Aboriginality in Science Fiction

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Aboriginality in Science Fiction Author(s): Brian Attebery Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Nov., 2005), pp. 385-404 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241374 . Accessed: 29/03/2014 10:04
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Brian Attebery Aboriginalityin ScienceFiction

It is always hazardousto write across cultural boundaries,and when cultural difference is accompaniedby a history of abuse, the writer is certainto fall into one trapor another.Non-Aboriginalwritersfrom Australiahave generatedsuch a collection of ignorant,patronizing,anddemeaningtexts aboutAboriginesthat some of the latter want to call a halt to any furtherattempts. As the novelist Melissa Lucashenkosays, "Who asked you to write about Aboriginalpeople? If it wasn't Aboriginal people themselves, I suggest you go away and look at your own lives instead of ours. We are tired of being the freak show of Australianpopularculture" (qtd. in Heiss 10). Yet science fiction may be a special case. As the genre within which concepts of the futureare formulatedand negotiated,sf can imply, by omitting a particulargroup from its representations,that the days of that group are numbered. Silence, too, can be a form of control, and the sin of omission, in this case, worse than many possible sins of commission. Australiansf writers have long struggledto incorporate nativepeoples andtheirtraditional storiesand ways of life into distinctively Australianfutures. The history of the struggle suggests that good faith and a desire to learn, while not proof againsterror and offensiveness, certainly make for more interestingfiction than does outright prejudice. In addition, writers such as FrankBryning and Terry Dowling, by creatinga space for Aboriginalcharactersandviewpointswithin sf, can also be read as inviting Aboriginal and other writers from non-Europeancultures to contributetheir own visions of Aboriginality,Australianness,and the future. Science fiction is often concernedwith the ways in which culturesinteract, most obviously in stories of first contactor interplanetary warfare. By allowing writers to dramatize negotiations among radically differing world-views and ways of life, the genre becomes what Mary Louise Prattcalls an "artof the contact zone." A contact zone, accordingto Pratt, is a space "where cultures meet, clash, and grapplewith each other, often in contextsof highly asymmetrical relationsof power, such as colonialism, slavery, or theiraftermaths...." (4). If sf is the art, the zone in which it operatesis the collectively imaginedfuture, a symbolic space where utopia, armageddon, and other powerful scenarios compete. Pratt'sexamples all representone side of the contact:disadvantaged writers staking a claim in dominant cultural forms. Her term might apply as well, however, to writing in which voices of outsidersand downtroddengroups are allowed to challenge the primaryvoice andpoint of view even thoughthe author belongs to the privileged group. This second applicationdependson Bakhtin's idea that voices incorporatedinto a text remain, to some degree, autonomous, rather than being whipped into conformity by the authorialwill. This is the perspectivethat sees novels such as Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Uncle Tom's
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betweentheir white authorsand the black Cabin(1852) as collaborations andviewpoints havebeenimported intothelarger speakers whoseexperiences
text. If there is any real cultural interactionwithin the science fiction of a colonial nation such as Australia, most of it could only be in this Bakhtinian
all of Australia's thatdealing sense, becauseuntilquiterecently sf, including

with Aboriginalcharactersand issues, has been writtenby writersof European descent. The recent emergence of science fiction by non-whitewriters such as
ArchieWellerand Sam Watsonprovidesa new perspective from whichto critiquethe earlierwriting,sometimesquiteharshly.Yet their fictionalso thattheearlier to construct a contact suggests work,eventheworstof it, helped zonewithinwhichcontemporary andnon-Aboriginal, writers,bothAboriginal can fruitfullyexplore issues of injustice,rationality, power, and differing visionsof the future. Thecultural thatmakesciencefictiona contact grapplings zoneoccurboth atthelevelof represented action andatthatof narrative structure. Somescience fiction(likemostfantasy) draws on themes andmotifsfromtraditional magical narratives suchas mythandfolktale,butit reframes thosenarrative elements withinnovelisticrepresentations of society and self. Well-known examples includeSamuelR. Delany'sTheEinstein Intersection (1967),patterned on the Lordof Light(1967), in whichadvanced Orpheus myth,andRogerZelazny's allowsan elite groupto transform themselves intoHindu technology gods.But it is not a simplematterto fuse mythandthe novel, each of whichcarries aboutthe ways in whichtime, society,andrealityare different assumptions Narrative withinthenovel'srealisttradition, organized. techniques developed suchas thedirectrepresentation of thoughts, and characters placeindividualized theirmoraldilemmas at the centerof the action.Oraltraditional stories,by aregenerally around whorepresent contrast, entire or organized figures groups nonhuman sf draws forces.When traditional symbolize beliefsandstories, upon then, it places them in radicallydifferentdiscursivecontexts,as well as juxtaposingthem with advancedtechnologiesand alien landscapes.An essentiallymodem view of the world-scientific, psychological, historical, materialistic-isthuspittedagainsta traditional, magicalview. Andeach of theseworld-views, structures that alongwiththenarrative encapsulate it, comes witha heavyburden of historical freight. Someof the mostaggressively modemsocietiesarealsothosein whichthe modern world-view arrived withEuropean so thattheclashbetween invaders, wasenacted in theformof usurpation of land,formation viewpoints historically of race-based of traditional castes, violent suppression religions, and even genocide. Australia,like New Zealand,the US, and Canada,is now a andscientifically prosperous, relatively peaceful, democratic, advanced society. Each of these formercolonies, however,is haunted by past injustices and of the immigrant ongoingconflictswith its nativepeoples.In the imaginations thesenativegroups becameassociated majorities, earlyon withwildlandscape andsavagery. Eventhough themostdisturbing wasoftendemonstrated savagery by the settlersthemselves,suchviolentpropensities were projected onto the
natives. Yet the landscapewithin which acts of violence have takenplace could
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andthe brutish be seen, paradoxically, as a lost paradise, savagesof pioneer intounfallen children of the wildernarratives couldsuddenly metamorphose tales (theclassicNorth Cooper'sLeatherstocking ness, as in JamesFenimore continent wasnotaswelcoming thearidAustralian American example). Though as the forestsand prairiesof NorthAmerica,the land and its peoplewere in immigrant intovisionsof Edenicinnocence transformed frequently writings andparadisal beauty. the one nativepossession mostenviedby In bothAmericaandAustralia, European interlopers-otherthanthe land itself-is the indigenous body of is thedisappearance of the stories.Thekeenestloss still felt by thenewcomers andenlivened theland.FromLongfellow's thatonceinhabited godsandspirits movement of the of theHiawatha adoption legendto Australia's Jindyworobok of European themselves as local 1930s,we can see writers ancestry redefiming within nativemyths theirownliterary traditions. by reinscribing Unfortunately, tendsto involvepushing theprocessof reinscription asidethosewhoseclaimto the mythsis stronger thanone's own. Whilewaxingsentimental overcolorful legends andnoblerhetoric, bothcolonial in removing societies actively engaged nativepopulations anddestroying theircultures. All of thistroubled interactions within historymeansthatcultural depicted sf are ladenwithlongingandguilt.The indigenous Other becomes partof the textualunconscious-always presentbut silencedand often transmuted into form.Within Australian symbolic sf, Aboriginal characters stand for variously theintractability of theAustralian environment, dangers tobe overcome, quaint survivals fromprehistory, anda spiritual awareness thatmodemhumanity has lost. Oftenthereis no overtmention of earlierinhabitants. Theyonlyshowup indirectlyin the form of place names and buriedculturalreferencesto
walkaboutsor corroborees. Such absences are the fictional equivalentof the of terra nullius, by which the Australiancontinent longstanding legalprinciple
wastreated as if it hadno ownership beforewhitesettlement. Intheconsciousness of whiteAustralians, actualMurrior Aranda peopleandtheirfolkways becomea collectivesymbolicentity:not Aboriginals but Aboriginalism, an abstraction thatcan too easilybecomea commodity. the changing of Aboriginal Tracing representations characters andmotifs, we can dividethe historyof Australian sciencefictionandfantasy intothree periods.FirstcametheBadOldDays,fromthe 1890sall thewayto the 1970s. During the Bad Old Days, Aboriginal peoples were seen primarilyas a
problem:holdovers, like the marsupials,from some earlier stage of evolution-
ary history,and, like the Tasmanian tiger, unlikelyto survivethe arrivalof moreadvanced competitors. Nextwas the Hopeful a briefperiodin Moment,
the 1970s when the emergence of Aboriginal writers such as Kath Walker (OodgerooNoonuccal) and of an Aboriginalcivil-rightsmovementsignaledthe
of imaginative between societies.Finally thereis the possibility rapprochement Troubled Now, a time whenwhichthereis no safe way for a non-Aboriginal writerto tackle Aboriginal issues andyet whenthe discourse of sf offers a number of innovative ideasof raceandcultural waysto reframe difference.
