Search This Blog

Sunday, March 31, 2019

#A-Z Challenge 2019: A Is For Australian SF Publishing

My theme this year is SF and fantasy, authors and worlds. But I’m starting with our SF publishing.

Australia has a fascinating history of SF and fantasy. According to Wikipedia, it was a ban on US pulp magazines during World War II(luxury) that gave local authors the chance to show their stuff. And show it they did! 

I remember some earlier Australian publications. There was always a strong fandom, and some anthologies, but the first professional Aussie SF publication, Void, was published by my lovely Ford Street publisher Paul Collins in the early 1970s. I stumbled on to his secondhand bookshop a few years later and bought some copies, in hopes of a sale. I never did sell to Void, or his book imprints Void Publications and Cory and Collins, though I sold to him later, when he had started writing and publishing children’s books. However, these publications did publish some of our top writers, such as David Lake, Keith Taylor and A. Bertram Chandler. David Lake is best known for his sequel to The Time Machine, The Man Who Loved Morlocks, though that was published by another small press. I have a copy somewhere on my shelves. Keith Taylor wrote fantasy for Cory and Collins, though the last time we met he was writing historical romance. The late Bert Chandler wrote a delicious space opera series with a hero called John Grimes, as well as Kelly Country, an alternative universe novel in which a science fiction novelist time travel visits Glenrowan on the night the Kelly gang confronted police there and changes Australian history. 




These days, much SF in Australia is published by small press, with what is sold in the bookshops focussing on fantasy, usually thick fantasy trilogies. Most large press Australian SF is published overseas and brought back here to sell. I think there are some Aussie authors whom their overseas fans don’t even know come from here.


But many of them are willing to write for small press here, however big their names are outside Australia. Sean Williams, for example, has had fiction published in semi-prozine Andromeda Spaceways, including a short piece set in the universe of his YA Twinmaker science fiction trilogy. This author is a NYT bestseller, and I have worked for ASIM(now ASM) and believe me, we have never paid much, which may be why we get so many overseas submissions by future big names who never return once they are being paid about ten times what we can afford! But local authors - that’s another matter. Sean McMullen, another bestselling local SF author, has also been in ASIM and has been published by Ford Street Publishing in recent years.  

As I’ve said, it’s difficult to publish SF here, except in small press publications. And small press is able to take chances the big companies can’t. 

We have lost a number of small press publishers over the years, including Satalyte Press, which closed very suddenly, leaving authors having to find new homes for their works, including one which had been launched only recently, and FableCroft publishing, run by Tehani Wessely, a teacher librarian who published many anthologies over the years, including Worlds Next Door, a  children’s SF and fantasy anthology in which I had a story. 

There are still plenty of them around, though. Coeur De Lion doesn’t take unsolicited work except for its annual anthology, Dimension 6, which is published on line. That has published the likes of Margo Lanagan, who is certainly well known outside of Australia, for such books as The Brides Of Rollrock Island and Tender Morsels and definitely for her devastating short story “Singing My Sister Down”, and writes both SF and fantasy. 

Aurealis has been around for many years and has given its name to the annual Aurealis Awards for versions forms of speculative fiction. It is now publishing only on line, about a story a month. 

Twelfth Planet Press does both anthologies and novellas. Mother Of Invention included work by Seanan McGuire(who is not Australian, but clearly willing to do small press). 

Ticonderoga Press, a small but formidable publisher, has published the fantasy collection Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier and a reprint of Lucy Sussex’s The Scarlet Rider, a book originally published by Tor, but doing much better in its current incarnation and with a nicer cover than the Tor edition. 
Ford Street Publishing specialises in books for children and teens, some of which are mainstream, but there are plenty of speculative novels as well, including a fantasy series Paul Collins is writing with Sean McMullen. Sean McMullen has also written two YA time travel novels for Ford Street, centred around Australia’s Federation in 1900.

There is a new publisher, Shooting Star, which has published a book by the wonderful Gillian Polac, among others.

The nice thing about all those small presses that specialise in spec fic is that there is always at least one book launch at every convention. The bad news is that I so often end up buying yet another book and have to find space for it...













23 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Sue - it'll be interesting to have the backstory to SciFi and fantasy publishing here - I'll enjoy reading, albeit I'm not doing the A-Z. You've given us a really informative post here - thanks ... cheers Hilary

Sue Bursztynski said...

Glad you enjoyed it, Hilary! Tomorrow’s post is about Robert Bloch, a fascinating writer of horror fiction.

AJ Blythe said...

I have to say, I haven't heard of any of those authors (although I have heard of "Timemachine"), yet I have heard of some of the presses. I tend to lean towards more fantasy than sf (although I do love Anne McCaffrey's sf).

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi, AJ! You might like to ask your Barbarians about Sean Williams, who has written some children’s and YA fiction which I bet their school library has. Margo Lanagan’s novel Sea Hearts(overseas edition The Brides Of Rollrock Island) won the CBCA Award for older readers a few years ago, but probably not the kind of thing your boys would like. You would, though, it’s a very powerful book set on a small island in Scotland where someone has the power to draw beautiful young women out of seals - selkies. All the men want one, so after a while, the human women leave and the only women left are the selkie wives who can only keep their sons, because the girls can’t survive on land...

