From:	Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU>
Subject:	Re: What's next (Australia)
Date:	Mon, 21 Jun 1993 17:10:47 +1000

>> How about a rest-of-Europe sourcebook? When is the Germany
>> sourcebook due out? Also, does anyone know if a Japan sourcebook is in the
>> works?

> And how about the important stuff - where's the Oz sourcebook? :-)

Also:

> The writers of an Australian sourcebook would have to be very
> incompetent not to be able to fill (with useful stuff) a TT size
> sourcebook. ...

Agreed.

A friend and I, who both GM and who both have writing aspirations
(I'm working on a Shadowrun novel as it happens - it's going quite
well), were discussing our plans to write an Australian source
book just last night. We had a couple of ideas that would make
Australia stand out sociologically - one was, the sort of turn-
around that America underwent during the Awakening happened in
Australia to a much larger degree; possibly because it was empty of
Man for geological ages, the Land itself is ... different:
somehow older, bigger, less amenable to Man's tricks. So that Oz
society becomes Aboriginal in structure, with white-anglo-saxons
very much second class citizens.

We had discussed it months ago, and agreed we should write up a
proposal and see if anyone was interested; in particular, whether
FASA had anyone working on it already, or whether they'd be
interested.

But I gather FASA only use you if you've previously published
something with them. (Sounds like Catch 22, doesn't it?)

So, I thought I'd post this - see what you all think, and perhaps
someone can tell us how to get in contact with the appropriate
people at FASA; or whether we'd just be wasting our time.

(As a footnote, my friend holds a Masters degree in Anthropology.
The thesis was on Alchemy, with a vein running through it on the
difference between scientific and shamanic attitudes to looking
at the world. (Hope I'm not mangling the sense of his thesis
too badly by focussing on that aspect of it). Oh: and we both
live in Australia, needless to say.)

For a really vicious Awakened environment, you'd try Papua New
Guinea. Imagine a mountainous country of dense rainforest where
bloody tribal wars have been the norm for many thousands of years...

luke