Sci-Fi

Aurealis and Shadows Awards finalists for 2012 announced

March 25, 2013

It’s award season again and the first couple of shortlists are out. The Aurealis Awards for fantasy, sci-fi and horror, and the Australian Shadows Awards for horror. All the finalist lists for both of these are really strong – it’s great to see so much Australian talent being celebrated, not to mention how many friends I can count among the finalists.

I’ve posted the full lists for both over at Thirteen O’Clock, so you can see all the Aurealis Award finalists here and all the Australian Shadows Awards finalists here.

Go and make yourself a big old reading list of everything there and you certainly can’t go wrong. Congratulations to all the finalists!

365 Shorts – 1st Quarter update

By alan

February 28, 2013

So, back on December 10th I posted this. In a nutshell, I set myself a challenge to read 365 short stories during 2013. And I expected to fail. Well, bizarrely, I’m actually ahead of schedule at the moment. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. You’re surprised, right?

Firstly, I should point out that I made a couple of small changes to the rules. Get fucked, it’s my game. I can make whatever rule changes I like. Basically, it occurred to me that if I set the challenge for all of 2013, the end would be at the busy Xmas/New Year time and might get lost or forgotten. So I decided to start my year on December 1st, 2012 and run till November 30th, 2013. As I’d just read a short story collection, it seemed fitting. So I started to record all my short fiction reading from then. I set up a document in Dropbox that I can access and edit in Documents To Go on my iPhone or iPad, or just edit directly from my laptop. That way, it’s easy to update the list wherever I am and whatever format I’m reading in (ebook, online, printed book, podcast, etc.)

Now is the end of February, which makes three months, or one quarter of the year down. I just did a quick calculation and I’ve read 153 stories so far. If I want to make 365 stories in a year, I need to average just over thirty stories a month, or about 93 stories every quarter. I’m leaps and bounds ahead of schedule at the moment. That does include a week’s holiday up in the Snowy Mountains, where I read almost nothing but short fiction, as I had two issues of Midnight Echo to catch up on, and a couple of anthologies. But even so, I’m taking it as an auspicious start. I have a pile of anthologies still to go in my reading pile, plus the usual selection of magazines (print and online) that I read, and regular podcast listening. At this stage, I’m quietly confident that I might succeed in my challenge. Of course, it could all turn to shit at any moment.

One thing that really helps is the awesome Daily Science Fiction. Not only because they published me at the end of last year (and no, I’m not including my own stories in the challenge!) but because every weekday they drop a new story in my inbox. I don’t read them all – if I get more than a day or two behind, I let the ones I’ve missed go, but I try to read them all. And it’s certainly helping my total.

Anyway, enough waffle. I’ve set up a page here, where I’ve listed all the stories I’ve read so far. I’ll update it either monthly or quarterly or whatever, and each time I do I’ll post here so you can keep up if you’re interested. Of course, it can fall apart at any time, so if you never hear about this again, don’t you dare remind me!

How about you? Are you playing along? How are your numbers so far?

365 Shorts 2012/13 – My reading so far.

It’s Ditmar time again, so get nominating

By alan

February 19, 2013

Firstly, I would direct your attention to this post, which I wrote last year and which is just as relevant now as it was then. Bear in mind that the links in that post are old, so make sure you use the links in this post. Anyway, this post is to point out that the Ditmar Awards are now officially open for nominations and will remain open until one minute before midnight Canberra time on Wednesday, 20th of March, 2013 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10). I will list at the end of the post all my eligible work, in case you were thinking of slinging a nomination my way. And, if you weren’t, you can read a lot of my eligible work online, so maybe you’d like to have a read and then sling a nomination my way. I’d be very grateful.

I’ll certainly be thinking hard about what’s moved me this year and making my nominations. You read that post I linked above, right? Well, then you must nominate, just as you must vote. You can nominate work if you’re a “natural persons active in fandom, or from full or supporting members of Conflux 9, the 2013 Australian National SF Convention. Where a nominator may not be known to the Ditmar subcommittee, the nominator should provide the name of someone known to the subcommittee who can vouch for the nominator’s eligibility. Convention attendance or membership of an SF club are among the criteria which qualify a person as “active in fandom”, but are not the only qualifying criteria. If in doubt, nominate and mention your qualifying criteria.”

What does that mean? Well, if you’re even vaguely active in the Australian scene, you can nominate. So get your nominations in!

