Dreaming Again: Thirty-five New Stories Celebrating the Wild Side of Australian Fiction

393 Pages·2013·1.6 MB·English

by  Dann Jack

Dreaming
Again
Edited by JACK DANN
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU
CONTENTS

Introduction — Jack Dann
Old Friends — Garth Nix
A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead — Richard Harland
This is My Blood — Ben Francisco and Chris Lynch Nightship — Kim Westwood
The Fooly — Terry Dowling
Neverland Blues — Adam Browne The Jacaranda Wife — Angela Slatter The Constant Past
— Sean McMullen The Forest — Kim Wilkins
Robots and Zombies, Inc. — Lucy Sussex This Way to the Exit — Sara Douglass Grimes and
the Gaijin Daimyo — A. Bertam Chandler
Lure — Paul Collins
The Empire — Simon Brown
Lakeside — Christopher Green
Trolls’ Night Out — Jenny Blackford
The Rest is Silence — Aaron Sterns Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn — Jason Nahrung
The Lanes of Camberwell — Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Lost Arts — Stephen Dedman
Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh — Jason Fischer Europa — Cecily Scutt
Riding on the Q-Ball — Rosaleen Love In From the Snow — Lee Battersby The Lost
Property Room — Trudi Canavan Heere Be Monsters — John Birmingham Purgatory —
Rowena Cory Daniells
Manannan’s Children — Russell Blackford The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross — Margo
Lanagan Twilight in Caeli-Amur — Rjurik Davidson
Paradise Design’d — Janeen Webb The New Deal — Trent Jamieson
Conquist — Dirk Strasser
The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga — Peter M. Ball
Perchance to Dream — Isobelle Carmody About the editor
INTRODUCTION
BY JACK DANN
Please forgive me, gentle readers, for a bit of lycanthropic railing and howling at the
moon, but there’s something I need to get off my chest; and it concerns the brilliant, edgy,
ground busting, wondrous book you’re holding in your hand. (And I’ll explain why I feel I can
hype this book with impunity in a moment.)
There is one very important name missing from the editorial credit.
Janeen Webb and I co-edited the prequel to Dreaming Again ten years ago. That book
was called Dreaming Down-Under. Publishers Weekly compared it with Harlan Ellison’s classic
Dangerous Visions; Peter Goldsworthy thought it was probably ‘the biggest, boldest, most
controversial collection of original fiction ever published in Australia’; Neil Gaiman said,
‘Ignore it at your peril; it’s the book your friends will be talking about’; Jonathan Strahan, co-
editor of The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, wrote that ‘It may be the
most important anthology of Australian speculative fiction ever published’; and Gardner
Dozois, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction annuals said that it ‘may well be the best
overall anthology of the year.’ It was the first Australian volume ever to win the World
Fantasy Award, and it also won the Australian Ditmar Award for Best Anthology. Stories from
Dreaming Down-Under dominated both the Ditmar and the Aurealis awards: All six short
story nominations for the Ditmar Award came from Dreaming Down-Under, and stories from
Dreaming Down-Under won the Aurealis Award in both the science fiction and fantasy short
story categories. Two stories in the volume were optioned for film, and others were chosen
for American Best of the Year collections. And in the recently published reference work
Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview, Donna Hanson writes: ‘This collection has
been credited with putting Australian writing on the international map. It brought to the
forefront Australia’s best-known authors and launched a few others. This anthology is so
pivotal to the Australian scene that it is still being talked about and is still in print.’
Not bad innings!
Since Dreaming Down-Under was published, Janeen and I have been constantly queried as
to when we were going to do another volume. Our refrain was consistent: ‘When the time is
right.’ We wanted to wait until the climate had changed … until new authors started writing
the stories that would shock, astound, and delight us; and we wanted to give the established
and up-and-coming authors showcased in the original volume time to develop new styles,
themes, and audiences.
Well, that time is here, and Janeen and I were supposed to co-edit this book, but
circumstances — damn all the fates, Norns, dark angels, doctors, germs, miasmas, and
especially hollow-headed bureaucrats who gather like storm clouds just waiting to mix a
multiplicity of metaphors and rain on our respective parades — have forced her to sit this
one out. Janeen is a private person. Her ‘circumstances’ are nobody’s business. But, dammit,
she should have had her name on the cover of this book.
Instead, she has looked over my shoulder, constrained me from my more florid idiocies,
provided support, wisdom, and critical feedback. After all, she was an internationally known
critic before she became a novelist.
So … what about this book? What about Dreaming Again?.
Well, for a start, this is what I wrote to the authors:
Dreaming Again will showcase the very best contemporary ‘wild-side fic(cid:415)on’
(those stories that have an edge of horror or fantasy, or could be categorised as
magical realism) and the very best genre fic(cid:415)on, which includes science fic(cid:415)on,
fantasy, and horror. We are looking for brilliant wri(cid:415)ng, style, and fresh ideas. Our
only criterion is quality. Your story can be ‘new-wave,’ or cyberpunk. It can be a
‘New Yorker story’, hard science fic(cid:415)on, so(cid:332) science fic(cid:415)on, magic realism,
contemporary fantasy. It can be a quiet vigne(cid:425)e or groundbreaking extrapola(cid:415)on.

