You all remember John Wyndham, right? 1950’s sci-fi writer. You probably had to study his work at school. If you didn’t meet up with him that way, you’ve probably seen one of the movies based on his work. The Midwich Cuckoos was turned into a movie called The Village of the Damned (1960 and 1995). The Kraken Wakes has been a major publicity vehicle for the character of the slumbering sea-monster, even though the novel has not been made into a film. The Kraken has appeared in mainstream films such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and both film versions of Clash of the Titans (1981 and 2010), as well as a B-grade, made-for-TV movie called Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006). Chocky was made into a children’s TV series by Britain’s ITV in 1985. And who can forget The Day of the Triffids? A 1951 novel and a 1962 film. The plants that can walk and will sting and eat you. I have a friend who is suspicious of her very large potato plants and the chittery noises they make in the wind because of that film.
Now let me mention another literary name to you and see how familiar you are with them. Pamela Lamb. Hands up, if you’ve read her stuff.
I have my hand up. And you might have yours up too if you are a teen or maybe a twenty-something from South-East Queensland.
Pamela Lamb has been writing for twenty years, according to her biography on http://www.smashwords.com, with her first published book appearing in 1992 for the University of Queensland Press’ Storybridge series. Lamb and UQP have since parted ways, and Lamb and her graphic designer son, Chris, have published most of her novels through her own publishing house, Agneau Press. It might interest you to know that Agneau is Greek for ‘lamb’.
But it seems to be Pamela’s market stall The Handmade Expo markets held once a month in Ipswich that has proved to be her best way of selling her works to the public. She says, ” I have established a loyal readership who, unfortunately, can read a great deal faster than I can write!” Pamela is one of those lucky writers who are not afflicted with a need for dramatic, Greta-Garbo-esque solitude and seriousness. Her personality is as much an asset to her sales as is the quality of her writing, or the interesting nature of her plots.
Take these snippets from Pamela’s blog at pamelalamb.blog.com:
Today was my regular market day at The Handmade Expo. Woke at 5:00 am, packed up, set up, drank coffee. Looking forward to meeting my readers, old and new. … I was lucky enough to have my application for a stall accepted for the Art Beat Festival so I will be there selling books from The Book Ladies’ stall and talking to people about the interesting connection between my novel Seeking Sarah and the statue that stands in Browns Park. … I have been crafting felt cupcake book weights to offer as a giveaway on my next stall. It is the last stall before Mother’s Day, so I thought a cupcake book weight would be a welcome addition for anyone wanting to buy one of my books to give as a gift.
You have to wonder, as I do, whether this is just the kind of thing that authors do these days, or whether it says something about Pamela as both a person and an artist. There is grit, dedication, pride and a sharing spirit evident in all of this.
This would be the point to mention that I know Pamela myself. So, you can’t expect me to tear her work to shreds. The vital thing to consider, though, is that I wouldn’t do that even if she was nothing to me but a name on a cover. I happen to like her work.
Pamela likes to keep her work local and relevant. I base this claim on the fact that she is consistent in setting her novels in South-East Queensland. It’s as though she sucks up her inspiration for writing from the red soil of her adopted homeland, some kind of mighty, story-weaving transplant that thrives in heat and adversity. Seeking Sarah takes us to a historical Ipswich. Rock ‘n’ Roll Rainforest is set in what was the present day. And A Secondhand Dreaming takes us into a potential future.
Future? I suspect the ears of the John Wyndham fans have pricked up their ears at this point.
Anyone who has read The Chrysalids by Wyndham will be familiar with the scenario of a post-apocalyptic landscape where a battered humanity is living in a new Dark Ages. Pamela presents us with the same scenario, and then takes us on a totally different journey in A Secondhand Dreaming.
Like in The Chrysalids, there are small groups of humanity who have escaped the radiation and have managed to keep the human genome breeding true, by killing mutated offspring as needed. Where Wyndham seemed to set himself the question of, ‘But what if there was a mutation that no one could see?’ as the premise for his novel, Pamela seems more to have asked herself the question, ‘And what would it be like to have to live like that?’ We are immersed in a simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar landscape and adventuring along with her characters Mig and Tez as they search for the City of Light, the home of the god they all worship, Powy Co.
And, rightly or wrongly, I like the fact that I’m adventuring on my home turf. OK, I’m not a Queenslander, and they do seem to breed them differently up north; but they are wandering through eucalyptus trees, and the seasons are all the right way around … the experience of reading my own landscape in a world inundated with Northern Hemisphere texts is like taking off one’s shoes when you get home after a long walk and relaxing into a comfortable chair.
I find it hard to understand why we aren’t treated to this kind of reading more often. Is this another manifestation of cultural cringe – that Australians prefer to read about trees that are suitably Eurocentric? Why are Australian readers expected to understand that the seasons are reversed in the texts they read, but audiences in other locations don’t have to work quite the same imaginative muscles? Why have we heard of Wyndham; but not of Pamela Lamb?
Have you noticed something similar? Do you have an under-read author on your bookshelves? Someone that the world should hear more about?
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