Ireland, Victor Kelleher and others besides.)
W hat’s more, much of the important genre sf has been seen outside Australia. Turner is published by Faber in the U K , I by Pocket Books and Avon in the USA, David Lake by DAW, W ilder by
Atheneum, H arding by H arper & Row, all of us, as well, in multi-
tongued translation . . . Often our books have been funded generously in their creation by the Literature Board (funding which has paid off amply in the world-class work produced under its
patronage).
In 1985, with this book and AussieCon II — the second international sf Convention to be held in Australia — talents old and new are tearing up out of the ground even as we watch.
Newcomers like Greg Egan, Yvonne Rousseau, Tim Dell,
Norman Talbot and Tony Peacey craft lovely, various tales quite as
if they had been doing so for decades. Turner extends his range
with each story. M urnane meditates on the very nature of books,
and the brain, and the memories held (to ransom?) by both. Lucy
Sussex and Carmel Bird prove once more how badly sf maimed itself by excluding women writers in their own voice from the centre
Introduction
9
of its canon, Foster, Blackford, W ilder and Playford are distinctive,
telling, fierce. We have a rich harvest.
But before we turn to the stories themselves, let us pause to
meditate on the Strange Attractor, on Chaos, and Order, and the
Void . . .
W hat we fear and desire is Chaos, wild craziness, anarchy and joy.
When guns flash and thump from broken apartments, our flesh
thrills, it creeps. That is why advertisers sponsor news programs
full of blood. That is why men and women kill instead of sharing
their poor short lives. For a little while, in the midst of it, brandishing bone-smashing weapons, the joy is all. Finally it is wearying and ruinous. Only psychopaths love endless cruelty and uncertainty, and are sullen at turbulence’s end.
W hat we crave and distrust is Order, sweet harmony, progression and smooth flow, predictability, dullness. The tanks rolling along the main street bring this sweetness and put Chaos in a
barred cell. Men without stubble apply electricity to soft places. O f
course, schoolchildren sing happily, playing ball games with their
friends.
W hat we cannot abide, what we dread and will not face, what
despite our terror we sense under turbulence and flow, is the Void.
Fifteen thousand million years ago, the Void erupted. It spat out
the universe. All was Chaos, all was Ordered. Bright pinpoint
traces of that violence roar in the sky, moving on paths ordained
across gulfs of time we cannot begin to comprehend.
Is there a link to be found here? Can Chaos and O rder both be
birthed from the Void? Might num ber and geometry yield up the
shapes of anarchy? Might Nothingness expel Being from its empty
centre?
This is sacred, terrible, hilarious ground we tread, ground suitable for mathematicians and jesters; for — surely — science fiction writers.
The mathematicians brooded on the face of the waters and what
they saw there finally was the ghostly imprint of the Strange
Attractor. W hat is it? Why, a phenomenon where a given point can
be made to jum p about in mathematical ‘phase space’ in a perfectly
random fashion . . . under the direction of a simple, determining
rule.
Think about it. It’s very strange; almost as strange as it would be
10
Introduction
if 2 + 2 equalled a different num ber each time you worked it out.
Douglas Hofstadter speaks of this wondrous numerical entity
creating a ‘delicate filigree’ as its equation graphs it out. David
Ruelle wrote that ‘these systems of curves, these clouds of points,
sometimes evoke galaxies or fireworks, other times quite weird and
disturbing blossomings’. Pythagoras in his dreams of a crystalline
order to the universe never saw such loveliness as the dance of the
lacy Strange Attractor, the principle of Chaos bringing forth
Order.
I find myself strangely attracted to this image as a figure for the
creation of science fiction.
Here we have grown men and women
