he Road Warrior is not the only science fiction
to come out of Australia. In fact the Australian science fiction
tradition goes all the way back to the late 19th century and has
always been quite active, turning out a steady stream of award-winning and well-loved authors. Anyone curious about this small
but thriving SF community will find a good resource in
Eidolon: SF Online.
Presented by Eidolon Publications, publisher of the print
magazine Eidolon, this site features a news page with
all the latest science fiction and fantasy happenings Down Under,
as well as a list of annotated links to other SF and fantasy
resources. The larger "Australian Science Fiction" section
contains a bibliography of all Australian science fiction
published up to 1993, as well as pages about the major
publishers and a list of Australia-specific links. Pages
dedicated to the major Australian authors contain bibliographies,
biographies, news and further links.
That's the Australia-in-general part of the site. The
remainder is dedicated to Eidolon itself. Founded in 1990,
there have been 21 issues of this magazine, and it has published
stories by some of the best writers on the continent, as well as those
from the United Kingdom and the United States. At least a few items from every issue are available online, from fiction to book reviews, interviews, letters, news and a variety of essays and features.
An upside-down inventory
All-in-all the site is an informative, if dry, rundown of
Australian print genre fiction. It's simple to navigate, plainly
designed and sparsely illustrated. The author pages have plenty
of interesting news tidbits about their subjects, as well as
listings of short fiction sales and forthcoming books, so
fans can keep track of the objects of their worship.
The Eidolon area is somewhat disappointing,
though. The index page lists all the contributors to each issue,
leading users to believe that all those authors can be found on the
Web site, but that's not so. There's actually very little
fiction available. The news and book reviews are nice, but for
the most part out of date.
Frankly, the site is more of an index of Australian
science fiction and fantasy and doesn't spend much time talking about what makes the writing unique in the part of
the world where the water spirals the wrong way down the drain.
But in all fairness, the site is actively in the process of
securing the electronic rights to all the back issues of
Eidolon, and it promises to add a discussion board
soon. These improvements should help out a lot. Even without the changes, most
Northerners will be pleased to discover that there's a whole
continent of science fiction and fantasy to be explored.