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The Bad Old Days. One of the first appearancesof Aboriginalpeoples within a fantastic narrative is also one of the most outrageously racist. Austyn Granville, author of The Fallen Race (1892), was not an Australianbut an American who spent time in Australia, so blame for the novel's views can be spread between two societies. A general ignoranceon the part of Americans regardingAboriginal life probablymeans that Granvilleacquiredthe specific details of his racism, if not the impulse, from Australianacquaintances.His romance appeared in 1892, at the height of a craze for exotic adventures modeledafterH. RiderHaggard'sKing Solomon'sMines (1885) andShe (188687). Granville follows Haggard's formula faithfully (as the novel's original introduction points out), to the extent of remodelingthe Australianlandscapeto provide a hidden forest kingdom deep within the outback. This kingdomis, of course, ruled by a beautifulwhite queen who will be pairedup with the novel's adventurer-hero. According to RobertDixon, such adventurestories are attemptsat narrating colonialism. They transform the experiences of European exploiters into "rippingyams" about mystery, masculine courage, and romanticfulfillment. The white hero is allowed to go native temporarily:to immersehimself in other cultures, become attunedto landscape,and engage in barbaricbehavior, all the while retainingan untouchable core of Englishness.The adventure makesa man of him but leaves him with schoolboyvirtuesintact. The ironythatDixon points out in Writingthe Colonial Adventure(1995) is that colonial cultures such as British Australiawere most uncertainon precisely these issues. Could one be simultaneouslywhite and native, violent and innocent?In particular,the hero's reformationdepends on his inductioninto a native cultureeven while the plot establishes that culture's inferiority. In Granville's version of the Colonial romance, the hero venturesinto the outbackwith a group of otherwhite explorersand a single native servantwhom he calls by the generic nicknameJacky-Jacky (with no acknowledgment thatthe servant might have a real name in his own language). The other Europeansgo astray, and, "severedfrom my last white companion,I standalone, save for the presence of the aborigine, lost in the wilderness" (40). Jacky-Jacky,in other words, is not a full companion, but something midway between a civilized humanand partof the naturalscene. Jacky-Jacky has earlierbeen groupedwith the pack animals, both literally and through metaphoric terms such as "trotted"-when the last horse dies, "the poor fellow's lamentationsat the untimely death of his favorite, beside which he had trotted so many weary miles, were quite painful to witness" (31). The hero has learned a smattering of his servant's language, and on the basis of thatbrief acquaintance assuresthe readerthatit is "a languageabounding with deep gutteralsandstrangewhispers, but more easily acquiredthanone would at first credit, on accountof the limited range of its vocabulary" (23). Speaking a defective language, overly fond of alcohol, companionto horses, so deferentialto his white boss thathe allows his hairs to be plucked to provide fishing tackle (48), Jacky-Jackyis a typical renderingof the half-assimilatedAborigine as seen throughcolonial eyes.
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But natives who have not been broughtinto the British-Australian sphereof influence fare even worse in Granville's narrative. Jacky-Jacky may be described in animal-like terms, but the tribe of natives the lost explorers encounter are actually a bizarre hybrid of animal and human. Here is the narrator'sfirst glimpse: "Lookingfrom behindthe leafy shelter of the bushes, my eyes fell, first upon the fire itself, and then upon three perfectly round objects, aboutfour feet in height, covered with fur andlooking like exaggerated hedgehogs" (60). These furry spheres are the products of miscegenation, descended on one side from a certain whomany losttribeof aborigines, agesagohadwandered backintothe interior of the continent andhadneverbeenheardfromagain.The centerof
Australiaat that time had been largely overrunby that enormousmarsupial,the kangaroo. With these creaturesthe lost Assoluloo tribe was supposed to have
assimilated, theybeinga verylowanddegraded race,livingchieflyonroots,and

being in a very small degree removed from the brutecreation. (94-95)
The narrator-hero is not greatly surprisedby these apparitions:

as I gazed upon the curiously formedcreaturesbefore us, andmarkedthe almost humanintelligence with which they performedthe duties assignedthem by their
leader,I had littledifficulty in tracingin theiruncouth features somedistinct of the early aborigine,while in theirfur-covered characteristics bodies,the generalactivityof theirmovements, the half leaps with whichthey moved, although circularly,from place to place, the distinguishing featuresof that gigantic marsupial,the CentralAustralian kangaroo,were plainly to be discerned. (95) He assumes that these improbablehybrids were the products of rape, by kangaroos, of captive tribal women-a blatantact of projection, considering who actually carried out such rapes. In contrast, the effect of white incursions on the lives of the local populace is presented as entirely benevolent. At the novel's end, the hero and his queen begin to turn their realm into a sort of missionary utopia, complete with steam engines and a free press. Most importantly,"[f]rom an almost savage condition,she has, in a few years, raised the masses of her people to a high average of intelligence" (351). Such is the power of a determinedwhite woman over even the most unpromisingsubjects. The attitudesrepresentedin Granville's novel did not disappearfrom the Australian literary scene, but they did go underground-in one case literally-and other viewpointsbeganto challengesome of his assumptions.Writers of fantastic fiction had plenty of other stereotypes to draw on in portraying native peoples and cultures. Van Ikin mentionstwo standardattitudestoward Aboriginalpeoples within early fiction: "contempt or indifference"(xxxi). The former is representedby G. Firth Scott's TheLast Lemurian(1898), in which ambushedwhite heroes "haveno qualmsaboutlaying a trapandcold-bloodedly killing every one of their attackers" (Ikin xxxi). The latter attitude often expresses itself as absence: the Australianscene is writtenaboutas if it were a province of England, completely free of prior occupation. A majority of sf stories by Australianwriters take place in the featurelesslaboratories,offices, and apartmentsof formula sf, a setting even freer of dark-skinned people than
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of women.Especially whenprojected intothe future,thisversionof a nativefree continent is, in effect, a sortof bloodless thatsimplydoesaway genocide withAboriginal withthe inconvenience andguiltassociated Another presence. wayto get ridof thenativeswithout else do it: in Erle guiltis to havesomeone Cox's 1925scientific romance Outof theSilence,a visiting superwoman offers, if herwhitehostswish, to weedoutall thecolored races(see WebbandEnstice 123). Troublesome nativescouldalso be eradicated fromEarth by transforming theminto aliens. WhenAmerican writerssuchas EdgarRice Burroughs sent theirheroesto otherplanets,thebeingstheyencountered on thoseworlds were frequently nativeAmericans in disguise-or, moreprecisely,reworkings of Cooper'sIndians.Similarly,the pointof reference for an Australian writer alienswas someversionof the Aborigine. depicting In J.M. Walsh'sVandals of the Void (1931),theinhabitants of Venusaredescribed moreflatteringly than Granville'sAboriginals,but still in subhuman terms: "Thosequaint,not unlovable people who somehowremindone almostequallyof a bird and a human butterfly. Prettytheyare, hardly as we understand it, theyseem"(29). In conformance with white descriptions of Aborigines,the Venerians eat disgusting foodswithrelish(278),endure inhospitable environments (277),and haveshortattention were ... veryinterested spans:"they in everything strange andnew, yet with an interestthatone felt surewas purelyevanescent" (29). Althoughbirds and butterfliesare more decorativethan sphericalhalfkangaroos, theyarenot muchcloserto fullyenfranchised humanity. A more recentinstanceof the Aboriginal-as-Alien is Ron Smith'sstory Attraction" "Strong (1968).Inthisversion, peoplefromEarth colonize a planet withno apparent qualms about theexistence of a native race,the "landies," who aredescribed as "primitive, witha culture at the food-gathering stage"(110). Thestory'smalenarrator findsthelandies repulsive: witha bright "Scaly, shine like a snakehasthatlookslike slimeonlyisn't"(111). Ontopof that,theyare hairless, naked, and smelly. Women of the colony, however, respond differently. It seemsthatthe distinctive odorof the malelandiesis a powerful sexualattractant thatleadsto a massabandonment of thehuman menin favor of "anew, crude,primitive, unknowable, unpromising wayof life thatcameto themas a strange mixture of freedom, whichis fulfilment, andcaptivity, which
