Collected Stories

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Four of these stories have not been previously collected: ‘Joe’ (first printed in Australian New Writing), ‘Concerning the Greek Tyrant’ (The Tabloid Story Pocket Book, Wild & Woolley), ‘A Million Dollars’ Worth of Amphetamines’ (Nation Review) and ‘A Letter to Our Son’ (Granta). The remaining stories were first published in The Fat Man in History (University of Queensland Press, Australia, 1974) and War Crimes (University of Queensland Press, Australia, 1979). A number of stories from both these collections were included in the British edition of The Fat Man in History (Faber and Faber, 1980).

1. The Role of the Cartographers

Perhaps a few words about the role of the Cartographers in our present society are warranted.

To begin with one must understand the nature of the yearly census, a manifestation of our desire to know, always, exactly where we stand. The census, originally a count of the population, has gradually extended until it has become a total inventory of the contents of the nation, a mammoth task which is continuing all the time — no sooner has one census been announced than work on another begins.

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