Crossing the Borders

Interview with Stephen Dedman & Grant Watson

In early 2003 the most respected and then longest running Australian SF magazine, Eidolon, folded. From the ashes came Borderlands, a Western Australian-based magazine which has to date published three solid issues. TiconderogaOnline’s editor Russell B. Farr caught up with two of the founders, Stephen Dedman and Grant Watson, to see how the magazine is going.

What gave you the idea of publishing Borderlands?

SD: The demise of Eidolon. I'd worked with the magazine for several years as associate editor, and it was an important part of my life. I felt that the field needed a replacement for Eidolon, another journal that offered Australian writers — established and new — another showcase for inventive and well-written science fiction and fantasy. That probably sounds more unselfish and altruistic than it should. It wasn't just concern for the writers, or the readers: Orb and Agog! were doing a lot to fill that niche. But The MUP Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy described Eidolon as the 'university of Australian science fiction', and I was proud to be associated with it. I also enjoyed the work I'd done for Eidolon, and I liked being able to repay the favour other editors had done me by publishing my work, and I didn't want to stop. It's a fantastic feeling when you can be the first to publish a good story which is also an author's first published story.

GW: I think that it's one of the less well-hidden secrets in the Australian independent SF scene that the first issue of Borderlands began development as a new issue of an entirely different SF journal. When things didn't quite work out as planned on that project, a number of people involved folded the work — and our ideas — into an all-new magazine. I think it was ultimately a better move anyway, because it gives Borderlands its own particular identity from the outset.
     In a more specific sense, I guess, the idea of publishing Borderlands was the idea of producing a high-quality Australian genre magazine. We also had very strong ideas about presenting a higher calibre of non-fiction. Most genre magazines tend to include either reviews or pop science columns. We've deliberately included neither, focusing instead on more worthwhile and analytical essays.

How well has the magazine been received?

SD: The reviews have been extremely positive, but the sales and subscriptions haven't been all that we could have hoped. GW: As far as I can make out, fairly well indeed — at least to our faces. I think it takes time to build a proper audience for these kinds of projects, and our first year was entirely about building goodwill and a core audience. Now that we've survived the first three issues, it's time for us to try building our distribution for the next three.

Do you think the demise of Eidolon has left a hole in the Australian SF scene?

GW: I think there was a serious risk that it would for a while, but it's a risk that has been successfully averted. Some times I feel that people working or reading within the indie SF scene today tend to — well, not devalue Eidolon as such, just not really credit it with as much as it deserves. I don't think it's an exaggeration to claim that Eidolon practically invented contemporary Australian genre fiction. Half of our local authors wrote for it, and one of their editors now edits SF books internationally. More importantly, I think that Eidolon acted as a very good focus for creating an Australian "style" of speculative fiction. I find we tend to have a fairly dark outlook on the genre. Even our happier stories tend to have a pretty grim edge to them. Just read any children’s book by Shaun Tan to see what I mean.
      I think this is where Eidolon left the hardest hole to fill. There have always been avenues of one kind or another for writers to have their fiction published. Avenues that actually push the genre and promote strong, distinctive talents haven't been quite as easy to come by. A good example to illustrate what I'm talking about is Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, which on the one hand publishes a staggering quantity of Australian SF but on the other hand doesn't appear to push any form of consistent tone or style. So it fulfils the easier hole left by Eidolon but completely ignores the other — actually progressing and developing the genre. (I should point out that this isn't intended as a criticism of ASIM at all — it does what it does and it does it well. It just doesn't act as a replacement for Eidolon.) Borderlands aside, I think one of the finest publications to continue Eidolon's legacy has been the Agog! series of anthologies edited by Cat Sparks. Anyone who hasn't read them isn't sufficiently reading Australian science fiction.

Do you think it is important to publish only Australians?

GW: Absolutely. It is vital to support and foster local talent, that presents its own style of speculative fiction distinct from other nations or cultures. If we didn't keep a strong line of Australian fiction running there would be too great a risk of our writers being swamped in the foreign markets — or have to lose that innate Australian-ness of their work. In a crass commercial sense it's important too. Australians like to read fiction by other Australians, so supporting the local scene makes financial sense as well.

SD: No. I think it's important to publish as much good work by Australians as possible, and I'm willing to publish only Australians if that's what the rest of the committee decides — or if, for example, we receive a subsidy on the understanding that we only publish Australians, and that subsidy enables us to pay our authors and artists more. But while it's part of our brief to make sure there is always a market for Australian authors who are writing the sort of fiction we like, I'm prepared to accept a very broad definition of 'Australian', including expats and temporary residents. I also think we should also be open to publishing work from authors who don't have any science fiction pro or semi-pro magazines in their own countries. I don't know if New Zealand has any, for example. Or Singapore. On the other hand, I know that the US has several, and the UK has a few, and Canada has at least one.

What can readers expect from future issues?

SD: I don't know — I'm a lousy seer. If you'd shown me the first three issues of Eidolon in 1990 and asked me to predict its future, I doubt I could have imagined any of the fantastic art and fiction it would publish over the next ten years. But I hope our writers continue to astonish us as they have in the past year. We've received amazing material, both fiction and non-fiction, solicited and unsolicited, and I hope that continues. I hope we can continue to publish the magazine for years to come, I hope we encourage writers and artists to produce excellent work and readers to seek it out, and I hope that before long we can pay our contributors more as well as bringing their work to more readers here and overseas.

GW: Hopefully more of the same, only better. We're striving to present the absolute best in science fiction, fantasy and horror three times a year. I think our non-fiction is going to improve a lot — Issue 3 has our best line-up of essays ever, and I'd expect to see us continue pushing that end of the magazine during 2004. On a personal level, I want to see us publish speculative fiction that starts to play around with the way of writing the genre, rather than simply playing with what's in it. I adore authors like Jeff Noon and Mark Z. Danielewski because they actually engage with new methods of telling the story, rather than coming up with exciting and original stories (although they both do that as well). Some of the best horror in the world is being written by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), as another example. So my biggest desire for the coming year would be to magically discover writing as inventive as those guys, and find an avenue for it in Borderlands.

Stephen Dedman is fiction editor of Borderlands, and was associate editor of Eidolon for eight years. He has tutored in Creative Writing at UWA, where he is currently doing research for his PhD. He is also the author of three novels and innumerable short stories, 13 of which were collected in The Lady of Situations (now sadly out of print). He has won the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, the Spectrum Award, and a sainthood.

Grant Watson is a successful playwright, actor and multiple winner of the Ditmar award.

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