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2012
Where will the world be in four years' time? Eleven of Australia's top authors take a guess in 2012. Each story imagines the world as it might be, presenting unique possibilities for the very near future. There are dark visions of water and oil shortages, terrorism, climate change, global and regional politics, the limiting of personal freedoms such as free speech, struggles with the ethics of genetic engineering and bioengineering, alien conspiracies, and the impact of technology on industry. There are personal stories here too - of the way these things might impact on families, and how we at an individual level might react to the catastrophes predicted to lie ahead. Each of these stories presents an original take on the imminent future of humanity. Each has something to say about who we are and who we might want to be. 2012 is both a call to imagine the future of the world and a call to create it. 'Watertight Lies' by Deborah Biancotti 'Fleshy' by Tansy Rayner Roberts 'Oh, Russia' by Simon Brown 'Soft Viscosity' by David Conyers 'Apocalypse Now' by Lucy Sussex 'The Last Word' by Dirk Flinthart 'Ghost Jail' by Kaaron Warren 'Love You Like Water' by Angela Slatter 'Skinsongs' by Martin Livings 'David Bowie' by Ben Peek 'Oblivion' by Sean McMullen.
118 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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25 people want to read
About the author
Alisa Krasnostein
24 books42 followersEditor and publisher at independent Twelfth Planet Press, creative publishing PhD candidate and recently retired environmental engineer. She is cohost of the twice Hugo nominated Galactic Suburbia Podcast team (www.galacticsuburbia.com).
In 2011, she won the World Fantasy Award for her work at Twelfth Planet Press. She was the Executive Editor and founder of the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! from 2004 to 2012. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, podcaster, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover. And new mum.
In 2011, she won the World Fantasy Award for her work at Twelfth Planet Press. She was the Executive Editor and founder of the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! from 2004 to 2012. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, podcaster, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover. And new mum.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 11, 2016
Themed anthologies are a strange beast because, in addition to collecting together the best spec fic the editors can source, the book has to deliver on the overarching aim he/she/they intend for the collection. It brings the editor to the forefront of the reader’s mind by trying to make a point about their story choices. And quite a few of these animals have been seen lately: Ticonderoga’s Worker’s Paradise and to a lesser extent Fantastic Wonder Stories, Agog! Press’s upcoming Canterbury 2100, and dare I mention c0ck?
Editors are generally shadowy figures, working behind the scenes even though their contribution (IMHO) is significant. But Ben Payne and Alisa Krasnostein are well and truly out of the shadows as joint editors of 2012, the new anthology from Twelfth Planet Press, and they plainly state their intentions for the antho up front. Of course they want stories which will stick in our minds and leave us deeply affected; we all want that. But these stories are ‘about concerns that were important to all of us’. The concept of 2012 is grounded firmly in the very near future (four years away at time or writing). The concerns are then bound to be familiar: environmental degradation, terrorism, dwindling energy resources, pandemics and so on. The book aims to take the concerns of today and project them ever so slightly into a future that may be bleak or hopeful depending on the author. As a book concept I guess I can see some drawbacks. Do readers want a book that explores, for example, environmental catastrophe when we see that scenario played out every day on TV and in the press? Isn’t it all going to be a bit same-same, a bit mundane, scary though these scenarios are? And is there going to be enough contrast between the individual stories in terms of subject matter and tone?
The areas of concern in 2012 fall into three broad categories. The most obvious and frequented one is water, or the lack thereof. The book begins with Deborah Biancotti’s ‘Watertight Lies’ about a small group of scientists checking whether an underground cache of water is drinkable. The pacing is slow and I was unsure why the scientists, working in the outback, had to have American accents. We spend a lot of time early on in female protagonist Gabe’s head: she’s borderline claustrophobic and not enjoying her spelunk at all. Some background about the state of the planet is filled in: water is scarcer, the weather is hotter, then a couple of farmers turn up disputing ownership of the water and things turn nasty. That’s about it really. I was left with two questions: what is this story trying to say, and where’s the spec fic element? I couldn’t find answers to either.
More water worries in David Conyers’s ‘Soft Viscosity’ a story of jungle warfare and CIA nasty business in Central America. This was the weakest piece in the collection. The characters were stereotypes, the dialogue was stilted and the prose was approaching the purple. Skies weren’t skies unless they were ‘whitewashed’, jungles were ‘an endless wet of green hell’. It’s very much the Dan Brown school of writing. There’s obviously a market for it but it’s not one I subscribe to. And again I wondered how this was spec fic. The only such element I could discern was the drug a nasty Central American interrogator took so he could be free of guilt when he did nasty interrogator things to his victims. This just struck me as stupid. There are plenty of evil people out there who will do this kind of stuff without the aid of drugs. It’s a pity because towards the end there was a glimmer of a nice idea, but we had to wade through a lot that wasn’t to get to it.
