The Adelaide Fan Review

We are delighted to announce that Dr Janeen Webb, author, critic, critic, editor, World Fantasy Award winner, is our speaker at June’s Nova Mob meeting on Wednesday 5 June! 

Janeen’s recent published works have explored alternate histories to great effect, receiving recognition in overseas markets that her home Australian market would do well to meet. Comment from critics are that her novels and stories are strong additions to the subgenre of alternate history (counterfactuals), a realm of the science fiction landscape where it’s hard to tell stories well but when you do get it right, you wield large enduring narrative power which stays with the reader and achieves that conceptual breakthrough and reframing of perception which is at the heart of successful science fiction.

Excellent memorable powerful stories.

What makes for excellence in alternate history? What makes special this particular realm of sf? You are invited to a fireside chat on these and similar questions.

If you’ve not encountered Janeen’s fiction over the past decade, now is your opportunity.

You may know Janeen Webb’s work from many perspectives. Perhaps the award-winning anthologies of Australian SF she co-edited, Dreaming Down Under and Dreaming Again, or the republication of Kenneth MacKay’s 1895 Yellow Peril novel The Yellow Wave (co-edited with Andrew Enstice). Or as a critic, including as a member of the ASFR (Australian Science Fiction Review) collective. Perhaps as an academic, “I spent way too many years as a professor, and I’ve recently been lecturing on counterfactuals for a post-grad College in Canberra”. Or as author of the nonfiction work of note Aliens & Savages: Fiction, Politics, and Prejudice in Australia (1998, 2023) with Andrew Enstice. Maybe by way of her short stories. Or maybe as author of the young adult fantasy Sinbad Chronicles series, of Sailing to Atlantis (2001) and The Silken Road to Samarkand (2003). Or novelist of the fantasy satires The Gold-Jade Dragon and The Dragon’s Child, or the alternate history author of The City of the Sun series (also co-authored with Andrew Enstice). 

It is these latter works to which Janeen will be talking in particular. In the best tradition of fannish discourse however it’s likely all these various aspects will be touched on.

“The date is 1854. The place is the Australian goldfields in the British colony of Victoria—the richest prize on earth. The story begins with a stockade. The flag of independence is unfurled. Men driven beyond endurance take arms against British redcoats. At their forefront are two hundred Colt-wielding Americans, the California Rangers, led by the charismatic and idealistic Captain James McGill. The stockade falls. The Rangers are scattered.

But from the ashes will rise a new revolution—a revolution powered by the sun. And this one will not fail. In the 19th century, just how close did we come to a world run on solar power? The Five Star Republic is history with a twist, the story of a world that might easily have been—the future you’ll wish we’d had. For more information visit the publisher’s page.”  Link to video of the book launch

Introduction by Andrew Enstice & Janeen Webb 
“He was a mate of Banjo Paterson, and hailed as a possible poetic successor to Henry Kendall. He was a champion jockey, a prospector, a station owner. He sat for thirty-five years in the New South Wales parliament. He was a friend of Churchill, of Cecil Rhodes, and a champion of the rights of the ordinary soldier. He founded the Australian Light Horse, and led them into battle in South Africa. And yet you’ve probably never heard of Kenneth Mackay. But the themes of The Yellow Wave: A Romance of the Asiatic Invasion of Australia resonate as much today as they did a century and a quarter ago: nationalism, racism, and fear of a resurgent China.”

“Janeen Webb holds a PhD in literature from the University of Newcastle. A lecturer in literature at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Janeen is also co-editor, with Jack Dann, of the anthology Dreaming Down-Under, which won the 1999 international World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, as well as the 1999 Ditmar (Australian Science Fiction Award). She has won both the Aurealis and the Ditmar awards for her short stories. She splits her time between Melbourne and her country retreat in Foster in South Gippsland.”
https://www.harpercollins.com.au/cr-107969/janeen-webb/

The entry in the SF Encyclopedia is insightful and has that highest of plaudits, praise by one humourist of another humourist. The Wikipedia article covers more. It also refers the reader to perhaps the most comprehensive bibliography at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. More recent works are listed on Janeen Webb’s own website.
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/webb_janeen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janeen_Webb
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Janeen_Webb
https://janeenwebb.com.au/

Nova Mob 5 June 2024 – Dr Janeen Webb – The Power of the Counterfactual A fireside chat discussion of Alternate History and histories.

Please share this invitation to this forthcoming meeting with like-minded friends and fans

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Wednesday 5 June 2024

8.00pm – 9.30 pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time
7.30pm – 9.00pm Adelaide time
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09
Passcode: nova
Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

Producer/Chair: Julian Warner