Australian Science Fiction in the Sixties

Abstract

Australian science fiction's roots go back to the mid-nineteenth century, mainly in the form of novels. When the genre began to take on a distinct identity in the American pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, Australians were among the contributors, but early in 1940 that all changed. A wartime import ban cut off the supply of American magazines, and almost overnight a local pulp industry sprang up and continued until the restriction was lifted in 1958.1 As a result, Australia was largely isolated from American science fiction for nearly two decades, and when the import ban on American magazines was lifted, the few local SF magazines quickly ceased publication. By 1960, Australia had neither specialist SF magazines nor publishers.Science fiction itself was under considerable stress at the time. By 1961, the USSR and America were putting men in space, uncrewed probes were reaching the moon, and even Britain was launching Black Knight rockets from an Australian facility at Woomera. With these icons of SF being suddenly made real, authors overseas wondered where SF could go next. In Australia, the problem was more straightforward: local authors just wanted their works published and taken seriously. For Australians, that was generally in British or American magazines.Initially they were not very visible. As a teenager, I read A. Bertram Chandler's The Rim of Space without knowing that the author was Australian. The little Australian SF that did get published was being swamped by the sheer volume of what was available from overseas.How much was little? In the 1990s, I acquired a box of magazines that a teenager had collected in the 1950s, then stored and forgotten. It contained about one hundred issues of various science fiction magazines, including Australian issues of Astounding, New Worlds, and Science Fiction Adventures.2 About a third of the items were locally produced and edited magazines such as Science Fiction Monthly, Future Science Fiction, and Selected Science Fiction Magazine. Analysis of this sample of what was available to the average young reader of the 1950s showed that the Australian content was just 2% of the stories. Worse, most of this 2% had already been published overseas.Soon after the wartime magazine import ban was lifted in 1958, overseas SF magazines streamed in and were readily available from newsagents. Libraries generally had British and American SF novels on their shelves within a year of publication. Brick Bradford, Flash Gordon, and Ace O'Hara serials were in the newspapers, and on the radio there was Space Patrol, Tarzan, and Superman. On television, Jet Jackson and Men in Space were showing, while Batman serials and an occasional full-length SF film were to be seen at the cinemas. Inspiration was now freely available to Australians, but getting what was inspired into print was harder.In spite of the difficulties, compared to the preceding decade, the 1960s saw the number of active Australian authors double, with two thirds more novels published per year, and (even excluding Chandler's disproportionately high output of short SF) the number of stories published rising by 250%. Unfortunately, the number of female authors plunged from 20% to 2%, and authors having three or fewer stories published doubled. Put another way, more male authors were writing fewer stories per head. Ninety-two Australian SF authors were active from 1961 to 1970, with more than three hundred works of long and short fiction published.Most of the short SF published locally was in mainstream and mass-market magazines. Magazines like Man Junior and The Australian Journal published most of the locally written SF, but they are difficult to research because no complete runs survive. Their SF was selected for lowest common denominator, mass audience appeal. Ron Smith's Day of Retreat (Squire, 1967) was one of the better stories that they published. A naked man is pursued by naked women through an Arcadian setting, and the object of the chase is an amorous encounter for the woman who catches him. …