While travelling overseas in 1987-1990, Bill felt that the time was ripe for an Australian SF magazine. Aphelion Magazine had folded, part of its metamorphosis into Aphelion Publications, Australia's influential early mass market publisher of SF. The small press field was burgeoning in the United States, Canada and the UK, and it seemed time for a similar project in Australia. Of course, once back in Australia, Bill discovered that both Aurealis and Eidolon had begun their respective careers. If the niche for an SF magazine publishing a range of SF, Fantasy, and Horror had already been taken, twice, then perhaps a Horror magazine would work on its own? User Unfriendly Fiction was conceived as a quarterly small press magazine with a short print run. The name, User Unfriendly Fiction, thankfully lasted on a matter of days before being changed to the much stronger Intimate Armageddons. The concept of a quarterly magazine lasted about as long as it took for a copy of Chris Masters' Esoteric Order of Dagon to arrive in the mail. Another marketing niche taken. You've gotta move quickly in this business.

Stuart Coupe of Mean Streets magazine suggested getting in touch with Wollongong author, Robert Hood, who might be able to help out with production and printing. Robert provided the strongest story in the book, 'Dem Bones', and offered his services.

The time was 1991, and there had been no anthology of original adult horror fiction published in Australia. The reasons for what seems an obvious omission until that point are long and complex, and have a lot to do with the lack of any mass market commercial fiction from Australians, published in Australia, for a number of decades. (Crime broke through first, in the mid 1980s. Thank a man called Peter Corris, and the academic textbook publisher who put out Corris' The Empty Beach.) Australia was the 'property' of English multi-nationals who saw the Australian marketplace only as an opportunity to distribute books originating in England.

Peter McNamara was challenging those barriers with his Aphelion line of SF books. Perhaps now was the time to challenge with a mass market horror anthology. Intimate Armageddons became a joint project of Bill Congreve and Five Islands Press who, although better known as a poetry publisher, had an important role in the breakthrough of popular fiction publishing in Australia. The close association with Robert Hood gave birth to MirrorDanse Books, and continues to this day.

Then, during production of the book, we became aware of Leigh Blackmore's Terror Australis project through Hodder. Intimate Armageddons beat Terror Australis into print by only a few months, and Leigh was gracious enough to launch IA at Galaxy bookshop.

INTIMATE ARMAGEDDONS

The first new anthology of modern Australian Horror Stories

Bones that walk... the thing that hunts the Nullarbor... the butcher in the spare parts trade... the horror writer who visits a local park at night... If it can be imagined in the hearts and minds of humankind, then it is happening now... in the dark where no one can see... to someone, somewhere in Australia.

Contributors:

A. G. Clarke
Bill Congreve
Peter Corris
Terry Dowling
Robert Hood
Sue Isle
Rosaleen Love
Sean McMullen
Geoffrey Maloney
Steven Proposch
Sean Williams

You can party for as long as you like, but nobody gets out alive!

To purchase this book, go to the How to Order page. For customers outside Australia, go to The Australian Online Bookshop.