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Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy
Too stuffy inside? All those familiar social realist furnishings, all those comfortable literary tropes. Perhaps a stroll out under the trees, where things are breezier, stranger, more liable to break the rules. You may meet monsters out there, true. But that's the point.
Casting its net widely, this anthology of Aotearoa-New Zealand science fiction and fantasy ranges from the satirical novels of the 19th-century utopians – one of which includes the first description of atmospheric aerobreaking in world literature – to the bleeding edge of now. Spaceships and worried sheep. Dragons and AI. The shopping mall that swallowed the Earth. The deviant, the fishy and the rum, all bioengineered for your reading pleasure.
Featuring stories by some of the country’s best known writers as well as work from exciting new talent, Monsters in the Garden invites you for a walk on the wild side. We promise you'll get back safely. Unchanged? Well, that's another question.
Casting its net widely, this anthology of Aotearoa-New Zealand science fiction and fantasy ranges from the satirical novels of the 19th-century utopians – one of which includes the first description of atmospheric aerobreaking in world literature – to the bleeding edge of now. Spaceships and worried sheep. Dragons and AI. The shopping mall that swallowed the Earth. The deviant, the fishy and the rum, all bioengineered for your reading pleasure.
Featuring stories by some of the country’s best known writers as well as work from exciting new talent, Monsters in the Garden invites you for a walk on the wild side. We promise you'll get back safely. Unchanged? Well, that's another question.
608 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2020
5 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Knox
40 books963 followersElizabeth Knox was born in Wellington‚ New Zealand‚ and is the author of eleven novels and three novella and a book of essays.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 11, 2021
This is a pretty big anthology. I admit I didn't read every single story. Below are some thoughts on those that stood out to me.
I enjoyed Karen Healey's 'Where We Walk, We Walk on Bones' which had a nice modern twist. The main character is a medium who is contacted by Phillip. Whilst solving his murder they discover more truths: 'All this expense and deception, so that you could live in isolation on a new planet? Is it really that bad?' The focus seems to be on job dissatisfaction and how far you're willing to go to change your path. It covers topics such as selfishness and self-realisation and touches on addiction.
Craig Gamble's 'The Rule of Twelfths' follows a youngster (Liberato or Libby) on a journey in his grandfather's dinghy - the first time on his own. The description of the landscape is definitely kiwi. At Lion Rock 'His movements are hushed by the carpet of pine needles. The air is heavy with resin.' He stumbles upon a hut and a possum caught in a cage. He is startled by another boy. 'The boy is taller than him and older, lean and bony.' Disaster strikes. It is a story about responsibility and of holding your own in front of older boys. The main character is humane, and his counterpart is too, but he doesn't seem it. He's a product of his father from the blue house. It covers mystery, blame, solitude, loneliness and curiosity. Short story endings often leave me thinking. This one does. Is the boy lured into the sea? Will this relationship continue?
Bernard Beckett's 'The Armillary' deals with a father-daughter relationship and an ongoing difference of opinion. "'I fear you are to become a poet and I will wither alone in my old age, unattended.' But she had stayed, even after her mother left." Their conflict concerns belief versus knowledge versus the unknown. There's a beautiful line near the end of this story, but if I share it here, I will ruin it for you.
'The Stone Wētā' by Octavia Cade is a survival story covering climate change, preservation, injustice, blame, counter actions, persistence, and transformations. The story covers a variety of terrain from the mountains, to the deserts, seabeds, and Antarctic. The characters take on their scientific names such as Geckolepis megalepis, Asterias amurensis and of course Hemideina maori. Our hero, a biologist, has a lockbox stuffed with climate data and "Data that couldn't be shared was always at risk."
I also enjoyed 'Analogue' by Samantha Lane Murphy. Her story takes tech development to the extreme. Data collection and analysis is used to predict our wants. The story, through Desmond and Daphne, covers our inability to stop or control this, or how easily we succumb, as well as privacy, and consent. Of his daughter (Amelie), he noticed as they walked in conversation that she 'seemed to carry out at least two other conversations with one hand, through her phone...the screens all around them shone so brightly in their effort to be noticed.' Ironically, she was aware of the stalker campaigns which 'sync into devices and continue to mine more and more data from consumers.' Desmond's reaction is different. His loneliness is placated by Daphne's presence even though 'black paint cut an ugly slash across her face' and she can be in fourteen other places at the same time she's "conversing" with him. Daphne admitted 'Today, I had conversations with over six hundred people, at a median of 2.4 minutes, all across the city. A large majority of those were tutorials and subscriptions, and others developed into more personalised interactions...' As Daphne says "I'm the distraction" when people are upset.