The current rules, including Award categories can be found at:

http://wiki.sf.org.au/Ditmar_rules

A partial and unofficial eligibility list, to which everyone is encouraged to add, can be found here:

http://wiki.sf.org.au/2013_Ditmar_eligibility_list

While online nominations are preferred, nominations can be made in a number of ways:

1. online, via this form:

http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2013/nominations.html

2. via email to ditmars@sf.org.au; or

3. by post to:

Ditmars
6 Florence Road
NEDLANDS WA 6009
AUSTRALIA

So that’s the official stuff. Now for the personal stuff. As promised, here are my eligible works this year.

Best Novella or Novelette
(Novella or Novelette: A Novella or Novelette is any work of sf/f/h of 7,500 to 40,000 words.)

“The Darkest Shade of Grey“, by Alan Baxter, published by The Red Penny Papers.

You can read this entire novelette online for free at Red Penny Papers, or buy it as an ebook for just $1.99. I’m really proud of this piece and it has particular personal resonance for me for other reasons that I won’t go into here. But I would really love to see it get a bit of attention on the ballot. If you nominate nothing else, I’d love you to nominate this one (assuming you’ve read and enjoyed it, of course!)

Then there are my eligible short fiction works. Some of these are available to read online too, so if the title is a link, click it to read it.

Best Short Story
(Short Story: A Short Story is any work of sf/f/h less than 7,500 words.)

“Burning, Always Burning”, Alan Baxter and Felicity Dowker, in Damnation and Dames, Ticonderoga Publications.

“Cephalopoda Obsessia”, Alan Baxter, in Bloodstones, Ticonderoga Publications.

“Crossroads and Carousels“, Alan Baxter, in The Red Penny Papers, Fall 2012.

“Fear is the Sin”, Alan Baxter, in From Stage Door Shadows, eMergent Publishing.

“In the Name of the Father”, Alan Baxter, in The One That Got Away, Dark Prints Press.

“Salvage in the Void“, Alan Baxter, in Kasma SF Magazine.

“The Everywhere And The Always”, Alan Baxter, in Mythic Resonance, The Specusphere and Esstee Media.

“The Goodbye Message“, Alan Baxter, in ticon4, April 2, 2012.

“Tiny Lives“, Alan Baxter, in Daily Science Fiction, December 25th, 2012.

I’ve also just noticed that my name crops up in a couple of other places on the eligibility list. So those are here:

Best Fan Writer
Fan Writer and Fan Artist: These awards are made to writers or artists for a work or body of work first published, released, or made available for public viewing in the eligible calendar year. The writer or artist must have received no payment other than contributor copies and other incidentals (coffee mug, t-shirt, poster, etc.)

Alan Baxter, for body of work including reviews in Thirteen O’Clock.

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
The William Atheling Jr Award: The William Atheling Jr Award is for the writing or editing of a work or a group of related works of criticism or review pertaining to the genres of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.

Alan Baxter, for review of A Haunting of Ghosts by Maynard Sims, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Dredd (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of El Orfanto (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Ishtar edited by Amada Pillar and K.V. Taylor, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Killeroo Gangwar by Darren Close and Paul Abstruse, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Rope by Martin Livings, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The List, Volume 1 by Paul Bedford, Henry Pop and Tom Bonin, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Sixsmiths by J. Marc Schmidt and Jason Franks, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Vaudeville by Greg Chapman, in Thirteen O’Clock.

I’m not entirely sure why all my Thirteen O’Clock reviews are listed separately, but that’s just how that particular award works, I guess. As they’re on the eligibility list, I’ve included them here.

So there it is. The reason to vote, all the links you need and my work that’s eligible. Here ends the Ditmar Award rant and promotion for now. Like last year’s post says, in order to make this award as fair and relevant as possible, we need as big a nominating and voting pool as possible. So, if you’re eligible, please get involved.

Guest post: Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies

By alan

February 12, 2013

I’m very happy today to be presenting a guest post by up and coming writer, Leife Shallcross. An online discussion a little while ago raised some very interesting points about gender roles in SF, and Leife’s observations were quite telling. So I asked her to write it up for a post here and she very graciously obliged.

Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies

I was having a discussion with some writerly friends a while ago about female leads in spec fic films. The conversation was started by an article that was arguing for a female protagonist in the next Star Wars movie, to be made by Disney some time soon. It was pretty interesting, and had some good points.

Naturally, though, this broadened out to a discussion of the nature of female characters in spec fic films generally. Are there enough of them? Are there enough leads? And are they genuinely well-rounded, complex human beings?

I’ll put myself out there and say I’m in the camp that thinks the answer to those questions is no.

