After a quiet start to the year I’ve had two acceptances in quick succession. The first is a novelette to the excellent Interzone magazine, my third sale there.
The story – A Shout is a Prayer / For the Waiting Centuries – is one of which I’m very proud. It takes place in both Australia and Vietnam. I had the Australian section of the story written in notes more than a year ago, but didn’t feel it had enough going on. It wasn’t until a fairly recently, after I was punched in the stomach by a poem about the Vietnam War, that the second half of the story presented itself.
When I say Vietnam War, I mean what they call here the American War. The Vietnamese fought the Japanese, the French, the Americans, and the Chinese last century, so they need to distinguish between the countries lining up to attack them.
Speaking of which, I recently heard a fascinating anecdote about Ho Chi Minh. At the end of World War II, after the Japanese were kicked out, the Vietnamese were given the choice between the French or the Chinese as colonial administrators. Uncle Ho immediately chose the French.
When asked why he said: “I prefer to smell French shit for five years, rather than Chinese shit for the rest of my life.” It’s possibly an apocryphal story – while the above quote is from the Pentagon Papers, here, historians are at odds over whether Ho Chi Minh actually said it. But myth or no, the story does contain a truth about the ambiguous relationship Vietnam has with its northern neighbour.
After all, the Chinese had previously occupied Vietnam for around 900 years, (43AD to 938AD, with a sixty year break in the middle), and again between 1407 and 1427, and invaded Vietnam in 1979 before being fought to a stalemate. They’ve got history, to say the least.
My science-fiction often touches on this troubled relationship, and it is at the edges of “A Shout is A Prayer…”
The poem that brought the story together – Love Tokens by Tran Da Tu – is here. Have a look. It’s intense. I reproduced it with the permission of the translator, Linh Dinh, after some email correspondence. He was very supportive of my using it, which was heartening.
Even though I live here, writing about Vietnam is challenging. Ha Noi is a fascinating, frenetic city and I admire the Vietnamese people, but still, I’m a stranger.
While I take risks in my stories (why write, if not to take risks?), when it comes to the cultural background, I primarily just want to get it right. To this end, I tend not to make culture the centrepiece, but rather just one element of a larger story.
Yes, I know it is always ‘just one element’ – we’re talking a question of emphasis here. So, for example, by having an Australian-Vietnamese protagonist who has grown up in Australia, the cultural heritage will be just part of the character I bring to the fore along with – to name but a few – class, gender; the city they grew up in, its ubiquitous corruption and the code the protagonist has developed in response; the addictions they struggle to control, and their passion for double denim (if you’re wondering, the answer is yes: I do write neo-noir).
This way, when the cultural aspects are introduced, they form part of a believable and immersive mosaic, rather than the centrepiece of the story or protagonist.
I’ve lived in Southeast Asia for most of the past decade, and I’ve worked as an aid worker, travelling to remote areas and seeing things few westerners would see. I’ve also done a Master’s degree that focussed on this region. But still, I feel all this only scratches the surface.
It’s essential to recognise your limits as a writer, but to go ahead and engage with complexity anyway. So, yes, write stories that have cultural influences outside the norm. Go for it. They’ll enrich your writing and do what good science fiction is meant to do – show the reader different worlds and ways of thinking.
Just don’t bite off so much that you choke.
The second sale is pretty fucking cool. Ticonderoga, a multiple-award winning small Australian Press, is publishing an 
Anthology called Hear Me Roar. It’s a collection of stories about ‘kick-arse women in speculative fiction’ edited by Liz Grzyb (an editor who also has also been nominated for, and won, multiple awards).
The story, The Silica Key, is an older one that I’ve worked hard on improving over the past 18 months, putting it through a number of re-writes. It’s about a hard-case called Lynn Thi Vu, and her life in Sydney’s near-future noir underbelly.
The list of names on the Table of Contents of Hear Me Roar is impressive, and includes a whole whack of award-winning Australian writers. I’m both fortunate and very pleased to be included on the list.
