Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy
Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt (Eds)
2008
A fairly uneven (aren’t they all?) collection of shorts. The two big ‘name’ authors, Egan and Nix, deliver terrific tales, as does Adam Browne with his story, but the rest are variable – they may not have satisfied simply because they were in genres I’m not a fan of (there’s certainly variety here!). In all, a nice collection, with an Acknowledgements section featuring lots of good collection and anthology recommendations. I’d like to get my hands on the others in the series.
Story and Author | Tags/Hub Areas | Therapeutic Tags | Personal Rating |
Glory by Greg Egan | First contact, alien archaeology, war conflict, the Amalgam series, seeker-spreader civilizations | Peace, eternal knowledge, transcendence | ***** |
An Account of an Experiment by Adam Browne | Middle Ages, monks, religion, language of God, mathematics, tyrant | Compassion, kindness, transcendence, defiance | ***** |
Toother by Terry Dowling | Horror, murder, teeth extraction | Resolution | *** |
Cracks by Trent Jamieson | New Weird, funeral, ancestral spirits, communication with the dead | Release, liberation | **** |
Mist and Murder by Lucy Sussex | Detective, murder, ghosts, Ceres, Victoriana, steampunk, meta fiction, Sherlock Holmesian | Solution, justice | **** |
Special Perceptions by Richard Harland | Horror, madness, alternate realms, poet, liminal spaces | Intuition | *** |
A Lady of Edestan by Cat Sparks | Fantasy, oppressive paternal society | Escape, women’s rights | ** |
John Wayne by Ben Peek | New weird, alternate history, New York, communists, red scare, assassination, time travel portal | Conservative politics, radical politics | ***1/2 |
The Dark and What It Said by Rick Kennett | Horror, ghost car, Australian outback, snakes | Facing fears | ** |
The Jeweller of Second-Hand Roe by Anna Tambour | Second hand food, steampunk, new weird | Family, self sacrifice | *** |
Domine by Rjurik Davidson | Alpha Centauri, time dilation, musician, cyberpunk, crumbling, stratified future society | Family | ** |
Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again by Garth Nix | Fantasy, evil gods, deicide, adventurers, Pinocchio, living puppet, arcane magic, duels | Friendship, heroism, duty | ****1/2 |