But I will qualify it, by saying that I’m the mother of an 8 year-old boy and a 10 year-old girl, and the vast majority of the movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years have been kid’s movies, so that’s what I’m going to talk about here. (And, let’s face it, with Disney at the helm, this is what we are going to have to expect for Star Wars.)

And before you groan, and lose interest in what sounds like it’s going to be another feminist mummy rant, I’m also going to talk about why I think this comes down to one thing: lazy writing.

If you take the Pixar films, for example. A quick look on Wikipedia gives you a fairly comprehensive list of films they’ve produced, starting with Toy Story in 1995.

1995.

…And the first movie they produced with a female protagonist came out in…?

2012.

Now, I’m gonna pick on Pixar here, but boy they make it easy. It’s not that they can’t write good female characters. Dory (Finding Nemo), Jessie (Toy Story 2), Mrs Incredible and Violet Incredible (The Incredibles), to name just a handful. So why don’t they do more of it?

Why did Mike & Sully (Monsters Inc) both have to be male? Why would making one of them female not have worked? What about Up? It really would have made little difference to the story whether the kid, Russell, had been a boy or a girl. You could make arguments around Mike & Sully representing the classic blokes’ working relationship, or Carl (the old guy in Up) seeing himself in Russell, but I don’t think either of those examples could not have been managed by finding equally satisfying alternatives through good, clever scriptwriting, had they chosen to swap the gender of one of the characters.

This points to one of the things that the article on Star Wars argued, which is that film makers tend to view male characters as having generic appeal, and female characters as only appealing to women and girls.

In my opinion, this a view that needs to be challenged and proved false.

And in case you thought Monsters Inc and Up were the exceptions, here’s a random sample:

photo of buzz lightyear and woody from toy story Guest post: Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies Toy Story (the original): not a single girl in the gang. Every single female character could only be described as tertiary, at best. There’s a bunch of the supporting character toys that could have been presented as female – the money pig, the dinosaur, the slinky dog, the penguin. But no.

Finding Nemo: Dory, an awesome character. Now count the total ratio of male characters in the movie to female ones (19:6). Not even one fishaholic shark, and would that have been so hard?

Cars: Do I even need to start?

Ratatouille: This one’s great. One female role with a name (there’s also one female ‘dining patron’), out of a total of 19 roles.

Even Brave. Their flagship female protagonist film. Count the ratio of female to male characters (4 including a castle maid, to 14). You might also want to look at the female to male ‘extras’. It’s a wonder the human race has managed to survive.

And just to be fair, let’s look at Dreamworks:

How to Train Your Dragon: Astrid, awesome character. Now count the total ratio of male characters to female ones (10:3).

Rise of the Guardians: The tooth fairy. Cute and funny, but, oh look, all the rest of the guardians are… male. Token. There’s a couple of female kids (including the interesting, different and kinda awesome Cupcake), but the one the protagonist connects with in order to save the world is, you guessed it, a boy.

I could point to the Disney princesses and *wince* Barbie for a bunch of female protagonists, but these are movies marketed at girls, not generically, like the ones I’ve named above.

MV5BMzgwODk3ODA1NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjU3NjQ0Nw@@. V1 SY317 CR00214317 Guest post: Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies The fact is, with a little, a VERY little, extra effort in character development, the ratio of male to female protagonists, supporting characters and extras could more closely reflect the fact the human race is approximately half-half. And when a movie studio is as influential as Pixar or Dreamworks, this is actually something they could reasonably achieve.

But, you might say, what about the thing you mentioned earlier? Mike and Sully representing the blokey working relationship trope, or about Carl in Up seeing himself in Russell? Well, these are movies for kids. They don’t know about blokey workmates, or that adults are often inspired by children they see themselves in.

The messages you give your kids repeatedly in childhood will shape their expectations of the world as adults.

I’ll go back to my core argument, though, which is that, in my opinion, stories which involve a disproportionate number of male characters and token females (or film studios that churn out an aggregate disproportionate number of male to female characters, including protagonists), are going to be the result of lazy character development.

Generally, having a diverse range of characters (including—hey!—even the genderqueer!) makes for increased interest in the dynamics between the characters. Which usually makes for more interesting stories.

And just might have the spin-off of making the world a more tolerant, egalitarian place.

20121102 132312 Guest post: Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies Leife Shallcross lives in Canberra with her husband and children. She fits in her writing around looking after the kids, an almost full-time job in the public service and playing the fiddle (badly). She is fascinated by fairy tales and folk tales and frequently weaves elements of these into her writing. She’s also the current secretary of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. Her second published story will appear in Next, edited by Robert Porteous and Simon Petrie, to be launched at Conflux 9 in April 2013.
She blogs occasionally at leifeshallcross.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter @leioss.

