Getting hold of indigenously published Australian science fiction story collections and novels remains difficult, being more than a little expensive due to the nature of trans-oceanic delivery.
So I was happy to obtain an affordable copy of 'Salt' (281 pp), published as a mass-market paperback in 1991 by McPhee Gribble, Australia. The cover art is by Kerri Gibbs.
Gabrielle Lord (b. 1946) is an Australian writer, primarily of crime fiction. As best as I can tell, 'Salt' is her only science fiction novel.
The novel is set in 2074, on an Earth devastated by eco-disaster. Things are particularly bad in Australia, where daytime temperatures reach 134 degrees Fahrenheit, and massive dust storms sweep across salt-encrusted deserts en route to the walled city of Sydney. A civil war some twenty-five years previously has left the nation in a state of barely-controlled anarchy, and the majority of the populace eke out lives of want and privation.
David 'Sando' Sanderson is a helicopter pilot for Sydney's Western Security, the paramilitary force tasked with maintaining law and order inside the city, and deterring attacks from the raiders emerging from the surrounding wastelands. As the novel opens, Sanderson is leading an aerial search for the crashed helicopter of Frank Hilliard, a hero of the civil war and a symbol of steadfastness in the face of society's looming collapse.
Sanderson suspects that the helicopter crash may not have been an accident: it seems that Hilliard was aware of malfeasance among the upper management of Western Security. As Sanderson makes inquiries, these bring unwanted attention, and Sanderson decides to flee the city for a precarious existence in the wastelands. He is accompanied by his girlfriend Hedda, Hilliard's daughter.
Once in the wastelands, Sanderson and Hedda discover a world ruled by a band of raiders, whose leader has no qualms about using all manner of violence to achieve his aims. Further complicating things is a prison where a mysterious laboratory, operating in secrecy, is conducting amoral experiments into human genetics. Will Sanderson and Hedda survive their encounters with raiders and ruthless scientists ? Or will their bones join those already fast-drying in the merciless heat of the Australian desert ?
'Salt' is something of a middling success as a science fiction novel. Any novel set in a post-apocalyptic Australia inevitably is going to be compared to the mythos of Mad Max, and 'Salt', in its favor, does this without coming across as imitative. The opening chapters are effective in presenting a world of entropy and decay, with civilization losing its battle against eco-catastrophe.
However, past these opening chapters I found myself wading through too many segments devoted to documenting various bouts of introspection and self-examination among the lead characters; indeed, a near-death hallucination on the part of one character goes on for nearly five pages. These segments tend to impede, rather than propel, the narrative (the pivotal flight to the desert by Sanderson and Hedda doesn't take place till page 124).
The narrative regains momentum in the second half of the novel, but I found the science fiction components to be a bit contrived and lacking in depth, as their main purpose is to frame the author's exploration of the emotional and ethical turmoil afflicting a scientist who is compelled to do Bad Things for the Greater Good of Mankind. The novel's denouement features some well-composed action sequences, but I found the final two chapters to be disappointing, as they close major plot threads in a perfunctory manner.
[ One good thing about 'Salt' is that it does not promote the adoration of Aborigines, a favorite pastime of the Australian intelligentsia. Indeed, there are no Aborigines in the novel at all. ]
Summing up, if you are willing to tolerate plentiful passages of 'telling, not showing' as regards the inner musings of the characters, 'Salt' eventually will deliver some Australian-flavored, post-apocalyptic entertainment that makes it deserving of a three-star rating.
Heavy Metal was structured on a totally different financial level. It was slick, it cost more, it had to have newsstand reps going around to make sure it was placed properly. We didn't have that kind of set-up.....But I knew that they had taken a page out of Warren Publishing's book and moved with it. And moved very well.
.....1984 was not produced because of Heavy Metal. It was produced because it was our genre.
In contrast to Warren's memories of starting the magazine, in his deposition in January 2018, as part of Ben Dubay's plagiarism lawsuit against Stephen King, former Warren staffer Jim Stenstrum claimed that James Warren was at best a reluctant backer of 1984:
A (Stenstrum): For, yes, "1984 Magazine." It wasn't called "1984." It didn't have a title then. He said there's a science fiction magazine that he wanted to put together and he finally – we had been talking about that for a long time. We had all -- Bill and I had been talking about putting together a science fiction magazine over at Warren for a long time. We had horror, we had war, but we didn't have science fiction and Jim Warren apparently was reticent. He didn't want to do it. He didn't think that was going to be a seller but Bill did manage to finally talk him into it.
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BY MR. COX: Did Bill Dubay ever talk to you about his knowledge of science fiction?
A (Stenstrum): Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean "1984" was a science fiction magazine and we had discussions – in fact, early on when we were putting together "1984," he had wanted to enlist some high profile authors to do stories or at least use adaptations of their works. Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, John Varley and a number of other names were -- but he quickly realized that it was going to be too expensive to even adapt these stories and he determined – Bill determined at that time that he would just use his regular guys.
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