Me and the Australians

Somehow, without noticing it, I've become the SFBC's go-to guy for Australians. I don't think there's a single book by an Australian writer that any other editor acquired.

It probably started with Greg Egan, as so many things do. From there, I moved on to acquiring A. Bertram Chandler, Sara Douglass, Sean Williams & Shane Dix, Sean McMullen, Jennifer Fallon and Jonathan Strahan's original Best Short Novels annuals. Even people with just an odd connection to Australia (like Scott Westerfeld, who lives there six months out of the year but I think is an American citizen) ended up on my "list."

At some point recently, I realized that I had this huge pile of Australians. But I don't know what to do about it. It's not as if I can lead them to do anything; they mostly don't know me from Adam. Perhaps it means I have one of those jokey "everyone on my planet can do this" powers from the Legion of Super-Heroes: I'm Detect-Great-Australian-Writing Man! Able to scour an entire arid continent in a single glance! Capable of detecting the minutest speck of Australian Content in a fantasy novel! He may be an American, but the Southern Cross is burned on his soul! (OK, maybe not.)

I do know this has not always been the case: Ellen Asher acquired a couple of George Turner books before I came to the club (and probably other things, too). But I think I ended up buying the last book or two of his that we did. So maybe it was Turner that did it.

Now, there's got to be some way to wrangle a sight-seeing trip out of this, so I'd better get thinking...