I have a new short story available to read, ‘Silken Cities (After Italo Calvino)‘, a spidery version of Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’. It was written as part of an international research project called ‘Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis‘ led by Dr Kaori Nagai of Kent University, and was presented at the final conference over the weekend.

The story is set on the Silken Continent, where the spidery cities are experiencing a change in climate as well as the invasion of a conquering foreign empire. Each of the cities are named after a species of spider, and the citizens are emblems of what makes that spider distinct. The spiders that inspire the cities are the Porongurup Trapdoor Spider, the Armoured Trapdoor Spider, the Garden Orb Weaver, the Cellar Spider, the Sydney Funnel Web and the Peacock Jumping Spider. There is also a bonus spider, Rosamygale, who is an extinct spider from the fossil record.

“High above the arc of the sky and in the dark cushion of space, the spider goddess Rosa watches over the Silk Continent from her burrow on the moon. The world she created was once broad and green, but it is now cracked and dry, in the painful process of shedding its skin.”

The structure and style is inspired by the postmodern novel ‘Invisible Cities’ (1972), which is a conversation between Marco Polo and the conqueror Kublai Khan. The warlord has stopped moving about his territory and he asks Marco Polo to describe what his empire looks like now. Marco Polo describes a series of imaginative, perhaps impossible cities, and Khan beings to wonder if Marco Polo is having him on. What unfolds between the conversations and the cities is an idea about the subjective nature of reality. ‘Invisible Cities’ is a creative touchstone for me, I keep returning to it as the standard of writing fabulist or surreal fiction that is rooted in a strong concept.

The spidery places of ‘Silken Cities‘ are fables of various Indigenous cultures’ encounters with the empire of Europe. It explores how invasion is entangled with trauma, disconnection from land, rapid climate change, ecological decline, and the problematising of belonging. The story is followed by a writer’s statement that explains a little more of the themes circulating within.