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Time for another Top 100

By alan

January 22, 2013

I haven’t done one of these posts for a while, so I thought it was about time. I came across this post of the Top 100 Sci-Fi Books
. Apparently it’s “A statistical survey of the all-time Top 100 sci-fi books”. Whatever that means. There’s a link on the post where you can click to take part in the poll and it takes you to a massive list of SF titles and you’re asked to select ten of them. So by “statistical” I think they mean “voted”. Anyway, it struck me as an interesting list, so I thought I’d see how many of this alleged top 100 books I’ve read. The list is below. Sometimes you’ll see [S1], which means the first book in a series, or [C], which means it’s a single author collection. I’ve bolded all the titles I’ve read. The ones all in italics are books I have, but have yet to get around to reading.

1 Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game [S1] 1985

2 Frank Herbert Dune [S1] 1965

3 Isaac Asimov Foundation [S1-3] 1951

4 Douglas Adams Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [S1] 1979

5 Robert A Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land 1961

6 George Orwell 1984 1949

7 Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 1954

8 Arthur C Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968

9 Isaac Asimov [C] I, Robot 1950

10 Philip K Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968

11 Robert A Heinlein Starship Troopers 1959

12 William Gibson Neuromancer 1984

13 Larry Niven Ringworld 1970

14 Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama 1973

15 Dan Simmons Hyperion [S1] 1989

16 H G Wells The Time Machine 1895

17 Aldous Huxley Brave New World 1932

18 Arthur C Clarke Childhood’s End 1954

19 H G Wells The War of the Worlds 1898

20 Joe Haldeman The Forever War 1974

21 Robert A Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 1966

22 Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles 1950

23 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five 1969

24 Neal Stephenson Snow Crash 1992

25 Niven & Pournelle The Mote in God’s Eye 1975

26 Ursula K Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness 1969

27 Orson Scott Card Speaker for the Dead [S2] 1986

28 Michael Crichton Jurassic Park 1990

29 Philip K Dick The Man in the High Castle 1962

30 Isaac Asimov The Caves of Steel 1954

31 Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1870

32 Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination 1956

33 Roger Zelazny Lord of Light 1967

34 Frederik Pohl Gateway 1977

35 Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain 1969

36 Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle In Time 1962

37 Stanislaw Lem Solaris 1961

38 Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle 1963

39 Carl Sagan Contact 1985

40 Isaac Asimov The Gods Themselves 1972

41 Philip K Dick Ubik 1969

42 Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep 1991

43 Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange 1962

44 John Wyndham The Day of the Triffids 1951

45 Robert A Heinlein Time Enough For Love 1973

46 Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon 1999

47 Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars [S1] 1992

48 Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818

49 Walter M Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz 1959

50 Daniel Keyes Flowers for Algernon 1966

51 Isaac Asimov The End Of Eternity 1955

52 Jules Verne Journey to the Center of the Earth 1864

53 Iain M Banks Player Of Games [S2] 1988

54 L Ron Hubbard Battlefield Earth 1982 < Seriously!?

55 Peter F Hamilton The Reality Dysfunction [S1] 1996

56 Orson Scott Card Ender’s Shadow [S1] 1999

57 Ursula K Le Guin The Dispossessed 1974

58 Neal Stephenson The Diamond Age 1995

59 Greg Bear Eon 1985

60 Philip Jose Farmer To Your Scattered Bodies Go 1971

61 Kurt Vonnegut The Sirens of Titan 1959

62 David Brin Startide Rising [S2] 1983

63 Philip K Dick A Scanner Darkly 1977

64 Niven & Pournelle Lucifer’s Hammer 1977

65 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale 1985

66 Arthur C Clarke The City and the Stars 1956

67 Michael Crichton Sphere 1987

68 Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat [S1] 1961

69 Robert A Heinlein The Door Into Summer 1956

70 Alfred Bester The Demolished Man 1953

71 Gene Wolfe The Fifth Head of Cerberus 1972

72 Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space [S1] 2000

73 H G Wells The Invisible Man 1897

74 Robert A Heinlein Citizen Of the Galaxy 1957

75 Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars [S1] 1912

76 Robert A Heinlein The Puppet Masters 1951

77 Dan Simmons Ilium 2003

78 Connie Willis Doomsday Book 1992

