Year's Best Australian Science Fiction And Fantasy
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 27, 2008
Year's Best Australian Science Fiction And Fantasy
Eds., Bill Congreve & Michelle MarquardtMirrorDanse, $19.95Australian writing of the science fictional and fantastic has a long history, encompassing 1890s utopias and colonial ghost stories. And it just keeps getting better. Each year a crop of short stories are published, of a quality to fill a Year's Best. This time the publisher is the small but enterprising MirrorDanse. Most Australian readers would know of Margot Lanagan, but she competes here in a very strong field. The range is varied, from Kaaron Warren's horrific study of anorexia to Chris Lawson on the hell of WWI trenches. There are stylists, such as Kim Westwood, and reworkings of myth. Spaceships and aliens are scant. When they do appear, as in Alistair Ong, they are sophisticated, fabulistic. Anyone who eschews this collection because "sci-fi isn't literary" is an idiot. For aspiring writers: the editors also include a very useful guide to markets.
© 2008 The Sunday Age