Embracing the Inner Nerd

Interview with Cat Sparks

Cat Sparks has, in a relatively short time, risen to become one of the most important people in Australia's independent publishing scene. As an editor, her Agog! anthologies have been both critically acclaimed and seen as a prestigious market to sell to. As an artist her work has appeared on the covers of a number or publications including Fables and Reflections and Dark Animus. Cat is also a writer, being among the first graduates of ClarionSouth. Russell B. Farr took the recent opportunity to catch up with Cat Sparks for an interview of one of Australia’s most successful and exciting all-rounders.

You're pretty much the toast of every town, winning six Ditmars in the last three years. Where did you and science fiction begin? Has it been a meteoric rise to the top?

I prefer the term 'Speculative Fiction' to 'Science Fiction', but whatever you want to call it, it began for me when my parents put my basinet down in front of Dr Who back in 1965. I have always been attracted to the genre and I can't imagine my life without it. All attempts to try and pretend that I don't love it have failed dismally, so I've decided to embrace the nerd within & dedicate my all to the consumption and production of SF related materials.
I wrote SF all through school as well as reading it, drawing, painting & sculpting it. My Year 7 English teacher actually forbade me from writing SF at one point but it didn't work. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in anything else, it's just that creatively for me, all roads eventually lead back to the fantastical.
I have always been teased about my love of SF, and I expect that I always will be. "Don't you read any real books? Don't you like any normal stuff?" Yeah yeah, heard it all before and I'm not interested. The people who inevitably say these things to me spend their lives up to their armpits in fantasy, only they don't recognise it as such. They think TV shows like Friends are representational of reality. They wear football jerseys to the supermarket although they never play sport. It's a real bugbear of mine — I am tired of dull and witless people telling me that I'm a freak.
I'm not sure about the meteoric rise thing. I don't feel that I am on top of anything. Every time you climb a mountain there's always another peak in the distance. At some point I decided that being a fan of the things I loved was not enough — I wanted to make my own.

You're an artist, editor, writer and photographer. Do you see yourself specifically as one of these or do you consider yourself to be an all-rounder?

I alternate between different media because I get bored easily — I'm a Jack of all trades with the attention span of a goldfish. This probably means that I don't excel in any one area as much I might do if I gave up the others and concentrated on one. I feel as though I was born into art. My father is a well respected painter and I was raised in an art-friendly environment. There is nowhere near as much of a challenge involved for me in producing art as there is in producing prose. Writing is painful, graphic design is fun. I don't enjoy photography any more. I photograph the SF community at various events because I think these events should be documented and archived and I'm a pretty good portrait photographer. I suspect that I am going to turn out to be a better writer than artist, editor or photographer, but I'm not sure anyone else agrees with me yet. As a writer I'm a slow bloomer. It took me nine years to make my first sale. I'll probably be in my mid forties before I write anything truly spectacular, and yet I believe that I will achieve my writing goals.

Earlier this year you were among the first ClarionSouth graduates. How did you find the experience?

Completely exhausting and utterly exhilarating. One of the most rewarding things that I've ever done (and I have clocked up many amazing experiences over the years). I've written a piece about it which you can find at http://www.fantasticqueensland.com/magazine.
I had been suffering from extreme writer's block the whole twelve months leading up to ClarionSouth. They don't call it boot camp for nothing — I found myself forced to get over it and on with it and the results were interesting. Basically, I came to realise that I'd never really pushed myself as a writer before. I'd been aiming at the bar, not trying to get over it. ClarionSouth was well worth the blood, sweat and dollars invested.

In the last three years you've published three impressive Agog! anthologies. How well have they been received, both in Australia and overseas?

I am amazed by how enthusiastically the anthologies have been received in the US, considering how little experience I'd had when I started. I have had favourable comments from Asimovs, Locus, David Hartwell and the SF Site amongst others. The subtext of most of these seems to be hey look — Aussies are writing decent spec fiction! to which my reply is always yes we are, now come and take a closer look. My goal with Agog! is to showcase the work of our most fabulous fabulists & I seem to be achieving this. Locally the reviews have been more variable, ranging from oh wow! to ho hum, I've read it all before.

The third Agog! anthology was recently launched in Canberra. What can the discerning buyer expect to find between its covers?

Top quality Australian speculative fiction. A diverse range of subgenres, styles and ideas ranging from the comfortable and familiar to the completely outre. Sad stories, bent stories, offensive stories, astounding stories. A reviewer recently stated that he thought the overall tone of Smashing Stories is something like dislocation: being slightly out of kilter with the rest of the world. I think I can agree with that.

Do you think the genre is healthy in Australia at the moment?

I think the short story component of the genre is vibrant — definitely alive and kicking — but it is being supported entirely by independent presses such as mine. The novel side of the equation is a different story. There's a great deal of beige taking up space on the shelves. Major publishers are not taking risks, they are going out of their way to preserve the status quo. To be fair, it isn't necessarily all their fault. Fiction has many forms of entertainment to compete with these days, and business is business, even when there's art and culture involved. But I think that it's important to consider issues of quality and cultural identity within the commercial arena. Do we want to be known internationally as the land of beige? I don't think so.

What do you think of the quality of fiction being published in Australia in the last few years?

There are some extremely talented people writing fiction in our country right now — but I worry that they will have to send their best work offshore if they want to have any chance at getting the recognition they deserve. Indie press can only do so much — and major publishers are simply not interested in short fiction, which is traditionally where much of the most innovative SF writing is born and nurtured. They're not really interested in long speculative fiction either unless it's epic fantasy.

Who do you see as the rising stars in Australia at the moment?

There are many names I could list here but I'll narrow it down to four: Brendan Duffy, Claire McKenna, Deborah Biancotti and KJ Bishop. Duffy and McKenna both have science backgrounds which are put to good use in their stories, but it's the passion in their prose that makes it kick arse, and brings it to the attention of readers and reviewers. To me, the best SF is often about the human condition. It's "what if" coupled with "how would it make us feel?"
Both Biancotti and Bishop tackle these themes from a cooler perspective. Their voices are more reserved, concise and controlled, but no less observant about the mechanics of existence — what it takes to be human in a hostile universe.
The best of our SF writers are producing work which is comparable to work being published in the big magazines overseas, and yet our stories are not finding homes in those markets. I used to think this was because our local product didn't cut the mustard. Reading a swag of Hugo and Nebula nominations from the past few years has led me to change my mind. Our stories are not being published because OS editors don't know our names. We don't attend Worldcons, don't schmooze, don't have a clue what's going on in the highly political environment of American SF publishing.

8. I understand you're presently working on a novel. Can you tell me about it?

I don't want to talk about it too much because I suspect it's going to change significantly from its original perimeters the more I write. Basically it is a fantasy (of the new weird rather than heroic variety)about refugees. A young woman searching for her brother, a survivor of a race of people who's mythological creatures can take corporeal form, and are being harnessed for use as weapons by another race. I've been influenced by the Pullman "Dark Materials" series and China Mieville's fabulous The Scar. KJ Bishop's The Etched City left a very strong impression on me as well. This is the sort of fantasy that interests me and I wish more major publishers would take a punt on it rather than churning out endless second rate Tolkien rip offs.

Next year's anthology from Agog! Press will be something different. Would you like to explain it and how the idea came about?

CS: Daikaju! will be an anthology of giant monster stories edited by Robert Hood and Robin Pen. It's their baby not mine — I'm not even doing the cover art as Bob Eggleton has volunteered his services. It came about because both Rob and Robin live and breathe Daikaju films and thought there might be some interest in creating a subgenre of Daikaju short stories. Visit www.roberthood.net for submission guidelines.

What can readers expect to see from you in the near future?

A bunch of new short stories which I began at ClarionSouth, a selection of B&W illustrations to accompany other people's fiction in Australian magazines, the cover of Justine Larbalestier's new book from Wesleyan press, and the first draft of my novel within 12 months.

Cat, all the best and thank you for your time.

Cat Sparks can be found online at www.catsparks.net/.

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