79 C S Lewis Out of the Silent Planet [S1] 1938

80 Robert A Heinlein Have Space-Suit – Will Travel 1958

81 Edwin A Abbott Flatland 1884

82 Cormac McCarthy The Road 2006

83 Richard Morgan Altered Carbon [S1] 2002

84 John Scalzi Old Man’s War 2005 < I can honestly say this is one of the worst SF books I've ever read.

85 Philip K Dick The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch 1964

86 Iain M Banks Use of Weapons [S3] 1990

87 John Wyndham The Chrysalids 1955

88 Ursula K Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven 1971

89 Clifford Simak Way Station 1963

90 Stanislaw Lem [C] The Cyberiad 1974

91 John Brunner Stand on Zanzibar 1969

92 Philip K Dick VALIS 1981

93 David Brin The Postman 1985

94 Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1886

95 Julian May The Many-Colored Land [S1] 1981

96 Arkady & Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic 1972

97 Greg Bear The Forge of God 1987

98 Richard Matheson I Am Legend 1954

99 James Blish [C] Cities in Flight 1955

100 Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World 1912

There are a few on there that I can’t remember for sure if I’ve read or not. I think I might have, many years ago, but it’s equally possible I just thought I should read them but never got around it it. So I’ve left them. The bolded ones I know I’ve read – it’s not a bad showing, though how some of them have made it onto the best 100 list mystifies me. It has also, however, served to remind me of a hell of a lot of books that I haven’t read yet but really want to!

So I’ve read 41 out of that 100. How about you?

Wild Chrome by Greg Mellor – review

By alan

January 8, 2013

wild chrome web Wild Chrome by Greg Mellor review Greg Mellor is a relatively new voice in Australian science fiction, but his debut collection from Ticonderoga Publications places him firmly in the upper echelons of SF writers at work today. Wild Chrome is a collection of 21 short stories, ten of them new and original to the collection and the other eleven reprints from such august publications as Clarkesworld, Cosmos, Aurealis and more.

Mellor has a background in astrophysics and is one of those writers who can dream big ideas and back them up with believable and potentially realisable science. His stories play mostly around the ideas of the post-human singularity, the arguably inevitable conjoining of humanity and technology, which opens up all kinds of questions about mortality and our place in the universe.

Mellor manages to keep an entirely human aspect in all his work, however big or deep the subject matter. That is, unless it’s one of his stories from the point of view of an alien species, and then he manages to write a very convincing non-human.

Not every story in this book hits the mark dead on, but all the stories are imaginative and entertaining, really nailing the excitement and wonder that we should expect from science fiction. And some of the stories are nothing less than brilliant. I’m looking forward to anything else Greg Mellor writes, but he’s set himself a high bar with this collection.

“Next” anthology – table of contents announced

By alan

December 21, 2012

I’m a very proud member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, better known as the CSFG. I’m proud for many reasons, not least among them the fact that I’m a two and half hour drive from Canberra, but they’ll still have me. Living in the country like I do, it’s difficult to get involved with anything like a writers’ group, so it’s nice that the CSFG extend their welcome to people like myself.

The CSFG is a great and supportive group of people, with regular gatherings, short story and novel crit groups, a very active mailing list and more. And they also have a publishing arm, through which they produce regular anthologies of short fiction. All the anthologies are managed by a slush wrangler, so all the submissions are read blind by the editors, which means there’s no favouring friends or Guild members, as the submissions are open to everyone, Guild or not.

The latest project from CSFG Publishing is the “Next” anthology. Here’s how they pitched the anthology theme:

Sequence. Succession. Cause and effect. Show us what happened. next.
Next suggests ‘change’, perhaps, but it doesn’t have to invoke change, it can simply be an account of cause-and-effect. Soemtimes it’s the absence of change, the sense of inevitability, that gives the story its terrible power and its resonance. Or it might be a rite-of-passage; of invention and exploration; of the testing and transgression of boundaries; or a story laden with doom or hope or just the inevitability of inescapable repetition. Yup, this theme is a theme for all seasons; it’s a cut and come again theme that can mean pretty much whatever people want it to mean.

Today, the CSFG announced the table of contents for the book and I’m very happy to say that my name is among them. It’s going to be a big book, with 30 stories from established names and newbies alike. Here’s the full ToC:

Next Table of Contents (in alphabetical order):

Kris Ashton: ‘The Midway Hotel’

Daniel Baker: ‘Stories in the Square’

Alan Baxter: ‘Quantum Echoes’

Adam Browne: ‘Animal the Colour of Waiting’

David Coleman: ‘Gambler’s Blues’

Craig Cormick: ‘Ned Kelly and the Zombies’

Elizabeth Fitzgerald: ‘Phoenix Down’

Ross Hamilton: ‘When Money Talks’

Richard Harland: ‘Here’s Glory For You’

Edwina Harvey: ‘Next, cried the Faun’

Rik Lagarto: ‘The Wild Hunt’

Chris Large: ‘Girl Finds Key’

Martin Livings: ‘Cause and Effect’

Tracie McBride: ‘Wooden Heart’

Chris McGrane: ‘The Cat and his Zombies’

Ian McHugh: ‘Vandiemensland’

Claire McKenna: ‘The Ninety Two’

Shauna O’Meara: ‘The Dream Tracker’

Robert Phillips: ‘A Dream of Something More’

Gillian Polack: ‘Someone’s Daughter’

Angela Rega: ‘Almost Beautiful’

Nicky Rowlands: ‘On the Wall’

Leife Shallcross: ‘A Little Warning’

Daniel Simpson: ‘Those Days’

Steve Simpson: ‘The Electrician and the Circus’

Helen Stubbs: ‘Casino Five’

David Versace: ‘Imported Goods—Aisle Nine’

Janeen Webb: ‘Hell is Where the Heart Is’

Catherine Whittle: ‘The Room’

Suzanne Willis: ‘Of Starfish Tides’

Editors: Simon Petrie & Rob Porteous

It’s a great cross-section of authors, and there are several names there I’ve never come across before, so it’ll be good to read their work. Out of those 30, there are 11 CSFG members, including myself, which is a good result for the Guild.

The book is scheduled for release at Conflux 9, which is next year’s Australian NatCon, so that should be a lot of fun. When there’s a cover reveal, I’ll let you know.

Tuesday Toot – Jodi Cleghorn and Deck The Halls

By alan

December 4, 2012

Tuesday Toot is a semi-regular feature here. An invite-only series of short posts where writers, editors, booksellers and other creatives have been asked to share their stuff and toot their own horn. It’s hard to be seen in the digital morass and hopefully this occasional segment will help some of the quality stuff out there get noticed. It should all be things that regular readers here will find edifying.

This time, it’s Jodi Cleghorn talking about something I can really get behind. Take it away, Jodi!

JodiProfilePic Tuesday Toot Jodi Cleghorn and Deck The Halls Who is Jodi?

Jodi (@jodicleghorn) is an author, editor, publisher and innovator.

By day (and sometimes night), she runs the many facets of eMergent Publishing (eP), a small press dedicated to nurturing next-crop authors, editors and visual artists.

Between the cracks she chases her own characters in a blending of themes and genres best described as “dark weird shit”. Fruits of these adventures include the collaborative epistolary serial Post Marked: Piper’s Reach and Elyora (Review of Australian Fiction—special edition), a horror novella set just off the New England Highway.

She’s occasionally known to loiter at her blog 1000 Pieces of Blue Sky.

What are you tooting about?

Deck the Halls: festive tales of fear and cheer, the first and most recent (I can explain) publication from eP’s Literary Mix Tapes imprint of conceptual anthologies. But first…that explanation.

Born From…

The origins of Deck the Halls are bizarre, to say the least.

In December 2010 I created a shit storm on Facebook when I commented about my displeasure with the overtly Christian tone of the carols night at my son’s school. (He goes to a state school with a diverse ethnic demographic and I felt it totally inappropriate to push any one brand of religious fervour, when their Easter bonnet parade is included as a ‘cultural’ event on the school’s calendar, devoid of religious connotations).

I know, I know, Christmas is a Christian holiday… but, historically, it was many other things before the Christian’s got their pesky hands on it.

Rather than whinge—or delete the exploding Facebook thread (with people telling me, among other things, how intolerant I was)—I decided to publish a bunch of twisted, non-traditional Christmas tales. It’s apparently the sort of therapy an editor-writer-publisher seeks out in the wake of a social media implosion.

In The Beginning

The original idea was to rope nine friends into writing stories based on the lyrics of Deck the Halls (the idea of a troll for Christmas set my imagination on fire as I sat there in the hot, humid school hall!) and then publish the stories online on Christmas Eve. First, I contacted Jim Wisneski to get his blessings (I was riffing off his idea from 12 Days project) and then sent announcements out through the usual channels to see who was interested. I referred to the project as a Literary Mix Tape (a concept everyone immediately got and a name that’s stuck.)

Nine places became nineteen places, with the caveat everyone was to beta read for each other—I was too busy to edit. On Christmas Eve twenty twisted stories—rocking the dark and light side of the Christmas and New Year period—went up, one an hour, on a dedicated website. Christmas Day I made all the stories available as a free eBook.

Beyond Christmas

The ideas of writing to musical prompts and cooperative submission (a term later coined by Tom Dullemond) found traction. That traction spawned the official launch of Literary Mix Tapes (as an imprint under the eMergent Publishing umbrella) and three more anthologies: Nothing But Flowers: tales of post apocalyptic love, Eighty Nine and From Stage Door Shadows [I have a story in that one! - Alan]. Two years on I am still amazed that of all the ideas I’ve had over the years, this was the one that garnered the most enthusiasm. Many of the cornerstones of the LMT imprint, and the way each anthology is released, can be directly traced back to that very first Christmas adventure.

Redux

I felt the original authors deserved to see their stories in a paperback, so I rebooted Deck the Halls in 2011, opening ten (then twelve) new places in the anthology. Andrew McKiernan offered to do the front cover (based on Susan May James’ chilling story, “Bosch’s Troll”). This Thursday (6^th December) a revised, revamped, extended and fully edited edition of Deck the Halls goes on worldwide sale as Deck the Halls: tales of festive fear and cheer.

DECK THE HALLS traverses the joy and jeopardy of the festive season, from Yule to Mōdraniht, Summer Solstice to Years’ End. The stories journey through consternations and celebrations, past, present and future, which might be or never were.

Along the way you’ll meet troll hunters, consumer dissidents, corset-bound adventurers, a joint-toking spirit, big-hearted gangbangers, an outcast hybrid spaceship, petrol-toting politicians, mythical swingers and a boy who unwittingly controls the weather.

Heart-warming and horrifying, the collection is a merry measure of cross-genre, short fiction subverting traditional notions of the holiday season.

At under $20 for the paperback (or $4.95 for the eBook) it’s a brilliant stocking stuffer or Secret Santa present. Better still, treat yourself to a copy and use it as an antidote to everything irritating, painful and nauseating about the holiday season.

“Salvage In The Void” now published at Kasma SF and free to read

By alan

December 3, 2012

I’m very pleased to announce that my science fiction short story, Salvage In The Void, has been published at Kasma SF Magazine and it’s free to read online. Not only that, but the story has been illustrated in fantastic style by Jose Boreas. I honestly couldn’t be happier with it. This story features those spacefaring friends, Peevy and LaVey, an engineer with a phobia about deep space and his synthetic hound. These guys first appeared in my story, Trawling The Void, which was published in Midnight Echo issue 6, the science fiction/horror special. Salvage In The Void follows on directly from the events in Trawling The Void. And I have in mind at least one more adventure for Peevy and LaVey, and possibly more after that. I’ll post an excerpt below to give you a taste and a thumbnail of the artwork. You can go to Kasma SF to read the rest and see the art in all its glory. And while you’re there, stick around and read some of the other stuff – it’s an excellent online magazine (and this is my second feature there.)

peevy and lavey small Salvage In The Void now published at Kasma SF and free to read Salvage in the Void
by Alan Baxter

“I don’t know how long I can bear this,” Peevy said. Deepfear churned his stomach as he absently stroked the SimHound’s head. “I didn’t want to die back there on a doomed ship, but I don’t think I can take this.”

LaVey whined in sympathy, looking up to lick a kiss across his master’s cheek. Peevy hunched in the cramped pod, the demi-sphere of radiation-shielded plasglass at his back. He felt the black out there, a yawning void trying to suck him into icy depths. He tapped and flicked in the holographic cube before him, called up images and charts. “I know I can manage the ‘fear, LaVey,” he said as he worked.

LaVey huffed in agreement.

Peevy read speeds and vectors, tried to correlate the information with on-board charts. There was very little in the way of accurate cartography so far out on the edge.

As the mind-numbing enormity of space became ever more apparent Peevy trembled more deeply, ‘fear tightening his chest, constricting his throat. “It’s so much easier to manage on-board ship,” he said.

LaVey whined softly, sitting close to his master, resting his chin.

*****

A sharp beep brought Peevy out of a fitful doze. LaVey, curled at his feet, looked up.

“A ship!”

LaVey sat up, barked in excitement.

“It’s a small vessel,” Peevy said. “What’s it doing all the way out here? Looking for the Clara Halo? It ‘s…” He cast a haunted look at the SimHound. “Dead. They ‘re all dead.” LaVey gestured with his nose at the comm.

