Over the years, the one thing I’ve learnt about Australian speculative fiction is that they really like awards.

Don’t believe me? Well, there’s the Aurealis Awards, which give out fourteen statues, the Ditmars, which give out thirteen, the Tin Ducks that give out seven, and the Australian Horror Writers naked chick statue, which is given out to one person each year. These thirty five awards are particularly impressive when you give that you’d be lucky to find as many people in the same room who have read the list of nominated works in any prize. Which is, of course, why a new award is such an impressive thing to have emerge, and to top it out, it’s a state wide award, much like the Tin Ducks, which means that the nine people in Victoria who’ll be interested in this will have a fair shake at the nine nomination categories:

The Continuum Foundation has opened nominations for the inaugural Chronos Awards for excellence in Victorian [ed. As in Victoria, the state of Australia] SF, fantasy, and horror in 2008.

The categories are:

Professional Categories

* Best Novel
* Best Novella or Novelette
* Best Short Story
* Best Collected Work
* Best Artwork

Fan Categories

* Best Fan Writer
* Best Fan Artist
* Best Fan Publication in any Medium.

Special Award for works not eligible in existing categories

* Best Achievement

Nominations from “natural persons active in fandom” or from full or supporting members of the Continuum 5 SF convention are open from now until June 28.

Nominations can be made by:
1. Email to awards@continuum.org.au; or
2. Post to - Chronos Awards Committee, 65A Limestone Ave, BRADDON ACT 2612; or
3. Lodging a comment at the Arcadiagt5 LiveJournal.

The Chronos Awards will be presented at Continuum 5 in August.

Really, I’m struggling to see why anything in Australia would need yet another award. I have no idea what it supports, or even encourages, and given the continually shrinking audience of the work produced here, I do wonder why the energy isn’t being put elsewhere…

Link.

Warwick Thornton’s first full length film, Samson and Delilah, is a quiet, understated piece about young love and the lives of Aboriginal teenagers in a small, central Australian town.

It is a political film. To me, it is primarily a political film. A lot is said about the romance between the two teenage protagonists (Samson and Delilah, obviously), but as I sat there, watching the opening scene where Samson wakes up, reaches over, and begins the take with an intake of petrol (or paint), it was hard for me to move beyond that initial statement. We’re not talking love here, the film says, at that moment, we’re talking life, existence, a world that continues to exist right now. The conversation continues as silence that surrounds Samson fills the film–his plight and life need another to speak for him, which in this case is Thornton–and the empty, yet routine days that both he and Delilah find themselves in. The political discourse continues when you begin to pick apart the film even more: Samson acquires a wheelchair early in the film that he rolls around on for amusement, and there is, within that, a statement about the crippled life that he leads. The wheelchair reoccurs, too, when Delilah’s Nana, elderly and sick, must be taken on a second wheelchair to a clinic every day to be checked. And the wheelchair reoccurs again, at the end of the film, too, a rickety, old thing to convey the crippled lives that cannot be left behind.

I write that last line, knowing, to a degree that it sounds as if it is condemning the Aboriginal life that Thornton portrays in the film; but, without having him here to say yes or no as to it being his intention, the life that he does show is one that is crippled. The community Samson and Delilah live in is run down, aimless, a place so isolated and removed from society that the people living in it are lied too and stolen from. The community itself, in turn, is at times violent and unsympathetic, the frustration of the people in it struggling to find a way to voice itself positively. It is in response to that behaviour that Samson and Delilah leave the community, and head into the larger world, where they find a predominately white community that distrusts them, views them as criminals, objects, and where theft and low grade, ugly drugs are the only things that are available to them for a life. It’s hard to watch the scenes where Delilah, in an attempt to make money, tries to sell a painting to a group of white men and women in a cafe: painfully shy, she moves from table to table, only to be dismissed with hand wave, or a shake of the head, her work ignored, her presence brushed away while they eat and live. When she returns, angry now, having become a victim to the world, her new painting is ignored, her more aggressive manner rejected until, finally, she is told that she has to leave. There is no place, the film says, for you here: you’re either ignored due to your politeness and shyness, or you’re told to fuck off because your anger and frustration bothers people.

To me, it is a political film, and I dug it on that level. It’s neither preachy, nor angry, but rather honest and, to a degree, hopeless. There are no solutions in Thornton’s film to the issues he present and the community the two leave ultimately becomes like a safe haven in response to the rejection they receive in the city.

Seeded within this, of course, is the love story that most people have written about. It’s wordless and awkward, but there’s an honesty between the two actors, and you hope for them to find an ounce of happiness by the end of the film, which may seem strange in the empty and silent landscape that they exist in.

Anyhow, it’s pretty cool. Worth time to go and see.

I found myself giving a definition of steam punk today to a friend. There were a couple of other people chiming in with their examples (it was in a friends locked post, hence no linkage), suggesting the usual assortment of books such as The Difference Engine. Me, I suggested a site called Brass Goggles:

What I like about this site is that it’s all about the imagery and scene setting which is, to my mind, what defines steam punk best. There are a few little tips you can do–you can weave in a post-colonial discussion or world based view into steam punk without too much of a hassle, should you like, but I don’t often see that. There’s a few flicks–mostly anime–where I’ve seen the moral question of science raised within the text, and the debate on its responsibilities laid out within. Of course, the end of that debate is always that science must acknowledge humanity, people, or some such things.

