An Antipodean notion…

I’m toying with a bunch of ideas at the moment. I’m certainly not between projects, but I’m always playing with new ideas, new notions, while I try to work out what I’ll put my energies into over the next year or so. When I decided to do Eidolon with Jeremy Byrne nearly two years ago, my goal was to reconnect with the Australian SF scene. That’s still very much what I want to do. Russell Farr and I are discussing one possible project, and Jack Dann and I have been tossing ideas around for some time as well. However, this evening I was struck by another idea. I love fantasy, and I really like some horror, but my main thing is SF. I’ve edited two original anthologies for trade publishers over the past two years, both featuring space opera, or at least big spaceship stories. It’s always been a passion of mine, and I’ve always felt we’ve not done quite enough of it here in Australia. I’m not sure of the business end of it, but I think I might edit an anthology of big spaceship stories by Australians. If I do it, the absolute essentials for the project would be that all of the stories would have to feature spaceships in some way or another, and they would have to be written by Australians. I can think of a bunch of people who could write for it brilliantly, but I think, like Eidolon, it would also be essential for it to be an open submission book.  I even know what I might call it – Woomera: New Australian Science Fiction. But, is it a goer? I don’t know. I think I need to sleep on it a little, try to work out how the business end of it would work. It could be very cool.