The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Westwood’s ability to give each character interiority despite the book being wholly from Sal’s perspective is really a beautiful thing to see. Every character has their own interests, voices, motivations, and characterisations that The Courier’s New Bicycle manages to be sympathetic to some of the grimmer villains of the piece while still being absolutely clear that they are villains is impressive, and fantastically well done. Salisbury Forth, Sal, is intersexed various of Sal’s friends are homo- or bisexual, a number are trans, and her closest friend is also her boss, a producer and provider of fertility hormones.

The role of the fanatics is in part driven by the degree to which this is a book peopled by “deviants”. Westwood paints this, and its consequences, vividly and in strong forceful strokes the images of scooters and beetle-wing-quiet cars crawling the streets of Melbourne, bicycles whipping past them and ruling the road fanatics gathered in prayer-shawls beating up “deviants” – these are described with an amazing vividness and immediacy. In the wake of environmental catastrophe and pandemic, fertility has dropped, green vehicles are not just the norm but the law, and a Christian fundamentalist government with very strict ideas of morality (cisgendered male and female are the only acceptable genders, hetero the only acceptable sexuality) rules Australia. The Courier’s New Bicycle is not only cited in every discussion of queer speculative fiction out there, it deserves to be, and in any discussion of near-future or postapocalyptic science fiction too the world posited by Westwood is terrifying, but also terrifyingly plausible. Salisbury must find whoever is trying to destroy the business before everything goes belly up…įor a novel that made the Tiptree Honour List and won an Aurealis and a Ditmar Award, and that is cited in every discussion of queer science fiction, The Courier’s New Bicycle is hard to find in print in the end, I resorted to asking Alisa Krasnostein to lay hands on a copy and bring it with her to LonCon 3 – which I am grateful to her for doing! Then someone starts trading tainted hormones on the boss’s patch. Vigilantes prowl for transgressors while the pious gather like moths under the streetlights at dusk.

A vaccine dispensed Australia-wide is causing mass-infertility, and the government has banned all remedies except prayer. Salisbury Forth is a courier of contraband in the alleyways of inner Melbourne, a city of fuel rationing, rolling power outages and curfews.

The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood