TS: sci-fi vs. fantasy!

More generally though, you could look at something like Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which is SF, but whose core value could as easily have been recognised in a Fantasy setting. Whereas I don't think the same could be said of The Dispossessed (or, vice versa, transplanting the "core" of the Earthsea novels into a SF setting).

Oh, I don't think that's changed at all! How much modern SF reflects preoccupations of the now, after all? Or projections of same? The parameters have changed and will change, and the biases current will be all the more evident with distance as we look back.

Actually here's a question for both you and Tim -- are there notable sf/fantasy/imaginative writers from your neck of the woods? I'm sure there are obvious names I'm missing, but alas the only one coming to mind is Nevil Shute for On the Beach, though that's no bad thing per se.

- Isobelle Carmody
- Ian Irvine
- Sean Williams

Science fiction I don't know, but recently a fantastic short-story book was released, featuring dozens of Australian authors over the past 50 years.

http://www.moviehole.net/news/5547.html

Mr Film Fantastic, Robert Rodriguez, looks set to helm the next "Conan" sequel.

The Arnold Fans has discovered that John Milius, who has been trying to get a third "Conan" film off the ground for longer than gas has fuelled cars, has been given his walking papers - and that Rodriguez, currently spinning a lot of bank with "Sin City", is the Barbarian's new pop.

"John Milius had a 5 year contract to be on the WB lot, however, after WB gave Conan away to Rodriguez, they decided they did not need Milius and kicked him off the lot without renewing his contract", says the site.

Milius had been working on "King Conan" - which tells the story of the Barbarian and his son - for quite a while. It's believed he recently talked to wrestler Triple-H about filling Arnold Schwarzenneger's shoes, upon discovering Arnold's too busy playing Governor.

It's not known whether Rodriguez plans on using Milius' idea for "King Conan" or whether he's going to start afresh, and whether he's going to try and coax Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the role of Conan or take on Milius' idea of bringing in Triple-H.

We shall see.

What Happened To The Corbetts is about the possible effects of a bombing campaign on England, written I think in 1938. The materials science in No Highway is nonsense,* but not too bad for the time it was written; to be honest I'm not sure what its date is. Shute, incidentally, was an important aeronautical engineer in the 20s and 30s; he designed the first plane with a retractable undercarriage.

* the plot of No Highway revolves around fatigue failure in aircraft. There are several mistakes which now seem glaring, but reflect the fact that in Shute's day materials science was relatively poorly studied - and, furthermore, was not something that the majority of engineers knew very much about.

As an adjunct to the question: short story vs novel(la)? Too many stories end up as lame-ass one-liners ("and it turned out he was Hitler!"), but the best are jewels of rare price, whereas novels allow writers to develop more of what they're really about, for better or worse.

No finer twist exists.