It had the kind of paradigm-shifting impact that happens with a book only once every few years, and it turned Diamond - a professor of geography at UCLA - into something of a rock star.

To broadly simplify, Diamond's book posited that human populations on continents with a primarily east-west orientation benefited from a more consistent climate and therefore developed more quickly than those living on continents with a north-south orientation. For most readers (and there were millions), Guns was their first exposure to theories of geographic determinism. His 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies began with a simple question - 'Why did Pizarro conquer the Incas and not the other way around?' - and then managed to tell, over the course of only 400-odd pages, the history of why humanity has turned out the way it has. I will always think of Jared Diamond as the man who, for the better part of the late 1990s, somehow made the phrase 'east-west axis of orientation' the most talked-about kind of orientation there was - freshman, sexual, or otherwise. Jared Diamond’s Collapse traces the fates of societies to their treatment of the environment Thank You! And yes I am still doing the little happy dance in my head!įurther to this, my sincere congratulations to Amanda Bridgeman for beating me out for the Best Novel with her The Sensation (Salvation #2) (Best WA Long Written Work!) I’m still ecstatic that ‘Nightfall’ (Clemhorn #1) Zmok Books was on the shortlist! Also shortlisted in the Short Work category were my ‘Trouble on Teral’ and “Crisis at Calista Station’ Middle Grade Readers published by Peasantry Press. I need to specifically thank Coan for suggesting Napoleon for the subject, Jared Kavanagh who edited the anthology, Sea Lion Press who took the risk on the book, and everyone who voted. The Tin Ducks are the Western Australian SF achievement awards and voted on by members at the annual Swancon convention.

Still glowing that my short story from Sea Lion Press ‘ ‘Alternate Australias’ anthology won a Tin Duck for the Best WA Short Written Work on Saturday.

Alternate Australias by Jared Kavanagh