely comprehensive selection of Australian Science fiction stories from 1845 to 1980. While I found the earlier stories to be fantastic in their antiquity, the later stories bored the hell out of me. Van Ikin gives a comprehensive and extremely knowledgeable foreword that encompasses some 50 pages.

For the Aussie Sci-Fi fan who wants to get to know the homegrown stuff, this is an invaluable book.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of science fiction by Australian writers might be appropriate for use in a course on the subject. The selections certainly do provide a historical sample of major works and authors but about half the collection consists of excerpts from novels. This can be helpful for understanding the development of a genre, but for casual reading it is rather frustrating to be dropped in media res or to not have anything like a complete narrative. The novel selections do help support editor Van Ikin's excellent introductory notes and illustrate his discussion of Australian science fiction as a specific national tradition. In the older works there is a strong sense of space and several works present the vast interior of the continent as a zone of mystery and potentiality. This idea reminded me of similar visions of the American west common in popular literature, as well as 19th/20th Century science fiction depictions of tropical rain forests, remote islands, and the Polar regions. Another feature of the earlier works (present in many of the selections) is racialist and racist: contempt, mixed with fear, of the Aboriginal peoples and a Yellow Peril paranoia about Asians. There are also a few works that follow the utopian tradition and offering social commentary in the process.

I found these to be the better stories in the collection:
“Human Repetends” by Marcus Clarke
“Re-Deem the Time” by David J. Lake
“One Clay Foot” by Jack Wodhams
“Inhabiting the Interspaces” by Philippa C. Maddern
“The Gentle Basilisk” by Dal Stivens
“The Words She Types” by Michael Wilding

[Corvid · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main thing to be learned from this book is that white Australians will be racist in ways that you didn't realize existed. Everything in the pre-modern portions of the anthology is distasteful in a way that a lot of Lovecraft's work is. The rest of it is at best mediocre--one of the modern-era stories is eerily similar to a short story from another anthology, except the place originally inhabited by a dog is taken by an aboriginal tribesman.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gladdens the heart to delve into some examples of early Australian science fiction and find much to be enjoyed :)