My feeling is that at some point Australian SF - our short fiction at any rate - stopped being about the reader and started being about the writer. Suddenly we're *all* writers, and we *all* want to be published, so a cottage industry of small press publications has exploded across the country to cater for everyone desperately wanting to write the stuff. We read each other's stuff too, so it's reasonably healthy, but the ratio in this country of writers to readers is all wrong.

So we need to find a way, collectively, to drag in more readers.

I'm not convinced that he's reading everything, because he doesn't seem like he's coming across the same authors that Ellen, Jonathan, and the rest of us are reading—Paul Haines, Margo Lanagan, and many others. Is this oversight?

I can't wait for my issue of Tic-On, because I'm going to rip his attitiude a new arsehole. Rusty knows I love him, but that "everything old is better" attitude is a big fat load of balls. Jesus! George Turner was a hack, Bertram Chandler was worse! Nobody can hold their hands on their hearts and tell me Maloney, Haines, Lawson, Blackford, etc etc and so forth untilwe all die of exhaustion aren't producing damn fine work.

Of course,m if you ask me whether any Aussies are world class I might have a different answer, but it's fucking hard toi persuade someone tor ead your magazine when the editorial says "we don't publish any good stories any more, but here's two we did publish".....

Well, a real can of worms has been opened here. I'm not convinced that everyone responding has understood what I was trying to say, or at least locked on to half of what I was saying and ignoring the other half. I'll clarify in point form:
1) there is still good work being published in Australia
2) Yes we are publishing more, but is the quality of writing overall getting better?

Against this it's easy to pick out some isolated examples, but how many of them are by writers whose first publication was in the last 5-10 years? And how does their work rate with benchmarks like Lucy Sussex's "My Lady Tongue"?

I agree with pretty much all you say...I've always been suspicious of the argument that writers who put out stuff we don't like are resting on their laurels... perhaps because, like you, I'm never satisfied with stuff I write...

I think people too often assume that if a story doesn't work it means the writer just couldn't be bothered... which comes back to intent... it's dangerous (IMHO) to ascribe motives to people when you read their work... "oh, they don't care anymore, they're just churning them out"... for all you know the author has put their heart and soul into it... it just didn't come through to the other side...

It seems I missed the juiciest part of this debate, but here's my 2 cents regardless...

I believe there is a great crop of emerging writers breaking through. Clarion South showed me that.

But I agree with Russell wholeheartedly (well, the spirit of his musings, as I can't vouch for the numbers of Aussies published in international 'Year's Bests' like Ellen and co can).

I love Aussie fiction, I'm almost parochial about it, but to be blunt there is not a single work of fiction I've read in the last two years - not a single one - that I wouldn't have attacked with an editorial razor blade.

Deb said:
>'You couldn't live with yourself,' she suggested, and she was right.
>When I send sub-standard stuff to an editor, I do it out of
>ignorance, not arrogance. I couldn't do it knowingly.

I've learned this lesson as a writer myself. If only more writers took Deb's attitude, my position on this whole subject would be very different.

Shane

I keep looking and seeing a different picture to Russell. There are so many reasons why established writers may not have visibly improved recently, for one thing. Yes, they may have hit a plateau or even their development limit. Given the names mentioned, however, it is just as possible that short story writers might have been focussing on novels or non-fiction or been rudely interrupted by everyday life. Or they may have produced stunning stuff and not got been noticed. You can't judge a writer's development on only one type of piece unless they only work in that area.

Russell's piece made me really glad that I only write three short stories a year and that I am much more comfortable with novels and NF. If he read my stuff he might hate it and decide it is part of the 90% dross, but at least I can be pretty sure he isn't including the main part of my writing in that assessment. It is a bad message for emerging writers to announce: "You are average." And that is what it comes down to and there is this debate - so many of us saw ouselves in that commentary and it is easy enough to hate oneself in writing (rejection slips, yum!) without being told you are probably rather mediocre.

Having vented my spleen, my real thought is twofold. First, that editors can't be left out of the equation. Datlow and van Gelder and the others at the top of the highest mountain of editorial skill can't be counted unless we also count all the emerging editors who are editing all the material that is pouring out currently. And good editing is active - an outstanding editor sees the potential in a story and helps the writer bring out that potential. So experience and skill *count*.

I am trying to say that there are bunch of editors with less than ten years experience out there coaxing short stories into print. You can see most of them grow every time they bring out a new publication. It is wondrous to watch. It means, though, that the abundance of older and newer and just-out-of-the-factory fiction is seen by some people with amazing experience, a lot of people with some experience and an increasing number of people who are still on a very steep initial learning curve. Ask the question in ten years time when these editors have that depth of experience and then we will know more.

Time is important for another reason. This is my second coming in the Australian industry (I am Jewish, I am allowed a scond coming). My first was very small and shy, so no-one remembers me. At that time, too, new growth was budding and a bunch of Eeyores said "but this isn't good writing - we will always be sadly insular and local". Twenty something years on and we look back and see the emergence of a lot of seriously cool writers at that time, some of whom now have international standing. Back then everyone was saying "Maybe Damian Broderick counts as good - not really sure." Now we have all kinds of healthy respect for the Brodericks and the McMullens and other authors are saying "I should try the international market too." The new authors are getting published, too. Of CSFG members with books in print, 50% of us have been published in the US or UK and the other 50% in Australia.

I guess I am saying that we should not be judging ourslves now, but just working on geting better. In twenty something years time our judgement is going to be different anyhow. My hope is that in twenty something years time we see a whole bunch of the writers round now with serious respect from the commnity, and that not too many of us will have fallen by the wayside. I hope we will also see more of us join the Ikins and Gillespies and Blackmores and Brodericks in the various sorts of intellectual endeavour that really help underpin the writing side.

And I seriously, seriously hope that writers will make their own choices about where they belong, and totally ignore comments from above about their possible mediocrity. We can't know more than vaguely yet where we fit in the spectrum of talent - all we can know if people like our writing, if it gets published and if we keep learning and growing.

(Rant over: please queue nicely if you want to strangle me)