is the very basic fact of being human ..." (126; ellipses in original). Although
Smith's story treats the masculinecolonists'point of view with irony, it a common nonetheless reproduces colonial whichis to project strategy, ontothe subject racethesexualaggressiveness actually demonstrated by thecolonizers. White menraping darker women aresomehow transformed intovisionsof white womenbeing seducedby nativemen. This vision, in turn, can be used to the oppression of the nativepeople. intensify Of the variousattitudes in fiction,the mostbenevolent-orleast expressed malevolent-was the assumption that Aborigines were holdoversfrom the distantpast, survivors fromthe dawnof mankind, inevitably doomedby the civilization spreadof European butentitled to gentletreatment for as long as theyshouldholdon. This is the attitude in manyAustralian expressed poems,
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reports, and memoirs such as Daisy Bates's The Passing of the Aborigines
(1938);andit occasionally carries over intothe realmof sciencefiction,as in andFloraEldershaw's novelTomorrow Marjorie Bernard & Tomorrow utopian in truncated & Tomorrow (1983; originally published, & form,as Tomorrow narrator of thatworkcomments Tomorrow [1947]).Thetwenty-fourth-century FirstPeoplearenow thatAustralia's
gone, completely and utterly, nothingwas left of them but a few rock drawings, a few spearheadsin rosy quartz, some patternsincised in wood, the words of some songs, soft, melancholy, their meaningforever sealed. Their dust was in this dust, nothingmore. In the north, where they had not perishedbut had been absorbed,their docile blood had mingled withouttrace and no overt memoryof them remained. (4-5)
In the underground story mentioned above, however, a lost tribe of Aboriginesturnsout to representnot humanity'smelancholypastbut its future. Phil Collas's "The Inner Domain" (1935), one of the first stories by an Australianwriter to be published in an Americansf magazine, begins when a
set of strangeradiosignalsarisessomewhere in the centerof the continent. thesesignalsproveto be utterances Deciphered, in anunknown The language.
narrativedescribesthis languagein termsreminiscentof Granville'sdescription of Jacky-Jacky's"limited"tongue: "Indeed,the gutteral,somewhatanimal-like
soundswere declared to be of purelyanimalorigin,andit by manyscientists was suggested thata hugejokewasbeingperpetrated thevoice by broadcasting of anapeor othermembers of simian thislanguage genus" (85). Later,though, is declared to be relatedto the language of a vanished Aboriginal tribe,the Arnuna.
At this point, the story seems to be headingin the directionindicatedby the
editorial that"theaboriginals whichasserts introduction, areregarded amongst as one of the leastdeveloped anthropologists racesof mankind-asurvival of the StoneAge...." (85). The editorspeculates thatthe territory now held by these "survivals" mightonce have cradleda moresophisticated society, but "What peopledweltthereandwhatdegreeof civilization theyhadreached, no one knows-the deep, sandy desert holds many secrets" (85). No one
knows-but everybody knows, the editor implies, that such a civilizationcould not have been built or maintainedby anyonerelatedto present-dayAboriginals. Indeed, Collas does invent an ancient, highly technological civilization hidden in a cavern beneaththe desert. He departsfrom the lost-worldromance scenario, however, by having his Arnuna tribesmentake over from the longdead machine builders. Having wandered into the caverns decades ago, the Arnunahave over time "learnedall that was known to our predecessors-the secrets and powers of the spheres of light; the methodof extractingmetal ore from rock by fusion and attraction;how to create the translucentmetal from which our buildings and many other things are made-in short, everythingthe original inhabitantsknew" (102). By the end of the story, we discover thatthe Arnunahave not only mastered the ancient knowledge but have surpassedit, making machines that can read thoughtsand explore times past and future. In the process, they have remade
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themselves as well. We see, on the viewscreen of the time-crossingmachine, an image of the Arnunaas they once were: "The typical walk, body markings, weapons and dress could be reproduced by scatteredtribesof Australian natives today. Gins carried squalling babies and the young lubras crowded together, giggling foolishly" (106). Racially charged terms such as "gins" for Aboriginalmotherswould come naturally to the story's white hero, but the narrativeseems to distributehis impressions of the old-style Arnunaamong their own modern descendantsas well. In the story's present, the Arnuna are representedas grave, dignified, dressedin vaguely classical robes, and "of splendidproportions... almostseven feet in height" (90). They are also given a new origin. In the distantpast, it seems, the Arnunahad fled to Australiafrom Egypt after being attackedby "a mighty force of fair-skinned metal clad warriors" (95). This rewriting of prehistory allows Collas to associate the Arnunawith the origins of Western civilization, so that their move into the caverns of the ancientrace is portrayed as a returnto lost grandeur.Their time as "typical"natives is an aberration,a result of their exile. So "TheInnerDomain"has it bothways: Aboriginesare foolish subhumans but they are also rational superbeings. The story offers a radically different conceptionof their potential,but thatpotentialis developedonly by abandoning all traditionalways of life. The Arnunaare the futureof humankind, ratherthan the vanishing past, but in becoming that future, they must trade their own culture for that of the vanished aliens. The Hopeful Moment. The first story to treat Aboriginal folkways as somethingof value in themselves was FrankBryning's "Placeof the Throwing Stick" (1956), publishedmore than twenty years after Collas's tale. Bryning's story takes off from the fact that the first Australianrocket-testinggroundwas named "Woomera." The name was intendedto honor the original inhabitants of the region by borrowing their word for a spear-launcher-at the same time those very inhabitants were being relocatedto makeroom for the rocketground. Bryningadoptsthe point of view of a warriornamedMunyarra,who has come to Woomera to challenge this new threat to traditionalways of life. His inspirationis an earlier hero of the Aruntapeople, who successfully(for a time) drove off the cattle which were devastatingthe huntinggrounds. Munyarra's quest is not destined to be even that successful. A showdown between boomerang and rocket is about as even as a match between a possum and a semi-truck, and Munyarraends up, predictably,as roadkill. The only trace of his heroic effort is a dented fm on the rocket. Technicians looking over the scene fmd only the boomerang, now "a charredbent object" (165). As for the warriorhimself, "all Munyarra'sskill in the manoeuvreof evading spearshad never given him experience in evading a missile flying fasterevery second and every yard from the moment it was launchedtowardshim" (165). His body is vaporized, leaving not even a "charredbent" trace behind. Yet Munyarraand his quest are portrayedheroically, ratherthan as trivial or ridiculous. He is fighting for somethingmeaningful,thoughthe only means
