Is there anything unique about Australian science fiction? This is a question we at Aurealis have grappled with since the magazine's inception. In fact, Aurealis owes its birth to this discussion. If Australian SF is no different from its overseas counterparts, then what rationale is there for the existence of an Australian SF magazine?

As you've probably gathered from previous editorials, I'm most definitely in the "yes" camp when it comes to discussing this question. Stephen will be arguing the "no" case in the next issue.

Let me first tell you about a common phenomenon I came across when I used to teach a course called "Writing Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror". I could always be certain that in a batch of stories from a new class of would-be writers, there would be at least two or three stories set in New York. Now, I used to find this interesting in the light of the fact that the number of people in the class who had actually been to New York was nearly always zero. In fact, it was usually authors who had rarely or never travelled outside of Australia who were the ones most likely to set a story in New York. Their only experience of that city was from television and movies.

This phenomenon always perturbed me. I would always ask the writer the obvious question: why would he or she set a story in a city — and in most cases a country — which they've never been to? The point I would try to make is that a writer, even a writer of speculative fiction, writes most effectively if their work is grounded in what they know. If the only experience they have had of a city is second-hand, it is impossible for them to provide anything fresh. What is the point in writing if you are doing no more than rehashing other people's visions?

As you can probably guess, I didn't often go unchallenged when I expressed this view. The justifications from writers for their choice of setting usually vared from "New York is where exciting things happen" to the slightly more sophisticated argument that "science fiction is about technological change, the USA is the most technologically advanced country in the world, so it is therefore logical that a story relying on technology should be set there."

I think these views reveal that the cultural cringe is still deeply ingrained in Australian SF circles. Most of these would-be writers use the Internet most days. Their stories are typed out on the latest version of Office. They live in a country whose scientists are right up there in the world arena of biological reasearch — and it's in this area where much of the cutting edge speculation in SF writing is happening. And yet, they don't think to set their SF story in an Australian city. This is actually the most damning part of the whole thing. Not only do these writers set their stories in New York, they do so often without even considering the alternative. Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide don't even cross their minds.

There is often another defence that pops up in our discussions along the lines that the setting isn't really important anyway. Well, if it really is totally unimportant, then don't name your city at all. If it is important enough to warrant the mention of its name, then why not set it in an Australian city? Why are we defaulting to New York, not our own?

This brings me to the heart of what I wanted to say. Every writer writes their best work when they are writing as close to their own core as they can. Good writers write about what interests them, what fascinates them, what moves them, what impresses them, what angers them, what makes them laugh, and what makes them weep. In a sense, the best writers default to their own core. If you have somehow been programmed to default to someone else's core, then you have lost your way.

What I'm suggesting, of course, applies to far more than just the setting of a story. New York is only a manifestation of it. If you have grown up in Australia, and you are writing close to your core, then your work will necessarily be something essentially different from a work written by someone who has grown up in America. Australian and American societies are different. As a consequence, the people from these societies are different. Not alien-from-another-world different, but certainly different in a myriad of subtle and not so subtle ways. Is one default better than the other? That's a meaningless question. The absolute value of one over the other is not what I'm talking about here. What is important for each writer to do is to assess how close their default is to their own core.

That's what I've seen as part of the role of Aurealis: to give Australian writers a reminder of their Australian core. I hope we've succeeded.

Dirk Strasser