We’re looking for the brilliant stories that we’ll remember in the years to come.
Dreaming Again will cross genres to showcase a combina(cid:415)on of the very best
Australian genre and non-genre short fic(cid:415)on. It will contain the cream of
Australian science fic(cid:415)on, fantasy, horror, Aboriginal fantas(cid:415)cal fic(cid:415)on, and
mainstream magical realism. This is the anthology that will shake up the
established thinking about the ‘shape’ of contemporary wri(cid:415)ng in Australia … that
will open up — and redefine — the literary canon.
We are very interested in science fic(cid:415)on, fantasy, horror (dark fantasy), and
stories of magical realism that use the Australian experience and geography; but
that is secondary to good story. If your killer idea takes place in the far future, or
in space, or on an alternative world — fine. Again, our criterion is quality.
This is an invita(cid:415)on to par(cid:415)cipate in the making of literary history. If you have a
story that represents the very top of your form, we’d love to see it.
I won’t apologise for shooting for the stars, for turning my back on reasonably good
stories and reasonably good writers, for wanting only the golden-tipped prose that makes
old men think they are young, or makes the hair stand up on the neck, or carries the reader
into that detailed daydream we call sense-of-wonder. I won’t apologise for wanting only
those stories that galvanize, that stimulate wonder and thought and laughter … that cause
discomfort … that in their small, subtle, and mysterious ways transform all those who
encounter them.
And, yes, I’m excited about the stories in this volume. And, yes, this probably sounds like
hype. So what? This book isn’t about the editor. It’s about the stories. It’s about the
numinous light shows and the Cimmerian darkness created by the talented authors who
contributed to this book. It’s theirs … their talent, their ideas, their unique perspectives on
life and death and the universe. They are the poets and tale-tellers and culture-changers.
They are some of the best writers working in this wild, beguiling land with its great red heart
and vast desert expanses. They are some of the best fantasists working in this country edged
by blue seas, coral reefs, rainforests, and sophisticated urban culture. It just so happened
that I was lucky enough to see these stories first and with great love and respect include
them in this showcase collection, this ten year celebratory sequel to Dreaming Down-Under.
In his generous preface to Dreaming Down-Under, Harlan Ellison wrote: ‘Because the work,
all this work, all this fresh, tough, and brilliant work, all these stories, they need no
California fantasist to shill for them. They speak for themselves. They have voices. Now, go
away; and listen to them.’
Harlan was absolutely right.
You don’t need my introduction or story notes; you just need the stories that are waiting
like patient angels — or disguised demons — to embrace you. So I would not take offence if
you gave up on this introduction right here and now and started reading the stories. In fact,
in this unusual ego-less frame of mind that I seem to have slipped into … I would urge you to
do so.
However, should you be in the mood for some shading and perspective and background,
I’ll soldier on. After all, this bit of the book is free!

