That danged gizmo

‘That danged gizmo’ emerges from collaborative practice between two culturally diverse authors: a retired American living in Georgia, and an African Australian living in Melbourne. The writerly alliance sees one author focus on characterisation (‘deep south’ dialogue), and the other on literary elements (playfulness with language, style and structure), both in quests to contribute to the quality of form in the work of science fiction. Each author approaches the writing with their own knowledge, their own biases, their own craft. Together, while navigating inherent challenges in multiplicity of voice, the artists reinvent discrete ideas and apply creative practice into a collective storytelling. Collaborative practice is a type of theft where literature is made up, where a multiplicity is endowed with significance. The success of multi-authored work relies on the participants’ ability to negotiate their diversity, adopt each other’s creativity and engender uniqueness to an artistic formation that is singular, seamless to the reader. In a contemporary context of digital and cyber realms, ‘That danged gizmo’ borrows from science fiction as a kind of hyperreality, where a machine destabilizes the relationship between a man and his wife.