Alanah Andrews, Speculative Fiction Writer: What do you write?
Lachlan Walter: I’ve always written within speculative fiction: typically science fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction, with the odd detour into weird fiction and near-fiction future.
AASFW: Why do you love speculative fiction?
LW: Like many science fiction/speculative fiction writers who grew up in the 1980s, I was a nerdy kid surrounded by a media landscape saturated with science fiction and speculative fiction, at a point in time in which science fiction’s terminology and motifs were being absorbed into our cultural dialect and acquiring real-world symbolism. To an enquiring mind that soaked up external stimuli like a sponge – especially a mind obsessed with books, giant monsters, Ghostbusters and Doctor Who – the language of science fiction and speculative fiction seemed like the logical way to understand the world, its rapid rate of change and our increasingly intertwined relationship with technology.
And then there’s science fiction and speculative fiction’s ability to make us question what we know, by reframing it as a ‘what if?’ and then digging deep. To this particular fan, their ability to open our eyes to what is by showing us what it might become, is nothing short of genius.
AASFW: Tell us about your latest release.
LW: My debut novel The Rain Never Came has recently been released, and is available from all the usual places.
A hybrid of dystopian, post-apocalyptic and climate fiction, The Rain Never Came blends these genre elements with an unmistakably Australian voice, to create a distinctive work that touches on Australian issues old and new: mateship, egalitarianism, attitudes to authority, community, climate change and refugees.
To sum it up: When sunburnt Australia becomes well and truly scorched, a forced evacuation of the East Coast is the only answer. Those who resist, like Bill Cook and Tobe Cousins, hide out in small country towns, eking out an existence. But some embittered by the drought are seeking revenge, and Bill and Tobe are in their way.
Set in the vast expanse of the dry Australian bush, there is no more perfect place to situate the end of the world.
AASFW: What would you do if an alien spaceship landed in your back yard?
LW: Probably ask the crew it if they would come in for a cuppa.
AASFW: What inspired the latest book you are writing?
LW: My love of science fiction, and my tendency to get lost in it. To say any more would be to spoil it – it’s still cooking, so to speak.
AASFW: In 100 years, what will the world will look like?
LW: The optimist in me wants to say that it’ll be a shiny, happy place in which most of today’s problems have been solved or at least lessened. After all, we already have in our grasp the solutions to many of these problems – climate change, hunger, poverty, war, intolerance and its related phobias – but vested interests and humanity’s insatiable need for power are standing in the way of implementing them. I would hope that in 100 years, humanity will be have become a little more enlightened and come to the conclusion that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (to appropriate a Star Trek-ism).
But the pessimist in me believes that things will be pretty-much as they are today, only more extreme.
AASFW: What book are you reading at the moment?
LW: I have what you would probably call a magpie-mind when it comes to my reading. Although I primarily write speculative fiction, science fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction, I’ll read anything that has the promise of literary potential: realist fiction, westerns, YA fiction, horror, literary fiction, thrillers, non-fiction and, obviously, speculative fiction in its all myriad forms. I’ve even been known to read the odd romance.
I also tend to usually have three or four books on the go at the same time. And so to finally answer your question, right now I’m reading Company by Max Barry (a devastatingly funny corporate satire that straddles the border between realist fiction and speculative fiction), The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes (which is eye-opening in the extreme – how obscenely frustrating the film industry must be), and The Complete Short Stories by JG Ballard (an epic two-volume collection, which is a slow read due to its length but an absolute must for those love who their science fiction cold, clinical and psychologically-oriented).
AASFW: If we want to stay up to date with your writing or buy your books, where can we find you?
LW: I’m not much of a blogger, but I do have a website that’s chock-a-block with information on The Rain Never Came (including purchase links), and also features my published short fiction, science fiction criticism, previous interviews and music reviews. You can find that right here: www.lachlanwalter.com
For all the latest news on upcoming publications and events, as well as literature/language-based humour, genre-inspired trivia and memes, and assorted and infrequent musings, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter:
www.facebook.com/LachWalter79/ and www.twitter.com/LachWalter79
(Originally published on Alanah Andrews: Speculative Fiction Writer, 25/7/2018)
Lachlan Walter 