Thoughts on Stories in A Foreign Country (1)

As the launch date for A Foreign Country gets progressively nearer (eeep?) I wanted to give you a taste of what to look forward to. So over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some thoughts on the included stories. Part review, part a brief insight into editorial decisions (though I emphasise these views are not necessarily shared by my co-editor) I hope these will whet your appetite, and also let you know a little more about the authors.

For now I'm going to focus on the stories which were entered in the competition (which is most of them). Here are the first three:

No Hidden Costs by Matt Cowens

It should be no suprise that a number of entries centred on environmental destruction; worst case scenarios where the sea levels are ever rising and the very existence of humanity is under threat or futures that imply that a level of disaster was inevitable, but the survivors have learned to adapt, but 'No Hidden Costs' takes a different perspective, examining the consequences of the increasingly desperate measures we may have to take to avoid such a scenario. This is, however, no tirade against environmentalism (I read it as very much the opposite), but a carefully considered exploration of a situation which has no easy answers, infused with glimmers of dark humour. In less than 2000 words, Cowens manages to pack in all that and not skimp on the characterisation either.

Matt Cowens is a writer and high school English and Media Studies teacher living on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand. He has taught English in Japan, designed and produced card games, written and illustrated comics, and is an enthusiastic podcaster and amateur video maker. His writing blog can be found at http://mattcowens.livejournal.com

The God Gene by Marama Salsano

As soon as I read this one, I got on the phone to my co-editor and announced that we were accepting it. It was relatively early on and whilst we had recieved several excellent stories, some of which made it into the final collection, 'The God Gene' was the first to really hit the nail on the head for me. It's also one of the stories we most heavily edited, in consultation with the author; there were a few parts of the backstory that didn't quite add up, and sometimes the phrasing was a little raw, but those could all be fixed. What caught my eye was the ability to tell a captivating story, the classic alien invasion and enslavement story told with a very strong sense of its Gisborne setting (and all kinds of potential for historical parallels) and strong characters with a deep sense of family and history.

Marama Salsano completed a business degree in 2004, then turned her hand to writing. In 2010 she graduated from Massey University with a Graduate Diploma in Arts with Distinction in English, and is currently enrolled in the MA in Creative Writing programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. She was a finalist in the 2009 Pikihuia Awards, and subsequently had her first piece of fiction published in Huia Short Stories 8.
Marama is of Te-Aitanga-a-Mahaki and Tuhoe descent, and lives in Gisborne where she is working on her first novel.

Cry of a Distress Rocket by Brian Priestly

This is really a story where the words speak for themselves. Another short one, it is a portrait of solitude, rich in its description not just of the far reaches of the universe where it is set, but of a world left behind and a mind left alone.

Brian Priestley was born Birmingham, England in 1926. He was reared on Jules Verne, HG Wells, and Astounding and other US pulps. After serving in the Army and obtaining a BA History Hons, he became a reporter. In 1968 he was named UK reporter of the year in the Granada Awards. From 1974-86 he was senior lecturer and later reader in journalism and head of the journalism department at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Over the same period, he was commentator and front man for TV programmes on the media, including News Stand and Fourth Estate. He was awarded an MBE “for services to NZ journalism” on retirement from the university. From 1987-2006 he was a columnist for The Christchurch Star and The Press. Priestley has been married for more than 50 years with two daughters and five grandchildren.

Hope that's whetted your apetite :). Watch this space because I'll be posting some more shortly.