WONDER YEARS

The 10 Best Australian Stories from a Decade Past

Selected by Peter McNamara

Paperback 206 mm x 135 mm, 320 pages.
ISBN 0958658374
RRP $24.95 (inc GST)

Whether music, film or favourite kinds of storytelling, there are times in all our lives when things just fall into place, when everything clicks.

This is how it happened for Peter McNamara, internationally acclaimed editor and doyen of Australian science fiction, in selecting ten stories from the period when Aussie SF finally came of age and became a true force to be reckoned with.

From Peter McNamara's introduction:

'I bought Omega Science Digest for the science articles -- and by accident discovered grand SF, the stuff that really rattles and shakes and shifts your mind around, and won't let you rest until you've found more of it. The stuff of addiction. The two stories that shook me into life were Damien Broderick's 'The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead' and Terry Dowling's 'The Man Who Walks Away Behind The Eyes'. These were Australian writers, a point I wholly failed to notice at the time.

'When I set myself to select my Ten Best genre stories from the past decade, I decided I'd need a few guidelines -- other than the decade itself -- to keep things under control. One author/one story seemed the way to go, and that worked out fine (though Margo Lanagan gave me some grief). Another guideline insisted that I not reprint any story I'd published before, but Leanne Frahm's 'Land's End' -- from Aphelion's anthology Alien Shores -- proved too much.

'Ten Best meant Ten Best, or it didn't. I side-stepped that guideline as well. Guidelines ... just nuisance value, really.'

From urban fantasy to tales of myths, dreams and warriors of the future, Wonder Years plots a course across the works of the leading writers and dynamic newcomers of the genre.

The two:

• Damien Broderick: The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead
• Terry Dowling: The Man Who Walks Away Behind the Eyes

The ten:

• Russell Blackford: Lucent Carbon (read extract)
• Simon Brown: Imagining Ajax
• Jack Dann & Janeen Webb: Niagara Falling
• Leanne Frahm: Land's End
• Chris Gregory: Jackie Chan (read story)
• Chris Kenworthy: The Fruits of Habit
• Margo Lanagan: White Time
• Geoffrey Maloney: The World According to Kipling (read story)
• Lucy Sussex: Absolute Uncertainty
• Sean Williams: A Map of the Mines of Barnath (read story)

'It was the 'Australian decade' -- ten years that saw Australian writers producing the best genre fiction ever to come out of this country. The best of the best -- always idiosyncratic, always begging why this one and not that one -- are captured here by editor Peter McNamara, who stood firmly at the centre of it all as the field's most passionate advocate, editing, publishing, and promoting. His Wonder Years are wonder years indeed' -- Jonathan Strahan

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

The Ten Best Stories from a decade of the Best of Australian Speculative Fiction