Suburban Sprawl
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been seeing the table of contents for upcoming Twelfth Planet Press anthology Sprawl pop up on various author blogs. I feel particularly invested in this anthology, not just because I’m in it (with the only short story I’ve written since Jem was born!) but because GJ was staying with us as she sifted through the stories, finding the ones that would fit together to form the anthology (or something like it) that she had in her head. And yes, I managed to peek at some of the other stories as she considered them, and talked about them.
The question that GJ seemed to chew over most often - and it was a question I had about my own story, back when I was writing it - was “is it suburban enough?” The idea of an Australian genre anthology that focuses on suburbia rather than the more often-seen country/bush/outback and even urban settings of Australian spec fic was an important one, worthy of being embraced rather than skirted around as a theme. We ended up having many conversations about Australian identity, and suburbia, as well as the kind of fantasy people are writing in Australia and internationally. The most interesting thing is that there is no single universal experience about suburbia - some are more urban, some more rural, some are stories about drugs and sharehouses, some are stories about families and maternity. Suburban fantasy, in other words, is not something that can be summed up in a single story, but the anthology is the perfect medium for it - building the idea through many stories, many characters, and many settings.
Australia is just so damned big - and so different, from place to place. There may be common themes in stories told about Brisbane suburbs, or Perth suburbs, or Hobart suburbs, but there’s a lot different too. It seems to me that one of the best ways to talk about cultural identity in a wider sense than just an individual’s experience is to gather a variety of stories and hope that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
It’s a long time since I’ve been this close to an anthology in progress, and it’s been fascinating to watch it unfurl! The rest of you will have to wait until later in the year, of course, to read the book for yourselves. But in the mean time, here is the (possibly not yet complete) Table of Contents:
Liz Argall - Seed Dreams (comic)
Peter Ball - One Saturday Night, With Angel
Deborah Biancotti - Never Going Home
Simon Brown - Sweep
Stephanie Campisi - How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market
Thoraiya Dyer - Yowie
Dirk Flinthart - Walker
L L Hannett - Weightless
Pete Kempshall - Signature Walk
Ben Peek - White Crocodile Jazz
Tansy Rayner Roberts - Relentless Adaptations
Barbara Robson - Neighbourhood Watch
Angela Slatter - Brisneyland by Night
Cat Sparks - All The Love in the World
Anna Tambour - Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of Paradise
Kaaron Warren - Loss
Sean Williams - Parched (poem)