With Worldcon coming up in Wellington this year, it’s got me thinking about what are the characteristics of New Zealand speculative fiction. What themes, trends, styles might become evident when our writers are sitting alongside those from the rest of the world talking about their work.
Just like anywhere, I doubt there will be a universal characteristic. Kiwi writers are writing every type of story and often there may be no particular reference to New Zealand, or there may simply be a playful use of rugby metaphor, a familiar place name (Tamsyn Muir’s Trentham military camp in Gideon the Ninth. Love it) or the kind of colloquialisms we love to hate (Yeah, nah, mate). And just like anywhere, I think there will be many instances where you can see history, culture, and politics playing out across the page (or screen, game, artwork).
Aotearoa is a country with a plurality of cultures, and a particular history of colonialism and the marginalisation and exploitation of Māori and their taonga—including their lands, language, and worldview. We have three official languages: Te Reo Māori, English, and New Zealand Sign Language. As a small relatively isolated island nation, we are acutely aware of the effects of climate change and we know it is our Pacific neighbours who will bear the brunt of the developed world’s actions to an extreme as sea levels rise.
So, how does this play out in speculative fiction?
At the most obvious level, you will easily find themes of our history as a nation and climate fiction. See books like Whiti Hereaka’s Legacy (time travel to the Māori Contingent of World War I. Awarded Best NZ Young Adult Fiction 2019), The Burning River by Lawrence Patchett (which reconfigures cultural power structures in the far future), or the weird and wonderful short climate fiction of Octavia Cade (who is a Bram Stoker finalist and Massey University Writer in Residence this year). You can also find powerful examples of incorporation of Te Ao Māori and the local stories of this place, including Maru Nihoniho’s award-winning interactive fiction Guardian Maia and the short story collection Pūrākau edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka, which contains several speculative stories.
Slightly less obvious are the publishing choices we make about whether to aim for popularity at home or abroad. New Zealand has several publishers releasing great speculative fiction right now, such as:
Victoria University Press: The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox and The Burning River by Lawrence Patchett
Penguin NZ: Pūrākau edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Heareaka and Rajorshi Chakraborti’s Shakti
Huia: Whiti Hereaka’s Legacy and Steph Matuku’s Whetū Toa and the Magician and Flight of the Fantail
Paper Road Press: who are putting Best of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy volumes of short stories as well as some truly excellent novellas (see Andi C. Buchanan’s From a Shadow Grave, and forthcoming Octavia Cade’s The Stone Wētā, and A.J. Fitzwater’s No Man’s Land)
But often choosing a local traditional publisher can be at the expense of wider distribution/availability. Some local publishers have not taken full advantage of the opportunities eBooks present to a relatively distant nation and, unless you can somehow leverage international interest (Congrats Elizabeth!), being popular at home through a traditional publisher can sometimes mean forgoing a wider audience.
Likewise, being traditionally published overseas can sometimes mean forgoing local attention when marketing, launch, and distribution efforts are focussed elsewhere. I hope that’s not the case for brilliant recent novels like H.G Parry’s The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep and Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth. Or for forthcoming books like AJ Fitzwater’s The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper (Queen of Swords, April 2020), Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights (Simon Pulse, November 2020), and Graci Kim’s The Last Fallen Star (Disney-Hyperion, 2021).
This challenge, in combination with that DIY mentality we like to claim as a cultural identity, has led to an increasing number of excellent indie-published NZ authors. People like Nalini Singh, Lani Wendt Young, Steff Green, Eileen Mueller, Richard Parry, J.C. Hart/Nova Blake, Isa Pearl Ritchie, Tabatha Wood, AJ Lancaster, Mel Aitchess, and Sascha Stronach. The list could go on and on. (If you’re not on this one, sorry! There will be a lot of you.)
Like all lists, these are reductionist and incomplete. Not least because I haven’t managed to put Bram Stoker finalist and many-times-over Sir Julius Vogel Award winner Lee Murray anywhere. Or Dan Rabarts. Or Darusha Wehm. OK. I’ll stop now. There are many more possible publication routes than my oversimplification. Go read all the books!
And then finally there is the question of how being from Aotearoa affects our writing. In many ways, this mirrors the trends we see overseas. For example, growing recognition of the importance of actively pushing for indigenous voices both to be published and to be represented in publishing (see Lani Wendt Young’s inspirational speech about the White Castle of Literature from her 2019 NZ Book Council lecture). A need to investigate and be mindful, as a pākehā writer, of the boundaries between avoiding white-washing our stories and cultural appropriation or stereotyping. An obligation to look around the table and see who is missing, as Lani would put it. And an obligation to truly listen to the people who have been marginalised. To be careful of the unthinking language we use that can harm: the subconscious gendering, the ableism, the reference to a living culture as ‘myth’, and the reference to ‘historical’ wrongs that many see continuing around them every day.
I hope we see all these aspects of New Zealand speculative fiction discussed at Worldcon. I hope our writers make new contacts and learn new tricks to succeed in whatever way is most meaningful to them. We’ve just launched the Aotearoa Inclusion Initiative, a scholarship programme for people from marginalised communities to attend the convention. Through working together to push for the success of the scholarship programme and reaching out to our wonderfully diverse community to come join in the fun, I hope we see all the voices at the table.
P.S. Applications for the scholarship are open throughout March. And please donate if you can spare the money!
P.P.S. You can also nominate for the NZ SFF awards until the end of March. There’s a list of 2019 potentially eligible works here. And the voting form is here. Anyone, anywhere can nominate. Worldcon members will vote on the winners.