On Saturday the sixth I had the happy opportunity to attend the Canberra launch of Twelfth Planet Press’ 2016 anthology Defying Doomsday (edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench). Anthologies of short fiction set during and after various apocalypses seem to be in vogue at the moment (I wonder why? Hmm). What sets Defying Doomsday apart is its protagonists – these are stories about how characters who are disabled or suffer from chronic diseases might navigate the end of the world.
The stories are typically more upbeat than you might imagine. Disabled characters, when they appear in this sort of fiction at all, are usually presented as fodder for the zombies or just that little bit too slow to make it to high ground before the flood. In Defying Doomsday, they have to cope with the end of access to medicine, support services and food that won’t aggravate their condition.
In these stories, many of the characters have to work that much harder to survive – but as Robert Hoge notes in his introduction, “people with disability already live in a post-apocalyptic world…so much of our world is already a not-made-for-us space that disaster may as well have already struck”.
K L (Kristy) Evangelista, Rivqa Rafael and Kaaron Warren
It’s one of the Australian anthologies of the year, without a doubt. I highly recommend it (I liked it so much I picked up a paperback to go with my Kickstarter ebook version – and I had a brief blast of book envy seeing someone had brought their Kickstarter-only hardcover copy to the signing!)
The best apocalypses have cupcakes
Thanks very much to authors Kristy Evangelista and Rivqa Rafael, along with MC Kaaron Warren, for hosting the event. Double thanks to Kristy for the book cover-themed cupcakes!
And a big shoutout to Harry Hartog Woden, which is fast becoming the book launch venue of choice for Canberra.
It is such a great book–one of my favourites of the year so far. I’m glad it got such a lovely local launch.
Oh absolutely. Some extraordinary stories in there. I particularly loved John Chu’s piece “Selected Afterimages of the Fading”, Tansy Rayner Roberts’ “Did We Break the End of the World?” and Seanan Maguire’s “Something in the Rain”, though across the board I think that quality is very high.
The opener, “And the Rest of Us Wait” by Corinne Duyvis, just about broke me.
The opening was indeed amazing. And John Chu’s story was my favourite of the collection.
I was pretty impressed by some of the less well-known names. Both Rivqa’s story and Kristy’s were excellent. I think the locals are keeping up their end.