Casey Lucas celebrates an anthology of New Zealand sci-fi and fantasy
A collection of science fiction and fantasy tales, Monsters in the Garden is a reminder that New Zealand fiction has always walked on the wild side. Our literary tradition has a tradition of social realism but genre writers have always been here, their work has always existed, and a lot of it even kicks ass.
There is a robust and powerful hunger for fantastic genre fiction by New Zealand authors. Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth was shortlisted for international awards including the Nebula and the Hugo. Aotearoa genre author Cassie Hart was recently a guest of honour at Fiyahcon, arguably the hottest new genre fiction convention on the entirety of planet Earth.
Neither Muri or Hart feature in Monsters. In fact several of the stand-out stories in the anthology are by authors better-known for non-fantastical works. Witi Ihimaera's contribution, "The Last White Rhinoceros", follows the life of the last man left alive, petitioning the courts for the right to die lest he be propped up indefinitely like a sideshow act for far-future tourists to gawk at. This story strikes notes every bit as profoundly wrenching as any work of literary fiction.
Then there's the one-two punch of Emma Martin and Pip Adam, one right after the other. In Martin's "In the Forest With Ludmila", we are forced to endure glimpses of tense, heart-pounding family violence and neglect as told through the distorted lens of a modern day fairytale. There are unforgettable details: a child's scalp striking the corner of a table, a grandmother's creaking laugh. Then we round the corner straight into Adam's "A Problem", where the menace of the story is a subtle, lurking crocodile. But the story's worst implications are told in the gaps between the sentences.
If that all sounds horrifying, that's because it is. There's a palpable darkness to many of these stories, though their protagonists are rarely without agency and triumph to make up for it. Many of the futures and fairytales explored within Monsters are possessed of a certain menace. In Juliet Marillier's "By Bonelight", we endure the darker moments and the wicked stepmothers of these worlds to savour the delicious payback when they get what's coming to them. In Tamsyn Muir's "Union", we can guess the fate of the village's local shit-stirrer long before it descends upon him, and dear reader, that is half the fun.
That isn't to say that it's all doom and gloom and visions of androids replacing women in the future, and old souls propped up by science and medicine against their wills. Among the book's more hopeful offerings is "The Stone Wētā" by Octavia Cade, in which a team of climate scientists engage in cloak-and-dagger data sharing with the goal of saving humanity's future. Rachel Craw's contribution, "The Dreamer and the Nightingale", has bitingly funny dialogue, while Phillip Mann's "The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse" is a feast of delightfully surreal fiction. Mann has a way of sketching an absurd scene with the fewest possible strokes, leading the reader along on a merry chase and suddenly arriving at profound conclusions about the nature of camaraderie and co-dependence.
All of these stories, whether they imagine far-flung futures or tales that explore a world that's merely a small glitch away from our own normal, have an emotional impact. These stories will scare you. They will make you laugh. They will make you think. They treat childhood with a tender touch. And they do not do these things because they're 'high-brow' science fiction and fantasy. They do not evoke these emotions because they are 'better than most' genre fiction; genre fiction is fully capable of doing those things without being judged against the yardstick of big-L Literature.
There has been criticism of this anthology about who it chose to leave out – and who made the cut. There are two stories by the editors' own children. Monsters was one of those shoulder-tap anthologies where everyone's submissions were solicited rather than being held by open call. But none of the stories feel out of place.
Many of the authors featured in this anthology such as Margaret Mahy, Tina Makereti, Janet Frame, and Elizabeth Knox are lauded by the literary establishment as writing works that transcend genre. They can make the fantastical interesting without making it, ugh, capital-f Fantasy. After exploring time travel, worlds where assassins chase their targets across the page, and futures where heroes of science make last mad-dash efforts to save humanity from itself, Monsters in the Garden also dares to imagine perhaps the most daring alternative dimension of all: one where genre doesn't need to be transcended. One where we don't need to keep having these conversations. One where stories stand on their own legs as stories and we all read them and enjoy them and find our lives enriched by doing so, whether they have spaceships or not.
Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Elizabeth Knox and David Larsen (Victoria University Press, $35) is available in bookstores nationwide.