Peevy keyed up a comm-link, took a deep breath to calm himself. “Vessel callsign VSC7811, do you read me, over?”

Man and dog sat still in tense expectation. Nothing but a soft hiss came back over the comm.

“Vessel callsign VSC7811,” Peevy said again, “This is Chief Engineer Peevy, recently of the USV Clara Halo, sole survivor. My pod has limited range and supplies, please respond.”

More crackle and hiss. Peevy’s eyes were wide as he looked at LaVey. “Can’t they hear us?”

LaVey shook his head, lips forward in concern. He tipped his head, flicked one ear.

Peevy read the dog’s body language, their bond deeper than anyone ever understood. “You think they’re ignoring us?” He growled with annoyance. “Vessel callsign VSC7811, this is Chief Engineer Peevy, sole survivor of the USV Clara Halo…”

“We hear you, engineer.” The voice was gravelly.

“Oh, thank everything in the deep, wide black! Please, can you pick me up?”

A guttural laugh came across. “Hold your horses there, engineer. United Spaceways Vessel, huh? You’re a company man.”

“Yes. But the Clara Halo is gone.”

“Really? Well, I don’t want any contact with the company or the Democratic Alliance of Planets. I’m sorry.”

“What? Wait! I don’t want to drift in this pod forever.” His stomach lurched at the thought. “I’ll die of starvation or lack of oxygen before I find anyone.”

“Why is that my concern, engineer?”

“Simple human kindness?” Peevy ventured weakly.

…Read the rest at Kasma SF.

I’ll also add a permanent link on the Dark Shorts page.

Tuesday Toot – Jo Anderton

By alan

November 20, 2012

This time, it’s Jo Anderton. Take it away, Jo!

Who is Jo?

Apparently, Jo Anderton looks quite normal from the outside. But don’t let this fool you, because she’s actually a writer, and you know what they’re like. Even worse, she writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. You should feel sorry for her characters.

Jo’s had a few short stories published here and there, most recently in Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear and Epilogue. She won the Australian Horror Writer’s Association short story competition in 2012. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for a couple of Aurealis Awards, and the WSFA small press award. Her first novel, Debris, was published by Angry Robot Books in 2011. It was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and a Ditmar. Jo won the Ditmar for Best New Talent.

Whenever she’s not torturing characters and cackling manically to herself, Jo works as a marketing co-ordinator for an Australian book distributor. She lives in Sydney with her husband and too many pets.

What are you tooting about?

Suited, the sequel to Debris! This series is set in a world of industrialised magic, where most people can see and manipulate semi-sentient, subatomic particles called pions. Pions can be used to rearrange matter, and the stronger you are or the more people you have working with them, the greater the effects. So you have enormous cities full of impossible, majestic buildings, all powered by massive pion-binding factories. But this comes at a cost. Pion manipulation creates debris — a waste product that destabilises pion bonds. As you can imagine, this could be terribly dangerous for a world built on pions. Most people can’t even see debris, so the ones who do are conscripted by the state to clean it up. Really, they’re nothing more than glorified garbage collectors, over worked, poorly paid and definitely underappreciated.

In Debris we met Tanyana. She starts off as a powerful and wealthy pion binder. But a terrible accident leaves her scarred, and her pion sight gone, replaced with an ability to see debris instead. She’s forced to become a debris collector, with a suit of living metal drilled into her very bones, her income slashed and her life in ruins. The first book is about Tanyana struggling to come to terms with her new identity… but nothing is what it seems. The accident that ruined her might not have been an accident at all. In fact, debris itself might not be the waste product everyone thinks it is. It might be something much more important.

Suited follows straight on from where Debris left off. Tanyana deals with the consequences of the choices she’s made, the alliances formed and the enemies she’s well and truly pissed off. But the hardest battle is within herself.

These books are a little bit science fiction and a little bit fantasy, with influences from anime and video games. I’ve loved writing these books, and I hope readers enjoy them too!

You can find Jo online here.

I should post a caveat here, as Jo is a very good friend of mine, but I can also vouch for the fact that her writing is awesome and her books are well worth the read. I loved them and can’t wait for the third book in the trilogy. If there’s any doubt about her talent, look at it this way – she was nominated for the 2011 Ditmar Award for Best New Talent, and I was nominated for the same award. Jo won it and I couldn’t be happier for her, because she totally deserved that win. (I mean, sure, I wish I’d won a Ditmar, but Jo totally deserved it.) So, go and buy her books. You won’t regret it.

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“Salvage In The Void” now published at Kasma SF and free to read

Tuesday Toot – Jo Anderton

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