(Image courtesy Alt-rock band of same name.)
The Republic of Letters
emerged in France during the course of the 17th and early 18th
centuries and was composed of French intellectuals from the Parisian salons who
worked together to bring about concepts of philosophy, broadly conceived as the
project of Enlightenment.The main way the philosophical ideas of the
Enlightenment’s Republic of Letters were transported throughout France
and across the Atlantic was through polite conversation and letter writing. It
was their imagining of possibilities that helped to bring about change. We
can’t achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention
and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we
are all trapped in the past.
In 2009, the Australian Republican Movement used the example of the Republic
of Letters to encourage political change in Australia through the
establishment of the National Republican Short Story Competition. One
way that change can begin is through speculative fiction writing.
Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities.
They speculate.
They speculate.
They make the future seem real.
The National Republican Short Story Competition began in 2009.
This was a milestone, as it had been 10 years on 6 November 2009 since the
republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind
Australians what they still didn’t have the Australian Republican Movement ran
the First National Republican Short Story Competition as a
challenge to Australia’s fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures
of the Australian republic.
The winner of the 2009 First National Republican Short Story Competition
was the Canberra-based writer, Kel Robertson. On learning of his win, he
commented:
In Rook Feast, Robertson told the story of the
final meeting between the King of England, who is under house arrest, and a
minister of the British government. The minister (who is also a relative) has
come to inform the last King of England “on a perfect English spring day” what
is to be his fate. Set in the future, where a post-tourism-age appears to have
killed the monarchy, Robertson’s story explored concepts of the hidden costs of
monarchy through a ‘security expenditure issue’ and the theme of the
inevitability of the popular will of the people. The plot was written around a
discussion of what would be the individual future of the last King of England.
There is a strong sense of pathos and resignation from the King:
“More than 1500 years of history all the way from
bloody Edgar. Over. Ended.”
But for the last King there is no exile to
‘…California or New York, gracing the boards of big
corporations, skiing Aspin in winter and sailing Rhode Island in summer.’
He is not welcome in the great democracy. Nor have the governments of
Canada, Northern Ireland, New Zealand or countries in the Caribbean, and Africa
accepted him. Instead, nearly 50 years after they removed their titular
monarch, the government of Australia agrees he and his family can settle their
as private citizens. In this Australian republican future the robust
egalitarian society of the south remains strong with sufficient generosity of
spirit to embrace the remnants of Northern Hemisphere royalty — the last King
of England and the newest citizen of Australia.
In 2010, the theme for the Second National Republican Short Story
Competition was ‘Life and Death in an Australian Republic’. Helen
Bersten and Sean Oliver Ness were each awarded a ‘Highly
Commended’ for their short stories Double Lives and Inauguration
Day.
In Double Lives, Bersten tells dual stories: one
set during a Presidential meet’n greet where his new team of advisers, Team PC
(People’s Choice), are getting to know each other. At the same time, a
fictional crime story is being told about the night the Dunbar sank at South
Head in Sydney Harbour. Double Lives is both imaginative and innovative.
The attempt at a dual narrative – one commenting on the other, the past
intruding into the present – is ambitious and difficult. The complicated
structure makes a genuinely ambitious and credible effort to produce a fiction.
It is a story that has the required republican provenance but which tries to do
other things and go to other places, both physically and psychologically.
In Inauguration Day, Ness tells the story of
James Hapeta, an Australian Federal Police Lieutenant assigned to Presidential
protection detail with the Inauguration Day Presidential parade. As the
Presidential motorcade travels through the streets of Canberra, Hapeta and his
security colleagues’ attention to security is at fever pitch due to a
discovered credible threat. Ness’ sense of humour is evident in his reference
to ‘Billies’. As the Presidential motorcade passes through Ainslie
‘…an elderly couple: grey hair, plain clothes, a
stiffness that stood out from the happy families [are holding] a poster-size
portrait of the Queen [and] a sign that said “THE SECOND RUM REBELLION IS HERE
– GOD SAVE US ALL!’
Ness explains that in the early days, monarchists took the Rum Rebellion
analogy and ran with it; in response, they were uniformly nicknamed Billy
Blighs, or just Billies. Hapeta observes the scene around him:
‘The big houses faded as they turned a sharp corner onto Antill. On
the left, they passed schools and public swimming pools and clusters of shops;
on the right, rows of small homes and low-rise apartment blocks. State
Policemen were on either side of the street, controlling the crowds. As the
motorcade swept down the street, the low murmurs turned into a loud cheer that
echoed off the apartment blocks. Streamers were tossed into the air, and
confetti rained down like pink snowflakes.’
When Hapeta breaks protocol and leaves his post to assist a ‘Statie’,
the theme of ‘Life and Death in the Australian Republic’ emerges. The final
scene is captured by a bystander with the photo becoming the defining memory of
the day.
Marshall’s winning story is a touching description of the raising of the
first president by immigrant parents, whereas the second and third prizes have
either Prince William or Prince Harry as a main character. Marshall is a former
journalist and TV writer who has worked in Sydney, Toronto (Canada) and New
York. Her television writing credits include Neighbours, and Sons and
Daughters. While working with Neighbours, Valda co-authored two
books based on the Ramsay Street families: The Ramsays: A Family Divided
and The Robinsons: A Family in Crisis. She has been a staunch republican
since the 1950s. “I am an absolutely passionate republican,” she has commented.
“At the movies in the 50s, when they played God
Save the Queen before a screening, even then I thought, why are we doing this?
Why do we have a head of state on the other side of the world?”
Her 2010 novel, The First President is a story of love and
politics in which Australia becomes a republic in 2016. Valda was born in
Adelaide and now lives in Sydney.
*****
It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction
in Australia. In colonial times there were republican poets such as Charles Harpur writing in the 1840s and 1850s,
and republican writers such as John Dunmore Lang and Daniel Deniehy in the 1850s and William Lane, Henry Lawson and John Norton in the 1880s and 1890s. But where have been the
republican stories for the past century? There have certainly been many
republican writers during this time, but very few examples of where republican
settings or arguments have been explored in Australian fiction. Republican
arguments and explorations of the past and imaginations of the future have
almost always been written within the framework of constitutional debates.
So, the Australian Republican Movement would like to point the way
forward through Australian stories with a republican backdrop. They don’t have
to be political thrillers or constitutional whodunits as long as they are an
exploration of our future, our republican future.
Competition details
- First Prize: $500
- Second Prize: $60
- Third Prize: $40
- Length: 2,000 to 4,000 words
- Closing date: 6 November 2012
- Entry is open to all Australian residents
To read more about the Australia’s emerging republican speculative fiction genre go to http://www.independentaustralia.net/2010/republic/speculating-on-a-republic
Previous National Republican Short Story winners
are:
- 2011 First Prize – A Child of the Holocaust by Valda Marshall
- 2011 Second Prize – The King and Mister Crow by RPL Johnson
- 2011 Third Prize – Royalty Reality by Harold Mally
- 2010 ‘Highly Commended’ Prize – Double Lives by Helen Bersten
- 2010 ‘Highly Commended’ Prize – Inauguration Day by Sean Oliver Ness
- 2009 First Prize – Rook Feast by Kel Robertson
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