Ten years ago, Janeen and I had an agenda. Then as now, we wanted to shake up the
established thinking about the ‘shape’ of contemporary writing in Australia: to open up —
and redefine — the literary canon to include the non-mimetic side of our literature. We
wanted to showcase the very best contemporary stories that pushed the envelope of genre
fiction and those stories that used genre tropes or might be considered magical realism. We
referred to those stories as ‘wild-side fiction’ to convey that evocative, almost dangerous
sense of being right out there on the edge. And we wanted to get the word out to the rest of
the world that there was something happening here in Australia.
Here’s a snapshot of how it looked back in 1998: The genre culture was vibrant. Writers
and fans were meeting regularly at science fiction conventions, which were rather small and
intimate. Mainstream publishers such as HarperCollins Voyager, Pan Macmillan, Random
House, and Penguin were developing new lists of Australian fantasy and SF writers; and new,
vigorous small press publishers such as Eidolon, Ticonderoga, Aphelion, and MirrorDance were
pushing boundaries and publishing some wonderfully quirky and imaginative work. There
was healthy competition between the two major Australian genre magazines Eidolon and
Aurealis, each featuring cutting-edge fiction by Australian authors. Jonathan Strahan and
Jeremy Byrne were editing the annual Year’s Best Australian SF, fantasy, and horror fiction;
and although the Australian Ditmar Award (voted on by readers) had been long established,
two new professional awards were created: the Aurealis Award and the Turner Award. A
generation of hot new talented writers such as Sean Williams, Simon Brown, Lucy Sussex,
Stephen Dedman, Aaron Sterns, Paul Brandon, K. J. Bishop, Kate Forsyth, Richard Harland,
Ian Irvine, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Margo Lanagan, Scott Westerfield, Fiona Mcintosh, Janeen
Webb, and Kim Wilkins were making their bones and pushing the various envelopes; and
established professionals such as Garth Nix, Terry Dowling, Damien Broderick, Isobelle
Carmody, Sara Douglass, Sean McMullen, Greg Egan, and Rosaleen Love were writing at the
top of their form. Harlan Ellison thought we were experiencing a Golden Age of Australian
Science Fiction, and, indeed, it sure as hell felt like something was going on. In fact it felt like
the heady days of the late 1960s when SF writers in England and the United States
challenged genre conventions and started a period of experimentation called The New
Wave.
What were we challenging ten years ago?
We weren’t really challenging genre conventions (although we did, sans polemic and
proclamations); and although there was plenty of literary experimentation, we weren’t part
of any movement. We were part of a vibrant, creative community; and we felt that
something new and exciting was happening, and it was … us. It was as if we had suddenly
broken through the barriers of distance and isolation. Yet although individual writers had
gained international recognition, Australian genre fiction in general was still flying under the
radar. Most Australian genre writers weren’t connecting to the influential American,
European, and British publishers, editors, critics, and, most importantly, readers. All that
began to change after the publication of Dreaming Down-Under and the catalyzing World
Science Fiction convention, a truly international event, which was held in Melbourne. A
number of American editors, friends that I had known for dog-years, approached me with,
‘Damn, you were right about these Australian writers. They’re terrific’ I was much too
humble and ego-less to say, ‘I told you so.’
According to The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, the ‘renaissance’ in Australian
genre fiction gained wide acceptance thanks to Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy Byrne’s
Australian Year’s Best series, David Hartwell and Damien Broderick’s huge reprint anthology
Centaurus … and Dreaming Down-Under.
So we all did it in the nineties.
Why then do a sequel to Dreaming Down-Under now? After all, a sequel is a dangerous
sort of two-headed literary beast. Dreaming Again will inevitably be compared with
Dreaming Down-Under. There sure as hell better be a good reason for this book.
So what’s changed?
Well, thanks to the phenomenon known as Clarion South, often called a ‘boot camp for
writers,’ some astonishing new writers have surfaced … and we find ourselves once again
squinting into the bright reflections of another gold-tinged time … a continuation and
consequence of Australia’s golden age of genre. Writers such as Kim Westwood, Jason
Fischer, Chris Lynch (and his American collaborator Ben Francisco), Christopher Green, and
Peter M. Ball are all ‘products’ of Clarion South. They are some of the names that we will
certainly recognise in the future. The ‘New’ writers of the 90’s such as Trudi Canavan, Cecilia
Dart-Thornton, and Margo Lanagan are making seven-figure deals, winning awards, and
making international names for themselves, while the last generation of ‘hot’ writers, such
as Garth Nix (who has over four million books in print), Sean Williams, Terry Dowling,
Isobelle Carmody, and Sara Douglass, have garnered major international audiences and are
going from strength to strength.
There is also a generation of writers who have been around for a while … and have
suddenly sparked. Richard Harland comes to mind. He won an Aurealis Award and the
prestigious Golden Aurealis Award for his satiric horror novel The Black Crusade. For my
money, his Dreaming Again story ‘A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead’ is a knockout.
And … there are those important established writers who did not have stories in the original
Dreaming Down-Under, such as the bestselling authors John Birmingham and Garth Nix.
When I started editing this anthology, I’ll confess that I was worried that I might not find
the keep-you-up-at-night, genre-bending stories by the new Young Turks. Man, was I wrong
about that.
In short, enough time has passed.
It’s a whole new world of writers working under the southern sun.
It’s steam-engine time again.
It’s time to take another laser-lit look at what’s happening in this special place.
And lastly — and firstly and in-between — it’s all about the stories!
I invite you to go forth into this land of wonder, terror, and mystery … this wild side of
Terra Australis.
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