The final water(less) world tale was Angela Slatter’s ‘I Love You Like Water’, which has shades of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! but goes in quite a few unexpected directions, opposing the ideas of science and sympathetic magic and bringing them together in a satisfying climax. My only quibble is that our target year of 2012 didn’t provide sufficient time for the world she portrays to come about.
Then there’s the ‘playing god with our genes’ scenario. Tansy Rayner Roberts’s ‘Fleshy’ is a humorous twist on Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and it also scores some nice points about relationships, while Dirk Flinthart’s ‘The Last Word’ has a killer idea, great science and nice character interplay. It’s a hardcore story and he nails it.
And the we have the ones that defy pigeonholing. No surprise to find Karron Warren here, and she’s obviously still finding her overseas sojourn inspiring. ‘Ghost Jail’ is a multi-layered tale of guilt, revenge, and social upheaval. It’s a political freedom of speech ghost story, if you can imagine that, which has more to say than some novels. Martin Livings’s ‘Skinsongs’ is a wicked little piece that takes the cult of celebrity to its logical conclusion. While Lucy Sussex’s comic ‘Apocalypse Rules, OK?’ confirms what we’ve all suspected for a long time.
But Simon Brown’s ‘Oh, Russia’ again had me scratching my head. Frederick ponders the violent destruction of Russia while he waits for his wife to die. It’s a well-written piece but apart from being set in 2012 I couldn’t discern what was spec fic about it. And this got me thinking about Rudy Rucker’s attack on the Mundane SF movement which posits sober, fact-based extrapolations on ‘Disaster, innovation, climate change, virtual reality, understanding of our DNA, and biocomputers that evolve.’ Rudy is of the opinion (and I’m firmly in his camp) that, ‘Writing responsibly about socially important issues can be timid and boring.’ And, more importantly, ‘The idea [of SF] is to shock people into awareness. Show them how odd the world is. Whether or not you draw on realistic tropes is irrelevant.’ This kind of pc, firmly reality grounded SF is not my cup of tea, as you might have gathered. I know, I know, there’s room enough for all kinds of writing in the spec fic genre, but don’t expect me to jump up and down with glee at what is, effectively, SF-lite.
So I guess you can see I wasn’t engaged by ‘Oh, Russia’ whereas Sean McMullen’s 2012 story ‘Oblivion’ left me smacking my gob, highlighting as it does not simply a current problem, but tying it in very neatly with a philosophical solution and grounding both those elements in two well-portrayed characters. This one had the ‘wow’ factor the editors were looking for in spades. Which is why I guess it’s the last piece in the collection.
2012 doesn’t fail in its intent. But it doesn’t wholly succeed either, and I think the book’s concept contributed to that. Some authors really got on board while others struggled to meet the submission strictures and, as a result, their writing suffered.
Editors are generally shadowy figures, working behind the scenes even though their contribution (IMHO) is significant. But Ben Payne and Alisa Krasnostein are well and truly out of the shadows as joint editors of 2012, the new anthology from Twelfth Planet Press, and they plainly state their intentions for the antho up front. Of course they want stories which will stick in our minds and leave us deeply affected; we all want that. But these stories are ‘about concerns that were important to all of us’. The concept of 2012 is grounded firmly in the very near future (four years away at time or writing). The concerns are then bound to be familiar: environmental degradation, terrorism, dwindling energy resources, pandemics and so on. The book aims to take the concerns of today and project them ever so slightly into a future that may be bleak or hopeful depending on the author. As a book concept I guess I can see some drawbacks. Do readers want a book that explores, for example, environmental catastrophe when we see that scenario played out every day on TV and in the press? Isn’t it all going to be a bit same-same, a bit mundane, scary though these scenarios are? And is there going to be enough contrast between the individual stories in terms of subject matter and tone?
The areas of concern in 2012 fall into three broad categories. The most obvious and frequented one is water, or the lack thereof. The book begins with Deborah Biancotti’s ‘Watertight Lies’ about a small group of scientists checking whether an underground cache of water is drinkable. The pacing is slow and I was unsure why the scientists, working in the outback, had to have American accents. We spend a lot of time early on in female protagonist Gabe’s head: she’s borderline claustrophobic and not enjoying her spelunk at all. Some background about the state of the planet is filled in: water is scarcer, the weather is hotter, then a couple of farmers turn up disputing ownership of the water and things turn nasty. That’s about it really. I was left with two questions: what is this story trying to say, and where’s the spec fic element? I couldn’t find answers to either.