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he has at hand are hopelessly inadequate.Unlike the Arnunaof Collas's story, his traditionalway of life is depicted as somethingcomplex and rewardingin itself, not as an absence of civilization. Ultimately, Munyarra'sculture is just Arnunaor Granville'shalf-kangaroo as doomed as thatof the pre-underground of a cultureis Assoluloo. The difference is that in this case, the disappearance treated as something to be regretted. Having been immersed in Munyarra's point of view throughoutmost of the narrative,we come to see the rocket as a dangerousbeast and its masters as irresponsible,at best, for letting it loose on the landscape. Munyarrachooses to enact the part of a tribalhero, and heroes of legend are not always triumphant.The tragedy is that his heroic, doomed quest was unwitnessedand so will not be enteredinto his tribe's oral tradition. If his deed were known and retold, it could change the world, as the earlier hero's deed changed both his own time and Munyarra's. Two decades later, Bryning came back to the same themes in a pair of stories: "Mechmanof the Dreaming"and "Nemalukand the Star-Stone"(both 1978). These differ from "Place of the ThrowingStick" in that the Aboriginal charactersin each successfully challenge examples of advancedtechnology. In "Mechmanof the Dreaming," for instance, a seemingly invulnerablemachine called Multi-purposeRobot Eight, or MPR8, is sabotagedby unseen locals. Unlike the indifferentrocket of "Place," MPR8 is crippledby boomerangsand spears: "He swung about, unable to standerect with the spearsjammed in his plates" (131). MPR8 is not only more vulnerablethan a rocket, it is also more sympathetic to its attackers' motives. Discovering that it has inadvertently reenactedan Aboriginal myth abouta golem-like creaturecalled Woolgooroo, the mechanicalman, or mechman,chooses to withdraw.MPR8even takespride in its assimilation into local legend: "I might like to claim, sometime, that mechmen were amongstthe aboriginalpossessors of this land before the white humen [sic] came. I might even like to claim MechmanWoolgooroo as a kind of ... Dreamtime ancestor"(139; ellipses in original). One key difference between the earlier and later Bryning stories is the presence of a mediatingsensibility. In "Mechman,"this role is played by Dr. David Mingarra, an anthropologist working as liaison between MPR8's construction crew and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Mingarra approachesthe problem from a scientific point of view. He denies any special insight into local tribal beliefs:
"You must realise thatall I know of aboriginalcultureandhistory is whatI have taken from the same books and University courses any white youth might take. My ancestraltribe disappearedfrom East Gippslandmore than a centuryago. I youth on the lucky grew up in Melbourneas a second generationcity-integrated side.... The only personalawarenessI may have of the thinkingand attitudesof the myalls in the Reserve at this time is what I can pick up from the partially integratedlocal blacks." (135)
Yet it is Mingarra,by virtue of having a footholdin two differentcultures, who solves the riddle of the mechmanand its mythicalpredecessor. When Dr. Mingarrais first introducedin the story, he is presentedin a way that indicates a non-Aboriginalnarratorand audience. Unlike a white team-
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member,who is simplyintroduced as "Sievers,in Electronics Maintenance" (129), Mingarra gets a full and raciallymarkeddescription: "He was the Department of Aboriginal Affairs'liaisonofficerin the field withthe survey project.His eyes, deep set beneath prominent brows,hadtwinkled,andhis white teeth had flashedagainstthe darkof his face in response splendid to MPR8'sjoke against himself"' (131). Thereis no doubtaboutwho represents thenormandwhotheexception on thissurvey.Yetas Mingarra as the emerges human story'smostimportant hispointof viewbeginsto replace character, that of Sieversand the others. Whenhe comments on his own role as cultural he is careful intermediary, to layclaimto European-Australian traditions aswell as Aboriginal-indeed, he has a betterclaimto whiteculture thanto the local traditions of a tribefar removedfromhis own people.He cannotknowthe answer to whythepeopleof theReserve areattacking MPR8,"unless, perhaps it couldbe in theliterature about myrace... thewhiteman'sliterature, I mean, whichis incidentally also"(135). Andit is a scientific my literature literature, thoughthe subject matteris traditional myth. Dr. Mingarra maintains a respectfuldistancefrom the beliefs he explicates.Interestingly, it is the mechman whofindsa personal connection withthestoryof theWoolgaroo. The two characters cross paths, Mingarra havingmoved away from ancestral traditions intotheworldof sciencewhileMPR8goes fromartificial originsto a senseof belonging to the landandits myths. To the degree that MPR8 standsfor the white Australian society that produced him, the implication is thata rootless newcomer canbe grafted onto nativeculture-at least he can do so if there is a character like Mingarra available to interpret for him andto absolvehim of guiltfor pastusurpations andabuses.Mingarra also fills the readerin on historical that developments makehis role possible:"All otheraborigines, like myself, are moreor less happilyintegrated withinthe all-Australian It is now nearlya community. generation sincethe trulyenlightened legislation of the early'eightiesandthe policiesapplying it" (139). Though thisstatement readsmoreironically thanit did in the 1970s,it doesexpressa hopethathistory andsciencetogether might createa hybridculturestronger thaneithertradition in isolation. After "Mechman," the scientistor professional of Aboriginal ancestry becamea frequent character type, nearlyalwaysservingas a cultural bridge between Western scienceandtraditional myth.Theopening section of Damien Broderick's TheDreaming Dragons (1980) is told fromthe viewpoint of Alf DeanDjanyagirnji. LikeDavidMingarra, he is ananthropologist, someone who comes backto the traditions of his ancestors via academic studyin the white Broderick community. his character provides witha moredetailed andmore troubledhistory than Bryning's.Alf Djanyagirnji, like many nonfictional was takenfromhis mother counterparts, andtribeby bureaucrats. Hisadoption intoa whitefamilyallowedhim to complete a formaleducation but it did not himfromracism protect anda feelingof outsider-dom. At thesametime,being outof theNgularrnga adopted tribekepthimfromlearning themythic traditions as a boy of the tribewouldlearnthem.ThusAlf findshimselfalienated from bothworldsand unsureof his own identity.Perhaps for thatreasonhe has
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undertakena project to de-mystify Aboriginal myths. His theory is that the Rainbow Serpent and its variationsare simply tribal explanationsof dinosaur fossils: "Alf's self-imposed treacherousrole was to cap the white man'sjob, to blow the Serpent in all its incarnationsfinally out of all the salt lakes, the evaporated swamps. No more feathered snakes, yowies, dongus, tuntabah, bunyips, sacred custodians:only ancient dried bones. No more dragons"(14). Alf Djanyagirnji's inner conflicts and complicated personal history make him a compelling character and a useful commentator on such issues as alienness, alternativerealities, and faith. Interestingly,Brodericksays that he originally wrote Alf as two characters:an Aboriginaloil-worker and a white anthropologist (qtd. in Blackford 103). The more complex Alf, caughtbetween two world-views and two seemingly incompatibleforms of validation, did not appear until a later draft. The novel suffers when Alf recedes into the background.He is replacedas point-of-view characterby the militarymen and Americanand Russian scientists called in to investigatethe site he has located, a site that turns out to be a gateway into an alien colony. A number of factors may have encouragedthe emergence of Aboriginal charactersand mythic motifs within sf of the late 1960s and early 1970s. One is that the genre itself took off in Australiaduringthose decades, following the lead of two imports, one from Britain-A. BertramChandler-and one fromthe Australianliterarymainstream-George Turner. Chandlerdid not usually deal with Aboriginal issues, but in his story "The MountainMovers" (1971), the indigenouspeople of an alien planet are revealed to be kin to Aborigines, and their sacred monolith turns out to be, like Australia's Uluru, a grounded spaceship.Theirtraditionstell themthatthey came fromelsewhere: "Storysay, in Dream Time, wind come from there, wind move world...." (75; ellipses in original). But they cannotreproducetheir ancestors'achievementuntil they are visited by a group of Australiantourists, who bring both scientific know-how and Aboriginal ancestry: "Like most modern Australians we're a mixed lot-and, in our fully integratedsociety, most of us have some aboriginalblood" (73). Turner, too, imagined a future in which Aboriginal genes and culture contributeto a new Australianidentity. In Turner'sDown There in Darkness (1999), for instance, the narratorcomments that "plentyof people sportedthe odd Koori in the bloodline (and in truththere are almost no pure-bloodedraces on the planet) but it was a mite old-fashionedto be uptightabout it...." (141). The novel ends with a vision of an equally blendedculture:
I saw in mind's eye a building somewhere on a hilltop, above the flurry of the world, where the kurdaitchastudentslived among all the books saved from the claws of time-white and black and brindle, men and women, old and young-and gazed into their own depths, drawingnearerand nearerto the core of knowledge. The GreatUniversity of the World it was, where man learnedhis own past and got hisself [sic] ready for his future. (351-52)
This future merging may reflect Turner's own heritage, for he believed his was of mixed race, perhapspart Aboriginal(Turner,In maternalgrandmother the Heart 26). In several novels beginningwith Beloved Son (1978), disasters
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broughton by war and ecologicalcollapseforce survivors to find a more sustainable way of life, one thatechoesthe ancestral folkwaysof the people Turner calls Koori.GivenTurner's sardonic it is characteristically viewpoint, notsurprising thathe emphasizes notonlythesurvival valueof a traditional way of life butalso the harshdiscipline andrigidroles. It is not a coincidence thatAboriginal themesandcharacters proliferated thatAustralian during thesamedecade sf began to achieve athome prominence
and abroad.Many writers credit the 1975 World Science Fiction Conventionin
for raisingawareness Melbourne of and standards withinAustralian sf. The Guestof Honorat thatWorldCon, UrsulaK. Le Guin,has alwayssoughtto cultural bringbroader perspectives, especially non-European into perspectives, sf. Bothby her own exampleandby conducting a workshop for Australian
writers, she encouragedthe productionof stories involving alternativevisions.
An anthology editedby Lee Harding, a directoutgrowth of thatworkshop, was calledTheAlteredI (1976),reflecting Le Guin'semphasis on beingandseeing differently as a resultof cultural contacts.
Outside of sf, the 1970s marked the emergence of the first generation of Aboriginalwriters and the appearance of a numberof influentialtexts deriving from Aboriginal lore. Among the latter were children's books by Bill Scott, Patricia Wrightson, and Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Scott's Boori (1978) is a hero-tale that takes place when "The Dreamtime had ended in Australia, and no white man had yet found the great land of the south" (1).
wrote severalfantasystoriesbasedon indigenous Wrightson legends,most notably the threevolumesbeginning withTheIce Is Coming(1977).Walker's StradbrokeDreamtime (1972) differsfromScott'sandWrightson's booksin being based in her own experience as a memberof the Noonuccal clan of coastalQueensland and in combining autobiography with retellings of myth. Withthesevolumes andothers thatfollowed,Aboriginal history andstorytelling becamefamiliar to Australian schoolchildren, something theywereencouraged
to see as part of Our National Heritage rather than as distant and alien. In bringing Aboriginal characters and motifs into their work, sf writers were following a national shift of perspective.
Eventhough neverdominated Aboriginality thesf genre,evenin the 1970s, it becameprominent enoughto triggerdefensivereactions. In a reviewof a 1978 anthologythat includedBryning's"Nemaluk and the Star-Stone" and Chandler's"Not WithoutPrecedent," Graham Stone complains that "both Chandler and Bryningintroduce aborigines and the flying saucerreligion. Chandler even bringsin convicts.SF laborsunderenough disabilities without the national adding obsessions, thanks" (10). Similarreactionsfollowedthe appearance of a set of storiesby Terry Dowlingthatdepicted a future Australia dominated by Aboriginal political and religioustraditions. Dowling'sRynosseros (1990) andsubsequent collections markeda greatermaturation of science-fictional explorations of Aboriginal culture.Focusingon the adventures of a non-Aboriginal, or "National," hero operatingwithin this culturalsphere, Dowling'sTom Tyson stories offer sophisticated narrative memorable techniques, images,andtroubling themes.
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between Thesethemes revolvearound conflicts tradition usually andinnovation ornature Mostinterestingly, doesnotequate andartifice. Dowling Aboriginality with traditionor nature-he is just as likely to pit advancedAboriginal at resurgence or to framethe conflict technologyagainstNationalattempts andnoveltyas a struggle betweentradition between tribalfactions. Rynosseros adapts the sf traditionof CordwainerSmith and Jack
Vance-characterized by distantfutures,radicallyalteredhumanity,technological effects that resemble magic, and an exuberant,even baroquelanguage-to the Australianscene. Againstthe backdropof Australia'swide andaridinterior, Dowling places great sand-ships,talkingbelltrees, shapeshifters,cyborgs, and visionaries, while overhead, tribal satellites guardagainstencroachments from the remnant of white population along the coast. Though he received many honors for his evocative and inventive fiction, Dowling did not please all
readerswith his imaginedfuture.To some it seemedto be an exampleof cultural andto othersyet another instance of the convicts-plusappropriation, habitthatirkedGraham Stone. Aborigines-equal-Australia
The Troubled Now. By the time Rynosserosappeared,however, other factors
of "national obsessions"were operating.Even as besides fan resentment Australian sf writers offeredby incorporating beganto realizethepossibilities traditional voicesandmotifsintotheirwork,thosepossibilities were Aboriginal notonlyby theemergence to close off. The 1970swerecharacterized starting of writingby Aboriginalauthorsbut also by the first stirrings of political Kath activityby Aboriginalactivists-manyof them the same individuals. for instance, asserted herheritage herEnglish-style Walker, name by dropping in favorof herAboriginal nameOodgeroo andby creating an informal culture on Stradbroke Island(very muchagainst centerat Moongalba the wishesof In a very shorttime the intellectual climateshifted Queensland authorities). fromdismissalof Aboriginal cultureto extollingits richness,andthenceto condemning the exploitation of Aboriginal traditions by anyonenot bornto them. Andindeed,Aboriginal ideasof the sacred haveall too oftenbeeninvoked by people who have no notion either of the disciplinethat traditionally themyths orof thehistorical forcesthat haverepeatedly accompanies threatened theirtransmission. andothermyth havemade the Joseph Campbell popularizers Dreamtime a byword andNew Age religionists. among poppsychologists One of suchNew Age religioustourism literaryequivalent is the transforming of withwhiteprotagonists Aboriginal stories mythsintofantasy (Charles Hulley's 1994 novel The Fire Crystal is a blatantexample).Anotheris the use of characters as mystical Aboriginal commentators ontechnological societies.The latterploy showsup in the film madefromTomWolfe's 7heRight Stuff. The movie cuts away from its high-techsettingsto show one of the astronauts helpingto set up trackingsites in WesternAustralia. He meets a groupof Aboriginal odd in the notionof flyingout intospace: men, who findnothing He know.He knowthemoon.He knowthestar,an' "Seethatold blokethere? he knowthe MilkyWay. He'll give you a hand,he know"(qtdin Muecke 2).
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And, sure enough, later in the story, an Aboriginalceremonyprovidesmagical sparksthathelp protectJohnGlenn's space capsule. As StephenMueckepoints out, the script uses "Aboriginality [as] a representationor emblem of 'the primitive'-set up against space travel as the ultimateachievementof Western modernity"(2). Criticisms of Terry Dowling fail to note how differentlyhe constructsthe relationship between the traditional and the modem. In the Tyson stories, mysticism is not separatedfrom scientific knowledge. Either world-view, or both in conjunction, can be found among characters of any race. Dowling, though, did not help matters when he chose the term "Ab'O" to name his futuristic tribes. The shortened form of Aborigine, though not the most offensive racial epithet available, has been used derisively more often thannot. An extra apostrophe and capital letter did not provide, for many readers, sufficient estrangementof an all-too-familiarterm. As JohnFoysterpoints out, "To write of a future in which the power lies in the hands of Nig'Rs, or Chin'Ks, or Wo'Ps would I thinkbe regardedas a little on the tacky side" (29). As Dowling's series has developed, he has worked very hard to create an alternative vision of racial and tribal identities, to provide a genuinely new concept to go with the estrangedterm, but it is not an easy task for an outsider to imagine a new form of selfhood for a group that has been so strongly Othered. Most white Australianwriters have chosen to avoid such controversy.Grai Hughes's alien-artifact story, "Twenty-First Century Dreamtime," first appeared in a fanzine in 1989 and was popular enough to reprint in the professional magazine Aurealis. There, however, the editor commented that "the author had intended to expand the story to novella length, but in his research discovered that aspects of the extended version would offend certain taboos of the Aboriginal people" (Strasser4). Rosaleen Love deals with the problem of writing across culturaland racial lines by focusing on the fallibility of the human sciences. Her story "Trickof other people's pasts. An ster"(1993) turnsout to be aboutthe unknowability ancient skull found near Melbournedefies categorization,even to the extent of shifting its form:
At night in the skull room the bones rearrange themselves, a little, not much.
The indentations in the skull from Cow Swampdeepen.The orbitalridges

thicken. Scratches in the teeth enamel sink in, just a fraction.
Soontherewill be a new theory of the originsof thehuman race. The workersin the skullroomassumethe bonesremain the sameandit is theirtheories whichchange.Butthatis notthecase. Thebonesknow.It amuses them.(159) Love's story goes about as far as one can go in refusing to claim ownershipof the cultural Other, and it manages to do so in a witty and thought-provoking way. It exemplifies, in a sense, art of the no-contactzone. But the relationships andAboriginalcultures betweenpast andpresentandbetweenAnglo-Australian keep changing. The publicationof Sam Watson's The KadaitchaSung (1990) and Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Clouds (1998), has reopened the
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possibilityof science-fictionaldialoguebetweencultures. One could even argue thatthese two novels alter the meaningof earliertexts such as Terry Dowling's early Tom Tyson stories, just as Rosaleen Love's tricksterskull retroactively changes the origins of the humanrace. The Kadaitcha Sung is not primarily sf, but Watson's heady mix of storytellingtropes has led reviewers to label it as such, citing also myth, horror, fantasy, and magic realism (Watson, "I Say" 591). The novel compresses the whole history of white-Aboriginalrelationsinto the family story of the creator god Biamee, his twin sons Booka and Koobara,andhis present-daydescendent Tommy Gubba. Tommy is a half-white, urbansocial worker, but he is also a hero who talksto spirits, makeshimself invisible, andgoes in quest supernatural of the powerful stone that is the heart of the Rainbow Serpent. Initiatedas a Kadaitcha,or tribalenforcer/shaman,he must maintainhis double identityand function in both worlds, magical and mundane, in order to defeat the evil Booka, who has possessed the body of a white politician. Tommy's own clan is the Biri, but he has to reach outsidehis own family connectionsandtraditions in order to achieve his quest. His initiation takes place in a cave in sacred Uluru, half a continent away from his home (and well outside the traditional stewardshipof either Tommy's tribe or Sam Watson's). Beating Booka at his own magical game requires assembling allies among Aborigines, whites, and spirits, and also acquiring an amulet brought from Africa by his white girlfriend's parents-it requires, in other words, all the resources of his own culture and an infusion from other cultures as well. Tommy's final triumph comes only after a great deal of violence (includingsexual violence) andat great emotionalexpense. Thoughofferedprivileges "beyondprice"by Biamee(251), he forfeits his rewardand his life when he chooses to disobey triballaw and let a member of anotherclan go unpunishedfor her clan's past treachery. Instead of killing Jelda, a young woman of the blackpossumpeople, as he is instructed, Tommy sends her away from Brisbanebearinghis child. For this disobedience, he must die, but he is doomed also becausethe Kadaitcha tradition he represents is too wild, too powerful, and too violent to live on in the new social reality of the Aboriginal people. TheKadaitchaSung startledmany readerswhen it first appeared.It did not fit into the accepted forms of discourse for Aboriginal writers-it was not a or a piece of mystical wisdom. Even retold folktale or a tragic autobiography a commentatoras knowledgeableas StephenMuecke, collaborator on andeditor of many Aboriginal texts, found the book "virtuallyunreadable"(Gelder and Jacobs 108). Yet what Watsonwas doing in the novel was what anothernovelist and essayist, MudroorooNarogin, has said Aboriginalwriters shoulddo: "The Aboriginalwriter is a Janus-typefigure with one face turnedto the past and the other to the future while existing in a postmodern, multiculturalAustralia in which he or she must fight for cultural space" (24). Turning to the past is acceptable; staking a claim to the future by using modes like sf is more controversial. Watson's book functions within the contact zone of Europeanstyle fantastic fiction. It also reasserts the points of contact between urban Aborigines and those who live more traditionallives:
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SCIENCE FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 32 (2005) have tried to separatethe so-called white economists and white administrators true Aboriginal person, the so-called full-blooded tribal person, who is from the urbanblacks who were agitatingfor such essentially a hunter-gatherer, bullshit things as land rights and that sort of thing. I wantedto redress that and say, not only to white Australiabut also for my own brothersand sisters, that even though we live in a land of concrete and bitumen, and even though we speak in the language of the conqueror,wear the clothes of the conqueror,deal in the currencyof the conquerorand essentiallyearn a living within the camp of the conqueror, we are still very much a tribalized, fully culturalpeople and we still have, even throughthat boundaryof concrete and bitumen, we still have a very strong link to the land. So I constructeda story aboutthe Kadaitcha figure within traditionalAustralia. ("I Say" 590)
The KadaitchaSung functionswithin the contactzone of genre fiction; it is itself an arena for negotiation among different traditions of narrative and andits centralfigureTommyGubba,whosename, occupation, characterization; and mixed blood all represent cultural interactions, asserts the continuity of Aboriginal traditionwithin modernurbanAustralia. An article in the TheMUP Encyclopaediaof AustralianScience Fiction and FantasyacknowledgesWatson'soriginality:"Thereare manywonderfulbooks, most of them for young readers, with elements of Creationstories in them. But only one book so far by an Aboriginalauthordelves into the fantasyrange;this is The KadaitchaSung by Sam Watson...." (Weller, "IndigenousMythology" 97). The authorof this article, Archie Weller, has himself writtena novel that straddlesthe line between fantasyand science fiction. Weller was acclaimedas an Aboriginal writer of distinction for his realist novel The Day of the Dog (1981), buthe has also hadhis claims to Aboriginalancestrychallenged.Similar questionshave been raised aboutthe racial identityof MudroorooNarogin and a number of other writers identified as Aboriginal. Rather than scrutinizing writers' family trees, we mightnote the significanceof the fact thatAustralians of mixed or unknown race would self-identify with the most visible and most oppressedracial Other. In the MUP Encyclopaediaarticle, Weller seems not to be numberinghimself among Aboriginalwriters, simply pointing out that "A novel by Archie Weller, TheLandof the GoldenClouds(Allen & Unwin 1998), has two Nyoongah, or SouthwestAboriginal characters,among those who go on a quest in an Australiathree thousandyears in the future"(97). What Weller does in his futuristicsetting is to offer a broadrange of racial and culturalpossibilities. His questingcharactersinteractwith several groups: pale city-dwellers who rule by psychic powers, even paler Nightstalkerswho live in caves and prey on the above-groundraces, Gypsies moving within and between differentgroups, Caribbean visitors who have preserveda higher level of technology than any of the Australians,and even a society whose religion is based on the game of cricket. The centralcharactersRed Mond Star Light and his kin, however, represent perhaps the most interesting version of racial of mixed descentbut mostly identity. They belong to a tribe of hunter-gatherers European,called the Ilkari. Their mythsandritualsreflect the influenceof their Aboriginalneighbors, whom they call the Keepers of the Trees. Some of them
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have Aboriginalancestry: "Sometimes, thoughit was strictly forbiddenby the Keepers' laws, an Ilkari woman would give herself to one of the Keeper men and thus there were Ilkariwho had a Keeper ancestor. But never would a dark Keeper woman give herself to a white man. Their race was much too pure and regal for that" (5). In the post-Holocaustworld of the novel, darkskin is both a markof honor and a survival advantage:many of the Ilkarisuffer from skin cancerbecause of exposure to the sun. The palest people are also the least trusted: the cavedwelling Nightstalkers.In the course of the story, manyculturalboundariesare breached. Red Mond shelters and falls in love with a Nightstalkerwoman, and one of the Keeper warriors falls in love with a Caribbeanvisitor. Like Sam Watson's Kadaitcha warrior, the Ilkari not only draw upon indigenous Australiantraditionsbut also ally themselveswith othernon-European powers. Red Mond and his fellow wayfarers survive by pooling several sorts of knowledge: forgotten technology, traditional stories, and newly-developed psychic abilities. As they travel, they shake up the societies with which they interact,giving a boost to dissidentfactionswithineach. By the end, a relatively stable but fragmentedworld is giving way to a new culturaldynamicthat may result in a new and less destructivecivilization. Weller offers two different visions of Aboriginalfutures. On the one hand, the Keepers of the Trees remainapart,preservingthe myths and disciplinesof nomadic life that have kept their ancestors alive for millennia. On the other hand, descendantsof Aboriginal people and the stories those descendantstell provide the basis for a new hybridhumanity.Neitherculturalpatternis marked within the narrativeas the right or only way to be Aboriginal. Archie Weller and Sam Watson are able to use sf and related genres to explore and reinvent Aboriginalitynot in spite of but because of those genres' racistorigins. A storytellingform thathas been used to depictracialandcultural interactions,even in the most outrageouslybiased fashion, can be redirectedto presentother points of view. Once the Otherhas been invoked, there is no way to post Keep Out signs on the genre. It has become a contact zone. I find it particularlyinterestingto read TheKadaitchaSung andLand of the Golden Cloudsalongside Dowling's most recentTom Tyson stories. In the first collection, Rynosseros, Tyson was a hero in the Rider Haggard romance tradition:the white colonial who acquirespower from nativepeoples-and finds a love interesthidden amongthem but not usually one of them. He was opposed by Aboriginal Kurdaitcha men (the more common spelling of Watson's Kadaitcha)who resentedhis acquisitionof a tribalship andtribalspiritualgifts. More recent stories, though, have changedthe impressionof who Tyson is and what might be at stake in his search for his own identity. Tyson, it seems, may be an artificialcreationmadeby the AboriginalClever Men as partof theirown exploration of life and spirituality. He, like various artificial intelligences he meets in his adventures,is a productof their superiortechnicalability, and his frequent frustrationshave more to do with differing scientific goals among Aboriginal factions than with any personalvendetta.
