David Foster is a polymathically gifted former research oncologist, with a doctorate in chemistry, and a bravura literary stylist.
His major published work includes The Pure Land, North South West,
Moonlight, Plumbum and Dog Rock. ‘The elixir operon' is adapted for
this book from his ABC stereo radio play.
Gerald Murnane, while strictly sui generis, is often linked with the
‘new fiction’ school in Australian letters. His elegant, intricate, cool
yet deeply felt ficciones place him with M urray Bail and Peter Carey
at the forefront of innovative writing. His important books include
Tamarisk Row, The Plains and Landscape with Landscape.
Anthony Peacey, who has the unusual distinction of featuring
twice in this collection, remembers German bombs falling in
England. Born there, he has lived in Norway, Sweden, and (since
1971) Perth, where he has taught English as a second language.
Peacey has sold groceries, loaded ships, made ball-bearings,
founded copper, stacked hides, driven semis across the Nullarbor,
surveyed wildlife and fathered four children.
John Playford is a graduate of Adelaide University currently
working in the D epartm ent of the Prime M inister and Cabinet in
Canberra. There is no necessary link between these facts and his
story of brutal Wagnerian conquest in South Australia.
Yvonne Rousseau is an Honours graduate in English and
Philosophy from M elbourne University, lair of Australian Leavis-
ites. A critic and reviewer, she has only recently turned her hand to
fiction, to gratifying effect. H er brilliant and funny Rashomon- like
book of meta-criticism is The Murders at Hanging Rock.
Lucy Sussex got her MA in Librarianship with a thesis on textual
bibliography in sf, emphasising the generic use of ‘fix-ups’, or
longer works fashioned from earlier unconnected fragments. She
has published scholarly studies on sf; her short fiction has elicited
excited approval from the American innovator and entrepreneur
H arlan Ellison.
Notes on contributors
237
Norman Talbot is Associate Professor of English at the University
of Newcastle. An established poet, he has just begun to publish
science fiction, of a notably sophisticated cast.
George Turner, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, is a well-
regarded ‘mainstream’ novelist who came late to speculative fiction
with his Ethical Society trilogy Beloved Son, Vaneglory and Yesterday’s
Men: a post-cataclysm future which allows the elaboration of his
views on major themes (cloning, extended life, control of aggression). In the Heart or in the Head provocatively intertwines autobiography and a history of sf.
Cherry Wilder, an Antipodean writer currently living in
Germany, has been likened for her clean, balanced style and Taoist
philosophy to Ursula Le Guin. H er novels include the trilogy The
Luck of Brin’s Five, The Nearest Fire and The Tapestry Warriors, and the
hauntingly detailed Second Nature, which shares its background with
‘The ballad of Hilo Hill’.
I
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1
IS
Q —
D avid Foster, George Turner, Cherry Wilder, Gerald
M urnane and ten other excellent writers bring you these
Strange Attractions —
A group of perfectly ordinary unemployed kids who literally create
a better world for themselves . . . a sinister conflict between the
Nazi SS and SD in the Barossa Valley, following the trium ph of the
Third Reich . . . Emily Bronte’s M r Lockwood cast up
mysteriously into the 21st century . . . a chilling study of the life
and opinions of an uncontrolled cancer cell. . . the brilliantly
realised quest of an interstellar hitchhiker in a world where the
Answer is most assuredly nothing so comfortable as the
num ber 42 . . .
From the utterly alien to the unnervingly mundane, these original
stories of hard-edged fantasy by Australians will beguile and
shock, delight and disconcert. Published to commemorate the
second World Science Fiction Convention hosted by Australia,
Strange Attractors carries this country’s recent notable triumphs
in film and art into a new realm of creative achievement —
Speculative Fiction. And does so with wit, intelligence, pace and
style.
Q
ID
Damien Broderick specially commissioned these tales of wonder
from Australian writers both new and established. Editor of the
well-known 1977 collection The Zeitgeist Machine, and twice holder
of a senior Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia
Council, he is the author of the thematically cross-linked novel
sequence The Faustus Pentacle, comprising the award-winning The
Dreaming Dragons, The Judas Mandala, Transmitters, The Black Grail,
and a fifth novel still in progress. T h e Age’s sf reviewer, he also
writes and broadcasts on topics ranging from
