short fiction – Page 2

Transported: 3 days to go – Places

Posted on June 3, 2008

My second index (or, more properly, concordance) of Transported: a selection of places visited or referred to in those 27 short stories – the bulk of them real. I have put these in roughly south to north order, but there’s a little east and west as well, so don’t sweat a few degrees here and a few degrees there.

McMurdo Base, the Wright Valley, Lake Vanda, Don Juan Pond

Punta Arenas, Patagonia

The Sandy Point Domain, Invercargill, the flat Southland plains (as twilight flows in), Gore, Queenstown, Wanaka, Rabbit Pass and the Waterfall Face (experienced trampers only), the Waiatoto River, Haast

Dunedin, Tomahawk, Smaills Beach (warning: footing uneven), Flagstaff, Taiaroa Head

Christchurch Airport, the Clarence River, the Seaward Kaikouras

Wellington, Miramar Island, Oriental Bay, Mount Victoria, the National Library of New Zealand (Rare Books Collection), the Basin Reserve, Island Bay, an imaginary tryline, the Loading Zone, the Angus Inn

Mana, Kapiti, Shannon, Palmerston North

Ngaruawahia

Utley Terrace, Rosemont Primary

Canberra, Goulburn (which does little to break the monotony), Sydney, Dubbo, Parkes

Basseterre (capital of St Kitts)

Santa Fé, Gainesville, Quantico, Washington, DC, the East River, Wyoming

Thebes, Mount Athos

Exmoor, Porlock (a poor excuse)

Saxony (where exchange students come from)

Moscow (who lost 5-1), Gorky Park, Kazakhstan, Lake Baikal

The Finland Station, Murmansk, Magadan

The Northern Festival Circuit (Nuuk, Norilsk, Vorkuta, Longyearbyen)

The Valles Marineris (with robots running around)

Triton (a moon of Neptune; Samuel Delany got there first)

Felsen’s Planet (in the Arcturus sector)

The Virgo Cluster (fifty million light years away)

Looking at People and Places, I guess I could have called the book “Strangers and Journeys” – but that’s already been done.

Transported: 4 days to go – People

Posted on June 2, 2008

To initiate the new discipline of “indexing for surrealists”, here is a small selection of people (most real, some imaginary) namechecked in Transported.

George Gregan, Sheree (a Tier One poet), Miranda (a Tier Two poet), Carl Dooley (an ironmonger), V. I. Lenin, Arthur C. Clarke, Arkady Renko, Marilyn Manson (a musician), Bruce McLaren, M. Foucault (a philosopher), Lacan, Kristeva and Baudrillard (other philosophers), Wayne Foucault (a dairy farmer, brother of M.), Krystal (who’s at yoga), Borges (a librarian), Senor Borges (a Distinguished Visitor), Billie Holiday, Alex Lindsay (and His Orchestra), Lisa Bryant (who put up an umbrella), Losi (an engineer), Mrs Masters (who died the other day), Mrs Parsons (a governess), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jacques (who thought he was a parrot), Cleve Cartmill (but not this one), H. P. Lovecraft, Sir Timothy Hyphen-Hyphen (a spy), Velimir Grushnikov (also a spy, but more sinister), and Trevor (from Hamilton)

Transported Longlisted for 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award

Posted on May 8, 2008

I’ve been blogging like crazy this week, but there’s good reason for one more post: my short story collection Transported (which you can pre-order online), which will be published by Random House New Zealand in June, is one of four New Zealand short story collections longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

The New Zealand collections longlisted are:

Transported, Tim Jones (Random House New Zealand)
Etiquette for a Dinner Party, Sue Orr (Random House New Zealand)
The Girl Who Proposed, Elizabeth Smither (Cape Catley)
Ask The Posts Of The House, Witi Ihimaera (Raupo)

The Guardian has the full longlist of 39 books and an article about it.

I’m really pleased about this, but it’s important to keep a sense of perspective. It’s a longlist – a looooong longlist. The quality of the other New Zealand selections (congratulations to all the authors!) indicates the strength of the field. The shortlist is announced in July, and I don’t expect Transported to be on it – but I won’t deny that I’ll be very pleased if it is!

It’s also good to see a prize specifically for short story collections, which are sometimes neglected beasts in the literary zoo.

UPDATE: If you’re looking for a review copy of Transported, or other ‘official’ publicity material about the book, please contact Jennifer Balle, jennifer (at) randomhouse.co.nz

Bernard Gadd

Posted on December 30, 2007

Bernard Gadd died earlier in December. I’m late posting this news, and there are excellent memorials to Bernard on Harvey Molloy’s blog and on Helen Rickerby’s blog.

I never met Bernard, but read and enjoyed a number of his poems, was impressed by his steadfast commitment to a multicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand, and owe him a debt of gratitude for selecting stories of mine for two anthologies he edited: “Statesman” in a Longman Paul anthology for schools, I Have Seen the Future, and subsequently “My Friend the Volcano”, in the first volume of the Other Voicesseries produced by his publishing house, Hallard Press. These were the first two stories I had published professionally.

He and Trevor Reeves were among the first New Zealand publishers and anthologists to see that speculative fiction – science fiction, fantasy and horror – was part of the New Zealand literary scene, rather than being separate from it, and to include it in literary journals and anthologies.

Thank you, Bernard.