Me, I just like the goggles, I guess.

Brendan Connell has picked up ‘Mono’ as a reprint in a yet to be named anthology.

Sweet, hey? I always liked ‘Mono’–my take on the zombie narrative, filtered through page space usage and race politics. It was originally printed in Phantom, a one shot magazine that Nick Mamatas (nihilistic_kid) edited a few years back for a convention bag. It’s nice to see it picking up a second breath for the world.

And, in other news–

This rain?

Yeah, another time would be nice, thanks.

Link.

In other news, did you know chocolate crackles requires an obscene amount of lard?

One of my students had his hair cut by his mother.

I realised, sitting there, that there are moments in life when the evolution of a young boy’s personality is tender and fragile and that his sense of identity could be crushed at any moment. This thought passed through my mind and then, very carefully, I asked if his mum had put a bowl on his head and cut around it. In response, he sighed, and said, “My friends already asked me that.”

Of course, the truth is, I had horrible hair as a kid. Everyone does, I think–if you have good hair growing up, I’m fairly sure that it’s a sign that you’ll have bad hair as an adult, and that you’ll be terribly boring. Still, there was just nothing I could do with hair: cut it short, let it grow, style it, it was all one kind of mistake. In fact, though it would have been impossible to tell me at seven, starting to lose my hair early, and forcing me to shave my head was probably the best thing, hair wise that could have happened. Personally, it’s lead me to develop a theory–or begin one, at least–that the truth is that body image happiness is measured by the amount of hair you have on your head. If I had the ability to write you up a fancy little diagram, it would sell it to you all in a logical fashion.

As you can see, today is the day of terrible wisdom and intelligence. Please, take notes.

The speech last night went well enough, I think.

There was a bit of traffic on the way there, including an accident on Anzac Parade, so I arrived with everyone hanging round waiting for me. Well dressed people, in fact. Ryan Twomey, the organiser of the whole thing, made sure I didn’t feel on my own or isolated. He even told me that the first choice as speaker had been Bryan Brown, and that I was after him, which goes to show that when it comes to artists living in Sydney there’s a drop off after Bryan Brown, but still, can’t argue with some place that gives me some free food and new people to talk too. Like I said, the speech went well enough–I think I got lost in the last minute or so of it, but I’d made enough jokes, including one about an Oprah suicide pact, that I probably got away with it.

In case you’re wondering, I talked about ending up in a German test paper, and how the enforced reading of my work in High School was something that I was beginning to support. I spent some time talking about the publication of Black Sheep and how it didn’t go too well, and how it sold pretty badly when compared to the idea of a three thousand print run. I know people love it when I discuss that–I’m destroying the illusion of success, they say–but if you’ve got to have a person speaking at a dinner, stories of failure are always more interesting than those of success. Well, you can always get a laugh out of it. But mostly, I was making a point that here was this book that had sound somewhere around a hundred and thirty copies, and that somehow, in some way, the first three pages of it ended up in a German High School exam, which is pretty fucking far odds, really. I mean, someone in a country where the book wasn’t even published heard about it, went to the effort of tracking it down, read it, and then had the additional factor of being involved in the exams, and–and–then said, “You know what? Lets put it in an exam.”

It’s pretty fucking cool, really.

So I talked about that, because, really, one of the truly best things about being a writer, and getting your work published, is that you’ll connect with someone, that you’ll enter a communicative process with them. At least, that’s what I think, anyhow. I would like to tell you that I was one of those writers who wrote just for the sake of writing, and don’t get me wrong, I like that, but I also write because I adore that connection your work gets when it’s read, and someone just links up with it, when you become part of a global conversation based on your themes, moments, ides, and just basic writing. It is, I think, one of the best feelings, and I wanted to impart that, which is the bit I think that I got messed up towards the end, too busy making jokes and trying to get laughs out of the audience. Which isn’t in itself a bad thing, I guess, and if you’ve ever heard me talk publicly, you’ll know that I have a bad habit of getting caught on little tangents like that.

At any rate, it was an alright time, and the people I talked to were cool; I just wish I’d shown up a bit earlier to meet more folk, but that’s like, I guess.

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

9)

10)

Choices, choices, choices.

Well, it made me laugh.

Anyhow, I have to give a speech tomorrow. I’m a guest of honour in a room full of people who don’t know about me. Any ideas on what I should talk about for ten minutes? Last night, a friend of mine tried to convince me that it should be the ‘Why Cunt is an Awesome Word’ speech. It’s still tempting.

You know, I’ve given it a bit of thought, but I think I’m going to give the new Star Trek a miss. I do this to spite anyone who thinks it is good.

In other news, the small press One Trick Pony are going to reprint ‘Johnny Cash’ in their first collection. I’ll give details and the like when I get them. I do rather like the press name, myself.