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Even the earlier Tyson stories change theirmeaningwhen they are readwith Watson's and Weller's novels. No longer do they bear the burdenof speaking for Aboriginalpoints of view, if they ever did so. Instead,they can speakabout what it might be like to live among Aboriginalneighborsin a radicallyaltered future, one in which science and myth go hand in hand and white Australians must reinvent themselves, with the help of those neighbors, after bringingon ecological and other disasters. Tyson does not acquirepower from the Aboriginesbut ratheris allowed by them to make his own discoveries to supplementtheirs-so long as he abidesby their social rules. Whathe discovers has do with his own origins, with the land itself, with hidden forces and intelligences at work in that land, and with the organizing of all those factors into myth-like narratives. His is a quest for pattern, and his dispatchers on that quest are the Aborigines, "as changed, changing and changeless as they now are, who have always had the soul-map of the songlines to keep intact this vital, pivotal connection between self and place, reality and dream, identityandthe infinite ... caughtbetweenamusement and grudging approval at this growing habit among Nationals" ("Doing the Line" 1). The patternshe finds have to do with three images that were planted in his unconscious by his Aboriginal creators: a star, a woman's face, and a ship. Each of these seems to have had a purposethatevents in Tyson's life have redirected. His own personal archetypes, these images can turn out to signal many things, some of them contradictory.It is up to Tyson, finally, to decide what story they will combine to form, which will be the story of his life. And it is up to other writers, Aboriginaland "National,"to decide what to make of the contact zone that is science fiction. The zone has been expanded repeatedlyby Dowling, Weller, Watson, Broderick, Bryson, and others. It is available especially to Aboriginalwriters, who can find in it a form that links their traditionaloral literatureswith a high-techor post-techfuture. By writing in genres such as sf, Aboriginal writers remindus that they too participatein world cultureandhave a claim on all forms of literarydiscourse. contemporary For non-Aboriginalwriters, sf may be less perilousthanattempting to describe the Aboriginalpast andpresentfrom an outsider'sperspective,for such attempts all too often come across as "patronising,misconstrued,preconceived, and abused"(Jackie Huggins, qtd. in Heiss 198). Withinthe zone of sf, abuse and misconstructionmay continue, but there is no excuse to carry preconceptions over into the future. Dowling's complex future is best read, not as an appropriationof Aboriginal themes, but as an invitation to other writers, especially Aboriginal writers, to take part in a dialogue aboutpossible futures and new ways of being human. One of the most importantfunctionsof sf like Dowling's and Weller's is to show us our own preconceptionsand offer ways to bypass them. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS for this essay was funded Partof the research by a grantfromthe FacultyResearch anda sabbatical leavefromtheUniversity Committee atIdaho StateUniversity, gaveme I wouldliketo thank all thosewhohave a newcontinent froma distance. timeto explore
offered suggestions and insights, including Michelle Reid, Terry Dowling, Van Ikin,
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DamienBroderick,JustineLarbalestier,LymanSargent,Kim Selling, MargaretClunies Ross, Robert Hood, Stephen Dedman, and JudithLeggatt. WORKS CITED Blackford, Russell. "The Damien BroderickInterview." Science Fiction: A Review of SpeculativeLiterature4.3 (September 1982): 94-105. Broderick, Damien. TheDreamingDragons. New York: Pocket, 1980. Bryning, Frank. "Mechman of the Dreaming." Other Worlds. Ed. Paul Collins. Melbourne: Void, 1978. 129-39. " EnvisagedWorlds.Ed. PaulCollins. Melbourne: . "Nemalukandthe Star-stone. Void, 1978. 77-83. " 1956. AustralianScience Fiction. Ed. Van Ikin. . "Placeof the Throwing-stick. St Lucia: U of QueenslandP, 1982. 159-65. Chandler, A. Bertram. "The Mountain Movers." 1971. Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction. Ed. David G. Hartwell and Damien Broderick. New York: Tor, 1999. 63-81. Collas, Phil. "The Inner Domain." AmazingStories (October 1935): 85-113. Dixon, Robert. Writingthe Colonial Adventure:Gender, Race, and Nation in AngloAustralian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914. New York: CambridgeUP, 1995. Dowling, Terry. Blue Tyson. North Adelaide, SA: Aphelion, 1992. "Doing the Line." Rynemonn.Unpublishedmanuscript. Rynoserros. North Adelaide, SA: Aphelion, 1990. Rpt. Parramatta,NSW: MirrorDanse, 2003. TwilightBeach. North Adelaide, SA: Aphelion, 1993. Eldershaw, M. Bernard [Marjorie Bernard and Flora Eldershaw]. Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow.London:Virago, 1983. Originallypublished,in abbreviated form, as Tomorrow& Tomorrow(Melbourne:Georgian, 1947). Foyster, John. "Quest of the Three Worlds." Australian Science Fiction Review. 2nd series. 1.3 (July 1986): 28-33. Gelder, Ken and Jane M. Jacobs. UncannyAustralia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. Melbourne:MelbourneUP, 1998. Granville, Austyn. The Fallen Race. New York: Neely, 1892. Harding, Lee, ed. The Altered I: An Encounter with Science Fiction. Melbourne: Norstrilia, 1976. Heiss, Anita. "Writing about Indigenous Australia-Some Issues to Consider and Protocols to Follow: A Discussion Paper." Southerly62.2 (2002): 197-205. Hughes, Grai. "Twenty-FirstCenturyDreamtime."TheMentor62 (January1989): 1825. Rpt. in Aurealis 4 (1991): 51-59. Hulley, Charles E. The Fire Crystal. Sydney: Mystic, 1994. Ikin, Van. "Introduction: The Historyof AustralianScience Fiction."AustralianScience Fiction. Ed. Van Ikin. St Lucia: U of QueenslandP, 1982. ix-xxxvii. Love, Rosaleen. "Trickster."Mortal Fire: Best AustralianSF. Ed. Terry Dowling and Van Ikin. Rydalsmere, NSW: Hodder, 1993. 157-62. Muecke, Stephen. TextualSpaces:Aboriginalityand CulturalStudies. Kensington:New South Wales UP, 1992. Narogin, Mudrooroo. Writing from theFringe:A StudyofModernAboriginalLiterature. Melbourne:Hyland, 1990. Pratt,Mary Louise. "Artsof the ContactZone. " Profession91. New York:MLA, 1991. 33-40. Rpt. in Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice
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Together. Ed. Janice M. Wolff. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2002. 1-18. Scott, Bill. Boori. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978. Smith, Ron. "StrongAttraction." 1968. AustralianScience Fiction 1. Ed. JohnBaxter. Sydney: Arkon, 1975. 109-26. Stone, Graham. Review of Paul Collins, ed., Envisaged Worlds.Science Fiction News 53 (February1978): 7-12. Strasser, Dirk. "Editorial."Aurealis: Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction 4 (April 1991): 4. Turner, George. Beloved Son. London: Faber, 1978. Down Therein Darkness. New York: Tor, 1999. In the Heart or in the Head: An Essay in TimeTravel. Carlton,Vic: Norstrilia, 1984. Walker, Kath. Stradbroke Dreamtime. Sydney: Angus, 1972. Walsh, J.M. Vandals of the Void. London: Hamilton, 1931. Rpt. Westport, CT: Hyperion, 1976. Watson, Sam. "I Say This to You. "Meanjin 53.4 (Summer 1994): 589-96. . The KadaitchaSung. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1990. Webb, Janeenand Andrew Enstice. Aliens and Savages:Fiction, Politics, and Prejudice in Australia. Sydney: HarperCollins, 1998. Weller, Archie. "Indigenous Mythology." The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Paul Collins. Melbourne:MelbourneUP, 1998. 95-97. . Land of the Golden Clouds. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen, 1998. Wrightson, Patricia. The Ice Is Coming. London: Hutchinson, 1977. ABSTRACT Science fiction in colonial societies such as Australia can function as what Mary Louise Prattcalls an "artof the contactzone"-an imaginativespacewithinwhich groups define themselves and negotiate their culturaldifferences. Australiansf falls into three periods with regardto its treatmentof Aboriginalcharactersand traditions.In the first, from the 1890s to at least the 1960s, native charactersare treated as subhumanand Aboriginalbeliefs andtraditionscompareunfavorably with European-derived scienceand social organization.The second period overlapsthe first, buta new perspectivebecomes dominantin the 1970s; the emphasisis on positive qualitiesof Aboriginalcultureand on common ground between Aboriginaland non-AboriginalAustralians.After the 1970s, increasedawarenessof political injusticeandfearsof impingingon Aboriginalexperience and intellectualpropertycause most European-Australians to avoid the topic altogether. In the same period, however, non-whitewritersbegin to explorethe possibilitiesof using science-fictionaldiscourse to redefinetheirown history, identity,and traditions.Novels such as Sam Watson's The Kaidatcha Sung and Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Cloudopen the genre up to new voices and points of view. These novels may be read as commentariesupon, and responsesto, earlier sf. Some of this new fiction benefits from being read as part of a cross-culturaldialogue, most notablyTerry Dowling's series of stories about a high-tech, Aboriginal-controlled,re-mythologizedfutureAustralia.

Aboriginality in Science Fiction

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Brian Attebery Aboriginalityin ScienceFiction

SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 32 (2005)

all of Australia's thatdealing sense, becauseuntilquiterecently sf, including