Words from the decaying mind of Paul Haines
X6 Publisher: Coeur De Lion Year: 2009 Description: Six writers — no rules. exsix is an anthology of six speculative fiction novellas, a novellantho, from six of the best speculative fiction authors working in Australia today who between them hold a swag of local and international awards. It includes my 38,000 word novella "Wives". IIf X6 only contained Margo Lanagan’s rich and evocative fantasy “Sea-Hearts”, you’d be getting more than your money’s worth! But this volume of short novels by veteran editor Keith Stevenson weighs in with over 170,000 words by multiple award winning authors such as Terry Dowling and Cat Sparks... and fiery, up-and-coming “young Turks” such as Trent Jamieson and Paul Haines. Ranging from the sublime to disturbing in-your-face noir, X6 is a brilliant cartogram of what’s happening in Australian genre fiction. - Jack Dann – multi-award winning author, and editor of Dreaming Again ‘A resounding six of the best for anyone who still doubts the novella is the ideal length for speculative fiction. - Sean Williams – #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Grand Conjunction One of the year's best anthologies was published by an ultra-small press in Australia, and is going to be very difficult for most readers to find. Nevertheless, X6, a collection of six novellas edited by Keith Stevenson, features two of the best stories of the year - an evocative fantasy by Margo Lanagan and a brutal, hard-hitting examination of a disintegrating Australia by Paul Haines - as well as good work by Terry Dowling and Cat Sparks. - Gardner Dozois, Best Of The Year, Locus Awards: "Wives" Winner 2009 Aurealis Awards Best Horror Short Story "Wives" Nominated 2009 James Tiptree Jr Award X6, Keith Stevenson (editor) Nominated 2009 Aurealis Award Best Anthology "Wives" and X6 2009 Locus Recommended Reading Reviews for "Wives": ‘Wives’ by Paul Haines in X6 is cleverly crafted to force the reader to adjust from known parameters to the story's world, starting with a very simple image of a man in love with a girl in a country town, then, with hints and whispers, revealing that this world is not our own. The story is of a boy's coming of age as he tries desperately to assimilate his upbringing and his mother’s values - that women are not simply property - within a society where property is everything. The real danger of the Australian values of mateship and mates before dates is shown in stark reality. The dialect and language are appropriate to the scene and set the distance between today's Australia and a future where we are more isolated and "countrified". It is a story of isolationism and the ease with which those who are cut off learn hate for "the other". It comments on the brutality of mutilation and the reaction of our protagonist when he discovers he has no pity or empathy, just bitter resentment for his own loss. It is a story of despair—a mother's despair and the despair of giving up hope when love fails. This bleak story is haunting, and the ‘realness’ of this unreality is truly horrifying. -- 2009 Aurealis Awards Judges Report "Wives," Paul Haines, X6 - this one doesn't come chronologically first, but I wanted to talk about it first to get it out of the way. For me, the brilliance of Paul Haines is that he writes stories I hate, about people I hate (and I don't mean mild revulsion, I mean actual HATE), and yet I can't pull my eyes away. "Wives" is his best work to date, an utterly hideous vision of the near future, exploring issues that are already very relevant to many people - the lack of women sticking around in country Australia, the sociological effect of preferring male children to female and, oh yes, the ingrained misogyny that hovers just out of sight in our culture. Haines exposes the ugliest sides of human nature in this epic story of "Bridal Services," rape and slavery, told through the eyes of a narrator so utterly screwed up by his circumstances that it's hard to blame him for the despicable, thoughtless way that he speaks, lives and acts. This is post-apocalyptic fiction at its best and worse, because there is no apocalypse. There's just us. (in discussion with my fellow LSSers about "Wives," I said "I don't know whether I want to nominate it for the Tiptree or BURN IT TO THE GROUND." Yeah, that. Just that.) -- Last Short Story On Earth (full review here) 'Wives’ by Paul Haines is set in a future, rural Australia where women are scarce and treated as commodities––an ugly, brutal tale, but undeniably compelling. -- James Francis, Reader's Feast It's a fucking masterpiece. --Cat Sparks It is a masterpiece. -- Adam Browne This story is one of the best things I’ve read in years. It’s dark, brutal, horrifying and absolutely addictive. - Alan Baxter, author of RealmShift and MageSign. An obscurely published (from an American perspective, anyway) anthology from Australian small press coeur de lion, X6, a "novellanthology" of six novellas edited by Keith Stevenson, slips into the original anthology race late in the the year and makes a very respectable showing for itself, nosing ahead of several more prominently published anthologies in the race for the "Best Anthology of the Year" title. The best story here here, and one of the most powerful of the year, is Paul Haines's almost 40,000-word long novella "Wives", a brutal and compelling story about an economically and envrionmentally stressed near-future Australian society where ill-advised selective-breeding techniques have led to a severe shortage of women available to be wives, and the extreme measures some are willing to take to obtain one anyway. Be warned that when I said it was brutal I wasnt kidding - this story pulls no punches, is full of very unpleasant people, and is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish reader, but it has the fascination of a grotesque and bloody accident on the highway that you can't make yourself look away from. - Gardner Dozois, Gardnerspace, Locus As perhaps is obvious, "Wives" is a very different kind of story to the others I’ve been discussing: a fantasy of irrationality, if you like, a tale of a world whose society sustains and perpetuates itself not in spite of its apparent illogic, but because of it. But it circles some of the same basic tensions: the line between human and inhuman, the competing gravities of emotion and reason... Like so much of the best SF...what "Wives" says is: pay attention to the world. - Niall Harrison, Strange Horizons. (full review here). |
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