Back before social media, the closest thing Australian fantasy authors and fans had to hanging out online was forums. When HarperCollins created Voyager Online, later nicknamed “the Purple Zone” after the website colour, it became a lively place for their authors and fans to hang out. Into this zone came Russell Kirkpatrick, newly published with his book Across the Face of the World.
When Voyager sent me an ARC of Russell’s book, I took it to the gym to read while on the treadmill. This proved to be a mistake, for all the right reasons. The characters’ struggles on their trek was so convincing that every step on the treadmill felt like two. So I read it at home, where I could slow down and appreciate the characters journeys and marvel at this incredibly well-developed and, at times, terrifyingly real world he’d invented.
Russell and I soon found we both had a background in mapmaking in common, and strong opinions about the failures of maps in most fantasy books. I felt they should look like an artefact from the story, not a like it had been made on a computer. Russell… well, as a geology lecturer with accomplishments including creating an atlas of New Zealand, his approach had been quite opposite. His modern, digital map was exquisitely detailed, geologically plausible and several metres long. He would unfurl it during convention panels to the amazement of the audience and fellow panellists and, if we timed it right, right after I’d delivered my take on maps looking like artefacts.
It was at these conventions that online communities became in-person friendships. And what inevitably happens when authors become friends is a writing retreat, where we would write, swap feedback, increase word counts, sharing recipes, swap music recommendations and laugh until we had to breathe deeply to avoid passing out. Usually Russell would pretend to be the sensible one until our silliness, teasing and crude jokes, listening with just an amused gleam into his eyes, but the prize was getting him to a full-bellied chortle.
He was incredibly generous. Once, my partner and I arrived for a holiday in New Zealand at Christchurch airport, only to be surprised by Russell waiting. He said “skip the plane” then drove us to Queenstown, acting as our tour guide. Later we met again, this time as planned, in Hamilton, from which he took us on scenic drives. There can be no better tour guide in New Zealand than a geologist, describing the volcanic history of the land we were travelling through in vivid detail. It was truly one of the best travel experiences of my life.
To Russell, geology was as much about people as place. When the two of us drove down to Metung for another retreat, he scoffed at descriptions of Australia as a harsh land. Look at New Zealand’s mountains, he said. These are just gentle hills. Small lumps, really. But after the Black Saturday fires, he told me he now appreciated and respected the savage side of this land. He mustn’t have been put off though, because he later moved to Canberra with his partner, Kylie, and was warmly welcomed into the sf community there.
Work obligations, the pandemic and health issues meant our paths didn’t cross often in the last decade, but I look back with fondness and appreciate that the last twenty-plus years wouldn’t have been as wonderful without Russell’s friendship. He was a kind, thoughtful, intelligent person, a talented writer of epic vision, played a mean round of golf, was a good sport and a friend to many, and will be greatly missed.
