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- Custom Article Title: Wet Ink, No. 10
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- Article Title: Wet Ink, No. 10
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‘Science fiction and fantasy’ is the cover theme of Wet Ink. Not all the contributions adhere to it. Michael Welding’s essay on utopias and dystopias is a good introduction to the theory surrounding literary projections of both idyllic and apocalyptic futures. He notes that, before white settlement, the antipodes was often the subject of fantasy, referring to Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751), in which a mariner shipwrecked somewhere in the Australian and Antarctic region discovers that the inhabitants can fly. He also jokes that flying was regularly depicted in speculative fiction but that the banning of humour (at airports) is just another case of political realities outstripping the literary imagination.
- Book 1 Title: Wet Ink, No. 10
- Book 1 Biblio: $14.95 pb, 65 pp
Catherine Harris’s ‘Space’ is a sci-fi story set in an overly bureaucratic world obsessed with the bottom line. Jenny, the protagonist, lives in a commune called the Centre, where everyone has strict duties. When a batch of 2000 babies arrives, Jenny is made the ‘Interim Infant Flow Coordinator’. This half-real, half-manufactured world is eerie.
Coincidentally, one of the best realist stories also features babies. Chris Womersley’s ‘What the Darkness Said’ is a touching story of a small boy who loses a brother then tries to retrieve the status quo by replacing him. It is a convincing portrayal of childhood innocence in the face of family trauma.
There are two long interviews in Wet Ink 10. Petra Fromm interviews Sean Williams, who says his social phobias give him more time to write, and discusses the gulf between realist and non-realist fiction, lamenting the narrowness of the conventional definition of an Australian novel. Moya Costello interviews Tony Birch and Jen Webb about the role of the short story. Wet Ink 10 is a good blend of theory and creative writing, with a healthy emphasis on the latter.
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