Finally, Janet Frame's 'Two Sheep' just makes the mind boggle.
I enjoyed Karen Healey's 'Where We Walk, We Walk on Bones' which had a nice modern twist. The main character is a medium who is contacted by Phillip. Whilst solving his murder they discover more truths: 'All this expense and deception, so that you could live in isolation on a new planet? Is it really that bad?' The focus seems to be on job dissatisfaction and how far you're willing to go to change your path. It covers topics such as selfishness and self-realisation and touches on addiction.
Craig Gamble's 'The Rule of Twelfths' follows a youngster (Liberato or Libby) on a journey in his grandfather's dinghy - the first time on his own. The description of the landscape is definitely kiwi. At Lion Rock 'His movements are hushed by the carpet of pine needles. The air is heavy with resin.' He stumbles upon a hut and a possum caught in a cage. He is startled by another boy. 'The boy is taller than him and older, lean and bony.' Disaster strikes. It is a story about responsibility and of holding your own in front of older boys. The main character is humane, and his counterpart is too, but he doesn't seem it. He's a product of his father from the blue house. It covers mystery, blame, solitude, loneliness and curiosity. Short story endings often leave me thinking. This one does. Is the boy lured into the sea? Will this relationship continue?
Bernard Beckett's 'The Armillary' deals with a father-daughter relationship and an ongoing difference of opinion. "'I fear you are to become a poet and I will wither alone in my old age, unattended.' But she had stayed, even after her mother left." Their conflict concerns belief versus knowledge versus the unknown. There's a beautiful line near the end of this story, but if I share it here, I will ruin it for you.
'The Stone Wētā' by Octavia Cade is a survival story covering climate change, preservation, injustice, blame, counter actions, persistence, and transformations. The story covers a variety of terrain from the mountains, to the deserts, seabeds, and Antarctic. The characters take on their scientific names such as Geckolepis megalepis, Asterias amurensis and of course Hemideina maori. Our hero, a biologist, has a lockbox stuffed with climate data and "Data that couldn't be shared was always at risk."
I also enjoyed 'Analogue' by Samantha Lane Murphy. Her story takes tech development to the extreme. Data collection and analysis is used to predict our wants. The story, through Desmond and Daphne, covers our inability to stop or control this, or how easily we succumb, as well as privacy, and consent. Of his daughter (Amelie), he noticed as they walked in conversation that she 'seemed to carry out at least two other conversations with one hand, through her phone...the screens all around them shone so brightly in their effort to be noticed.' Ironically, she was aware of the stalker campaigns which 'sync into devices and continue to mine more and more data from consumers.' Desmond's reaction is different. His loneliness is placated by Daphne's presence even though 'black paint cut an ugly slash across her face' and she can be in fourteen other places at the same time she's "conversing" with him. Daphne admitted 'Today, I had conversations with over six hundred people, at a median of 2.4 minutes, all across the city. A large majority of those were tutorials and subscriptions, and others developed into more personalised interactions...' As Daphne says "I'm the distraction" when people are upset.
Finally, Janet Frame's 'Two Sheep' just makes the mind boggle.
March 29, 2021
This isn't quite sure whether it is trying to be a historical survey, or a collection of new original SF. It works far better as the latter, though the strongest story in the book - Knox's "Unobtanium" - is from 2006. Some of the new stuff is unfortunately literary, but there are some good SF stories in there: Witi Ihimaera's "The last White Rhinoceros", Dylan Horrocks' "The Paresach's Tulips", and Karen Healey's "Where We Walk, We Walk on Bones" among them. And overall, it works as a collection. Its no Starlight 1 or New Legends, but its an OK collection, and worth reading if you want some NZ SF. Also, it has made me want to read The Halfmen of O again.
May 25, 2024
I'll admit I haven't read as many kiwi books as I'd like to, so this was a great tour of works by authors I knew, authors I didn't know, and some authors I didn't know but probably should have by now. I love nonrealism so I really enjoyed most of the stories in here (can't name specific names because it's been a few months, my bad) and I'm keen to both give it a re-read and check out many of these authors' other works.
September 8, 2021
Partly a good retrospective of New Zealand literary non-realism, but with some really good new stories. Dylan Horrocks and Karen Healey do some new things, and Jack Barrowman is a real discovery
May 11, 2025
I liked "Kabitsu-san" by Keri Hulme, "By Bonelight" by Juliette Marillier, and "Where We Walk, We Walk On Bones" by Karen Healey
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews