For a blast from the past, have a look at our very first Jungle Red Writers blog entry, March 22, 2007(!!) entitled, appropriately enough, "On First Efforts." It was Hank and Hallie and other early Reds, Rosemary Harris and Jan Brogan.
HALLIE EPHRON: Something a little different today... science fiction. I grew up as a huge fan, starting with A Wrinkle in Time, going on to The Day of the Triffids, Stranger in a Strange Land, Slaughterhouse Five, Sarah Canary, The Martian Chronicle… And of course television shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek and I Robot. (I also have a soft spot for The Tick.)
Today we’re hosting
some of the authors of a new anthology of sci-fi short stories that explode gender
stereotypes. Mother of Invention editor Tansy Rayner Roberts puts it
this way: "We hope readers of Mother of Invention are inspired to explore new and innovative Artificial Intelligence storylines that go beyond the old-fashioned trope of ‘straight white cis-man as lone genius, creates woman as robot body or computer voice."
The collection is published by Australian
publishing house, Twelfth Planet Press, and funded by a Kickstarter campaign. A quote on the book cover says the stories it take the “familiar
tropes of mad science and the creation of artificial life get turned on their
heads in the most gloriously feminist way.”
I asked the authors to talk about their short story, what
inspired it, and whether
there’s a a mystery in it?
“Fata Morgana”
An old woman walks out of the desert encased in a mighty war
machine.
There’s a mystery in my story, alright. Having saved
Bethany, its creator, from the flaming ruins of a corporation’s bunker
laboratory, Mach, a battered, autonomous Legionnaire-350, tramps
across miles of burnt and blistered desert to bring her 
to Fata Morgana, a tiny
outback settlement in the middle of nowhere. Is it trying to protect her, or
something else?
to Fata Morgana, a tiny
outback settlement in the middle of nowhere. Is it trying to protect her, or
something else?
“The Legionnaire-350s were not noted conversationalists, but
Mach had mellowed over time. She was proud of the way it had deduced for itself
that words had power, sometimes more than firepower itself. But nothing she
could say would stop it walking. Not this time. Not until the machine believed
them safe.”
I write a lot of science fiction set in climate
change-ravaged near futures where technology is running rampant, largely
because I don’t think any of it is science fiction. I think
this is exactly where we’re headed. My story explores collaboration despite
diversity: three disparate characters doing what they can to make a difference
in the world: an aged, disallusioned scientist, an evolving robot and a young
woman surrounded by violent, stupid men. Between these three, the future might
just stand a chance.
“Mother, Mother,
will you play with me?”
My room is bright and all my toys are here, even the ones
Mother thinks I’ve outgrown.
I am a toy collector, and I can track my childhood back
through well-loved things, charting the way I played with and loved them
through the patterns of ware. When approaching "Mother, Mother, Will
You Play With Me?" I looked to the toys, and the way they kept a record
no one else could see.
There's a mystery in the story, absolutely, but it's not central; it informs the shape of the story, rather than directing it completely.
Rosaleen Love
“Bright Shores”
This is the story of
how Mei lived her life and met her death, and the story of what came after. She
was our mother of re-invention. On this day, the day of the spring equinox, we
meet to honour her life on earth, and her brave passing to brighter shores.
The idea came from a random item on the news. It was
reported, in a straightforward manner, that two robots sent into a nuclear
disaster zone had ‘died’. They ‘lived’ long enough to beam out images of the
destruction, before being destroyed by radiation. If the robots have died, how
then, might they have lived, in their previous lives? And as for the life to
come, what might that be?
The mystery at the heart of the story is the cosmic mystery
of existence.
HALLIE: Are you a sci-fi fan? What are you reading and watching today?
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