More water worries in David Conyers’s ‘Soft Viscosity’ a story of jungle warfare and CIA nasty business in Central America. This was the weakest piece in the collection. The characters were stereotypes, the dialogue was stilted and the prose was approaching the purple. Skies weren’t skies unless they were ‘whitewashed’, jungles were ‘an endless wet of green hell’. It’s very much the Dan Brown school of writing. There’s obviously a market for it but it’s not one I subscribe to. And again I wondered how this was spec fic. The only such element I could discern was the drug a nasty Central American interrogator took so he could be free of guilt when he did nasty interrogator things to his victims. This just struck me as stupid. There are plenty of evil people out there who will do this kind of stuff without the aid of drugs. It’s a pity because towards the end there was a glimmer of a nice idea, but we had to wade through a lot that wasn’t to get to it.
The final water(less) world tale was Angela Slatter’s ‘I Love You Like Water’, which has shades of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! but goes in quite a few unexpected directions, opposing the ideas of science and sympathetic magic and bringing them together in a satisfying climax. My only quibble is that our target year of 2012 didn’t provide sufficient time for the world she portrays to come about.
Then there’s the ‘playing god with our genes’ scenario. Tansy Rayner Roberts’s ‘Fleshy’ is a humorous twist on Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and it also scores some nice points about relationships, while Dirk Flinthart’s ‘The Last Word’ has a killer idea, great science and nice character interplay. It’s a hardcore story and he nails it.
And the we have the ones that defy pigeonholing. No surprise to find Karron Warren here, and she’s obviously still finding her overseas sojourn inspiring. ‘Ghost Jail’ is a multi-layered tale of guilt, revenge, and social upheaval. It’s a political freedom of speech ghost story, if you can imagine that, which has more to say than some novels. Martin Livings’s ‘Skinsongs’ is a wicked little piece that takes the cult of celebrity to its logical conclusion. While Lucy Sussex’s comic ‘Apocalypse Rules, OK?’ confirms what we’ve all suspected for a long time.
But Simon Brown’s ‘Oh, Russia’ again had me scratching my head. Frederick ponders the violent destruction of Russia while he waits for his wife to die. It’s a well-written piece but apart from being set in 2012 I couldn’t discern what was spec fic about it. And this got me thinking about Rudy Rucker’s attack on the Mundane SF movement which posits sober, fact-based extrapolations on ‘Disaster, innovation, climate change, virtual reality, understanding of our DNA, and biocomputers that evolve.’ Rudy is of the opinion (and I’m firmly in his camp) that, ‘Writing responsibly about socially important issues can be timid and boring.’ And, more importantly, ‘The idea [of SF] is to shock people into awareness. Show them how odd the world is. Whether or not you draw on realistic tropes is irrelevant.’ This kind of pc, firmly reality grounded SF is not my cup of tea, as you might have gathered. I know, I know, there’s room enough for all kinds of writing in the spec fic genre, but don’t expect me to jump up and down with glee at what is, effectively, SF-lite.
So I guess you can see I wasn’t engaged by ‘Oh, Russia’ whereas Sean McMullen’s 2012 story ‘Oblivion’ left me smacking my gob, highlighting as it does not simply a current problem, but tying it in very neatly with a philosophical solution and grounding both those elements in two well-portrayed characters. This one had the ‘wow’ factor the editors were looking for in spades. Which is why I guess it’s the last piece in the collection.
2012 doesn’t fail in its intent. But it doesn’t wholly succeed either, and I think the book’s concept contributed to that. Some authors really got on board while others struggled to meet the submission strictures and, as a result, their writing suffered.
May 11, 2014
So I’m coming to this one a bit late. Reading about 2012 in the year 2014, and it wasn’t until I looked at the info page inside the cover that I realise this anthology was published in 2008. This anthology takes eleven of Australia’s best known speculative fiction authors and allows them to present unique ideas for the near future (at least at the time of writing it was the near future!) It will be interesting to see in ten years how these stories and ideas stand – to see if the issues of terrorism and climate change still stand, or how they’ve since developed.
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August 24, 2011
"looks at how the world is viewed when the problems of the world out way the individual. brings up the question of the ethics of humanity and how the idividual would work in a society or world where the individual is not valued.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews