Eidolon, Winter 1995, (Jun 1995, Editors of Eidolon, Jeremy G. Byrne, Eidolon Publications, octavo s/b, magazine)
"Miracle Ingredient A puts all Australian SF in precisely the same arena as beer advertisements and Neighbours, as Paul Hogan tourism commercials and Crocodile Dundee. And it's all about the selling, the whoring, of a nation of eighteen million people as if it were one thing: indivisible, homogeneous.
I've said almost nothing here about the actual content of Australian SF - because frankly, I don't care whether other Australian SF writers set their works in Australia or elsewhere, and I don't care whether they're inspired more by M. Barnard Eldershaw, Cordwainer Smith, Stanislaw Lem, or Larry Niven. That is the business of each individual writer, and I wouldn't dream of making proclamations on the subject.
And it may sound paradoxical, but Australians can cease writing "Australian SF" - and start writing real SF, SF with no adjective, like everyone else - without changing a single word of their fiction. Let me make this explicit: the last thing this essay is about is calling for less (or more, or different) writing about Australia in Australian science fiction. That's not the issue."
4 out of 5
http://eidolon.net/eidolon_magazine/issue_17/17_egan.htm
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