Interesting you’ve heard of those small presses but not the authors! šŸ™‚

On Wednesday I’ill be posting about Isobelle Carmody, so fantasy!

Melanie said...

This is really fascinating! I didn't know much about sci-fi in Australia. Pulp fiction from America shaped so much of our understanding of sci-fi that it didn't occur to me it wouldn't be true there. Now I HAVE to read 'To The Galactic Rim' and 'Kelly Country'. Thanks for this post!

Sue Bursztynski said...

Thanks, Melanie! I am rather fond of pulp fiction, myself, but we also have our own history of spec fic here. I think you should be able to get the Chandler books quite easily in ebook, if not print. Enjoy!

Joanna Maciejewska said...

Interesting post. I didn't know there was a ban during WWII, but then, until 1990's, Poland had a ban on most Western culture, so much of information missed us. That's why I haven't heard of the authors you mention, but I did come across some of the presses, and I even had a short story in a collection from a publisher based in Australia.
I'm looking forward to your other posts!

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi Joanna! Which anthology was that? I’m curious now. That would have been in one of our small presses, yes.

Roland Clarke said...

I have to confess that until I read this post, I didn't know anything about Australian SF or fantasy publishing. In fact, the nearest is the NZ film The Quiet Earth - and an Australian film set at time of first moon landing.

I.L. Wolf said...

So fun to see your theme this year! I always feel like I get a taste of travel here.

Happy A to Z!!

Isa-Lee Wolf

A Bit 2 Read
@IsaLeeWolf

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi Roland! Not surprised you are unfamiliar with our SF and fantasy, but if you read it, there are plenty of bestselling Aussie authors you may not know are Australian. Markus Zusak, for example, whose Book Thief counts as spec fic, sort of, as it’s told from the viewpoint of the Grim Reaper. And that awful Matthew Reilly, whose books are huge bestsellers but one of whose books I once threw against the walk in disgust. Plenty more where those come from. Have you ever seen Farscape? Made here, with Australian actors. I think the film you mentioned must have been the delightful The Dish, though it’s not spec fic.

Thanks, Isa-Lee! Good to hear from you, hope you will visit during the achalkenge, even if you aren’t taking part.

Roland Clarke said...

Enjoyed the Book Thief. And yes 'The Dish'.

A Tarkabarka Hƶlgy said...

Fascinating! I always learn a lot from your posts... especially interesting how WWII accidentally kicked off a new thing in publishing...
Happy A to Z! :)

The Multicolored Diary

Sue Bursztynski said...

Thanks for that kind comment! I learn quite a lot from yours too - I loved the story of the Apricaot Princess!

Swapna said...

Very Interesting post!I like your theme! Will be back for more
Great start to the challenge!
Do check mine out at
https://thedreamgirlwrites.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/annoying-friends/

Sue Bursztynski said...

Thanks, Swapna! I have visited your site now. Looking forward to your visits.

Tasha Duncan-Drake said...

I had no idea that Aus was a hive of small presses for SF. Sounds like an interesting set up for the market. It's always a shame when small presses go under, glad that many of them are still going strong.
Tasha
Tasha's Thinkings - Ghost Stories

Sue Bursztynski said...

Oh, yes, Tasha, small press here really pinches above its weight. And the people who run them are local!

Joanna Maciejewska said...

Sorry for a late reply - I was swamped with work. (By the way, all your comments went through, and I dutifully replied. Thank you for taking your time to comment!)
The anthology was The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror III. The ebook is available for free from Smashwords, if you're interested: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/766107

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi Joanna, I will check out that anthology. Lovely!

Sue Bursztynski said...

Joanna, I have download added that book. Ah, yes, Altair and Robert Stephenson, been around for many years now! I do know this small press. I see there is a story by Jakob Drud - he sold me his first story for Andromeda Spaceways back in 2014, glad to see he is doing well!

Anne E.G. Nydam said...

It's really interesting that Australian SFF authors (and presumably readers!) have benefitted from being out from under the thumb of the big US and British publications. I know here in the US there's also lots of small press and indie stuff being published, but it tends to remain invisible in the shadows of the big-name stuff.
I look forward to seeing what authors you feature. And congrats on your story in an anthology!
Black and White: A is for Amphiptere

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi Anne! Oh, we still have the US publishers here - Australian branches, of course - but they are hard to sell to and they don’t publish a wide variety of stuff. They don’t take chances. If you aren’t writing Fat Fantasy Trilogies you are unlikely to get a look-in and most agents have full books anyway, so hard to get them to push your work if you can’t get one! And they don’t do anthologies, just the occasional collection of stories by one well-known author at a time. So if you write short fiction, small press is the best way to go. I mostly write for children, but I’ve been in a number of small press publications over the years.