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The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy

Fourth Annual Volume

Edited by Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt

The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy, FourPaperback 198 mm x 128 mm (7¾ in x 5 in), 228 pages.
ISBN 978-0-9757736-3-5
RRP $19.95 (inc GST)
(Published October 2008)

Distributed by Tower Books, Unit 2/17 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia. Ph 61 2 9975 5566, fax 61 2 9975 5599.

The critically acclaimed anthology series returns.

Walk to the edge of reality and look out into worlds that just might be: human observers witness preparations for war on an alien planet; a serial killer with a fetish for collecting haunts a forensic psychiatrist; a knight and an animated puppet seek evil in a medieval city; Victorian era detectives seek a killer on a distant planetoid; friends find more than they expect on a hike into deserted bushland; an adolescent who speaks to the dead is called to a funeral.

These are just a few of the adventures that wait inside.

The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fourth Annual Volume includes talented newcomers as well as established professionals writing at the peak of their abilities.

As always, the book Includes an overview of the genre, a list of markets for writers, sources of Australian SF and fantasy, and recommended reading.

The Editors:

Bill Congreve: One of Australia's most experienced speculative genre editors and publishers, with anthologies such as Southern Blood shortlisted for awards world-wide. He has won numerous awards for editing and publishing SF and horror. His vampire stories have been collected as Epiphanies of Blood.

Michelle Marquardt: Has an honours degree in veterinary science. She is the author of the George Turner prize-winning novel, Blue Silence, which was also shortlisted for both the Aurealis and Ditmar awards.

The Cover Artist:

Trudi Canavan: Trudi lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has worked as a designer, illustrator and cartographer, first for Australian publishing companies, then as a freelancer in order to feed herself while writing her bestselling Black Magician Trilogy. She was also Art Director for Aurealis magazine for nine years, and provided illustrations for many Australian speculative fiction publications. These days she spends most of her time writing, but still exercises her artistic muscles occasionally, for her own pleasure or for special projects.

The Authors:

Greg Egan: Greg is the author of seven science fiction novels; the most recent, Incandescence, is set in the same future history as 'Glory'. His story 'Oceanic' won the Hugo award for Best Novella of 1998.

Adam Browne: Adam lives in Melbourne with Julie Turner, also a writer, and their daughter Harriet. His stories have been published in Australia, Canada, USA and Poland. He also writes screenplays: Virus, directed by Stephen Amis, was produced in 2005, and The Adjustable Cosmos, directed by Adam Duncan, began production this year.

Terry Dowling: Terry is one of Australia's most acclaimed, awarded and versatile writers of science fiction, dark fantasy and horror. As well as being author of the internationally acclaimed Tom Rynosseros saga, his US retrospective Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear earned him a starred review in Publishers' Weekly and won the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection.

Terry's stories have appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction, The Year's Best SF, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and many times in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, as well as in such anthologies as Dreaming Down Under, Wizards and The Dark.

Trent Jamieson: Trent lives in Brisbane with his wife Diana. In the last 14 years, he has published around seventy short stories, most recently in Cosmos magazine and Jack Dann's Dreaming Again anthology. He is currently writing The Players, a children's series funded by an Art's Council of Australian grant; Iron Temple, a space operaish novella for coeur de lion's latest project X6; and has just finished a novel about the business of death in Brisbane which may or may not be called Death Most Definite.

Lucy Sussex: Lucy was born in New Zealand, and emigrated to Australia at 13. She has compiled three anthologies for younger readers, and She's Fantastical, an anthology of Australian women's non-realist fiction, was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her award-winning fiction includes four books for younger readers and one adult novel, The Scarlet Rider (1996). She has written three short story collections, the most recent being A Tour Guide in Utopia (2005) and Absolute Uncertainty (2006). Currently she reviews weekly for the Age and West Australian newspapers. Her next book is Saltwater in the Ink, forthcoming from Red Dog Books.

'Mist and Murder' won New Zealand's Sir Julius Vogel award for Best Short Story of 2007.

Richard Harland: Richard's fourteen published novels cover all areas of speculative fiction, from fantasy (the Ferren trilogy) to SF (the 'Eddon and Vail' series), from cult gothic horror (The Vicar of Morbing Vyle, The Black Crusade) to fantasy for younger readers. He has won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel, a Golden Aurealis for Best Novel in any Speculative Genre, and has twice taken out the Aurealis for Best Fantasy Short Story. His next novel will be the Dickensian fantasy World-Shaker, published by Allen & Unwin in May, 2009.

Cat Sparks: Cat lives on the sunny south coast of NSW where she works as a graphic designer and occasional editor. She has been employed as a photographer, a media monitor and at various government jobs too dull to mention. Cat has won Aurealis Awards, Ditmars and a Writers of the Future trophy as well as surviving Clarion South in 2004. Forty-six of her stories have been published this millennium.

'A Lady of Adestan' won the Ditmar Award for Best Novella/Novelette of 2007.

Ben Peek: Ben is the Sydney based author of the dystopian novel, Black Sheep, and the autobiography, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth. His short fiction has appeared in Overland, Polyphony, Aurealis, Agog!, and Fantasy Magazine, among others.

Rick Kennett: Rick is a life-long resident of Melbourne where he works in the transport industry. His stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, locally and overseas. He is co-author with A.F. (Chico) Kidd of 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories (Ash Tree Press 2002). He includes naval history and wandering cemeteries (necrotourism) as interests. 'The Dark and What It Said' is based on a grain of truth, garnished by personal experience and fears.

'The Dark and What It Said' won the Ditmar Award for Best Short Story of 2007.

Anna Tambour: Anna currently lives in the Australian bush with a large family of other species, including one man. Her first book was the collection Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales, followed by the novel, Spotted Lily. Her next novel is Crandolin.

'The Jeweller of Second-hand Roe' won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Story of 2007.

Rjurik Davidson: Rjurik is a freelance writer and is Associate Editor for Overland magazine. He teaches creative writing at RMIT.

Garth Nix: Garth was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he has previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth's books include the award-winning fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen; and the cult favourite YA SF novel Shade's Children. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence, and The Keys to the Kingdom series. More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world; his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian and The Australian; and his work has been translated into 37 languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

'Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again' won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Story of 2007.

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