Daniel Baker

Ursula Le Guin claimed that fantasy ‘is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence’ (1979: 84). In 2015, I began work on a fantasy novel, A life in streets, and discovered that to write fantasy is to simultaneously exist in this world, that world, and the world of the keyboard. Consequently, the need to see and keep seeing an alternative vision of my past, present, and future realities is not without its illuminations, not without its spectres. Anchored by the work of Kathryn Hume, Rosemary Jackson, and Slavoj Žižek, this paper argues that Jackson’s paradigmatic positioning of marvellous or secondary-world fantasy as inherently non-subversive misses the mark. Moreover, her valorisation of the transgressive energies manifested by the literary fantastic seriously undervalues the transformative potential inherent to the construction of impossible, secondary worlds which, it could be said mimic something of a literary psychotic b...

Philip K. Dick suggested that comprehension follows perception, encapsulating the manipulative spirit not only of his oeuvre, but all fantastic fiction. Arguably, the particularities of Dick’s pointedly dystopian energy—surveillance states, virtual reality, (post)humanism consciousness—has become something of a contemporary cultural shorthand for all the things we intuit as gaps within Western society. That is, all dystopias render pictures not of the future, but of the present and what it lacks. 
Standing in the shadows of Todorov and Darko Suvin, this paper argues that such gaps are not specific to dystopian science fiction. Rather, they haunt the fantastic. Using China Miéville’s This Census-Taker (2016), it suggests that darkness, which is to say an absence of illumination, inherently affects the way we see ourselves (our desires, memories, and traumas) and the worlds we inhabit, becoming a mystery to be solved, a condition to be understood. But what happens if it can’t, if the darkness cannot be unseen, and we remain in the dark?
Significantly, such a question reconceptualises the ontological hesitation of the fantastic and absences (of meaning, closure, and certainty) as a form of perceptual coding, reprogramming how we perceive reality.

‘Facets of Eleanor’ belongs to an increasingly popular and prevalent sub-genre of fantasy, the New Weird (or New Fabulist), that blurs the lines between the fantastic, genre fantasy, mythology, fairy tale, science fiction, and horror. Epitomised by the work of Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer (among others), it ‘demonstrate[s] the contemporary urge to pluralize our critical perspectives, questioning the possibilities of an objective vision and a universal language’ (Klapcsik 2009: 193), geared towards destabilising hegemonic ideological and narrative practices.

Stemming from research exploring fantasy’s progressive potential, this creative practice encapsulates the desire to defamiliarise the familiar through perspectival shifts and a liminal hesitation consistent with the fantastic element underpinning fairy tale. Fundamentally, it addresses Miéville’s hypothesis that Weird Fiction’s ‘focus is on awe, and its undermining of the quotidian’ (2009: 510) within an Australian context. Combining fiction and criticism, ‘Facets of Eleanor’ emphasises this theoretical focus, suggesting that its scope reaches past reality and into the narratives that mediate its perception.
 
‘Facets of Eleanor’ not only opens up a space to conceptualise a modern, Australian ‘flavoured’ fairy tale, but does so while foregrounding the historical, social, and discursive forces embedded in the form. Significantly, it sits within the author’s academic and creative oeuvre, acting as both a conduit and foil between the disciplines, at once filling gaps and poking holes.

This paper argues that the portal-quest fantasies written by Neil Gaiman and China Miéville — contemporary figures in the field interested in navigating its creative scope and established tropes — reorient this sub-genre towards a radical reconceptualisation of the portal and its uses via a self-aware methodology of iteration, satire, and suspicion. Taking up Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) and American Gods (2001) and Miéville’s The City and the City (2009) and King Rat (1998), it explores the form’s predilection for closed narrative loops, while offering a counter narrative that interrogates the status quo via critical figures like Farah Mendlesohn, China Miéville, Mikhail Bakhtin, Raymond Williams, and John Cawelti. Significantly, this paper suggests that, via self-conscious world-building, portal fantasies allow reader and writer the opportunity to inhabit those spaces between textual, ideological, generic, metaphorical, irrational, fantastic worlds.

What exists at the intersection of image and word? Where does the photographer end, the writer begin? Who owns the story? “Bits of Worth”, an artefact of Worth, attempts to address such questions. Combing iPhone photos taken by LJ Maher and 1000 word stories written by Daniel Baker, Worth is an evolving collaborative narrative that skirts the borders between author and reader. Herein, photos are curated by both creators and the constitutive elements of the greater narrative—characters, settings, plot, etc.—discussed. Part auto-writing, part fiction, part snapshot, part gallery, Worth blends lived experience and fictional reality, and, at its core, outlines a creative practice predicated on sampling, remixing, remediation, and authorised theft. Underpinned by the work of Lawrence Lessig and Henry Jenkins, Worth is positioned at a nexus of practice and theory, concerned with the historical image of the “original” artist and their relationship with economic, social, cultural factors. As such, questions of reader agency, collaborative vulnerabilities, artistic originality, and creative ownership naturally arise. Fundamentally, then, “Bits of Worth”, and its parent project part, constitutes something of a refrain, the unifying theme coded into a creative dialogue between its participants where each picture and each story is both conversation and consideration.