Posts Tagged “Anthology”
ARMISTICE collects tales of a time millions of years ago on far off worlds, a time when the inlaris’ home planet still existed; Woelf Dietrich, M.J. Kelley, Dana Leipold and Elaine Chao give us stories about intergalactic space travel and tragedy wrought by a global war that tore Earth asunder; narratives of hope and love, and yes, we take you to the wastelands of North America, where… Well, you’ll just have to read it to find out. But mostly these stories involve Earth: exploring first contact, the golden era of alien collaboration, the Great War, and the interspecies conflicts that still rattle the world.
When going somewhere dangerous, take a human. Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so quickly, they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink under their epidermis for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you.
July in Aotearoa might be more about freezing southerlies than ice-zombies from the North, but honestly, at least the latter has novelty value. Winter has well and truly arrived; time to snuggle up with some reading.
At the Edge, edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray, is now available in bookstores around New Zealand – or, for those of you who would prefer not to get out of bed (or onto a plane) to get your hands on a copy, you can find the ebook at all the usual haunts, and the paperback from Amazon. Want to get your hands on the latest and greatest in Australasian SFF? Click here for links.
Babylon’s Song by Kiwi writer, Woelf Dietrich features in the new anthology, Interspecies, Volume 1, The Inlari Sagas.
“These are generally hard-hitting stories about a grim future world. . . . I found the exploration mind-stretching . . .” —Piers Anthony, New York Times Bestselling Author of the Xanth Series
“Interspecies is a solid science fiction anthology that provides entertaining reading for a thinking person and sets a high bar. . . . These are writers to watch.” —Keith West, Adventure Fantastic and Futures Past and Present
These Broken Worlds introduces readers to a universe where a war between humans and aliens has decimated the Earth, leaving only Australia and New Zealand habitable. The rest of the planet is a burned up stew of toxic waste. This mini-kōsalogy lays the foundation for a new science fiction series, Interspecies, Kōsa Press’s flagship kōsalogy (what we call our shared universe anthologies) which will be released in 2015.
In These Broken Worlds, a scavenger frantically searches her dying planet for discarded tech in a last minute effort to save her lover. An old man remembers first contact and the devastating consequences to life on Earth. The birth of a hybrid threatens to disrupt a human community, but who is really to blame? A male alien uses unconventional means to court a human woman with a surprising result. A woman obsessed with vengeance conjures something dark and evil that will change her life forever. And an old alien regales children with tales of interstellar exodus.
VISIONS:Leaving Earth is an anthology exploring humankind’s obsession with space and leaving the home of their origin, with a Foreword by Sam Bellotto Jr., Editor, Perihelion Science Fiction Magazine. A broad range of professional and undiscovered science fiction authors from around the world present imaginative visions of space elevator disasters, medical clones, low gravity surgical suites, asteroid mining, alien contact, and the end of civilization.
Baby Teeth – Bite-sized Tales of Terror, Edited by Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray
Kids can say the creepiest things.
27 New Zealand and American authors delve into the strange, the unexpected, and the downright terrifying things that kids say in this collection of all new flash fiction. From the mouths of babes come 37 stories, from the haunting to the hilarious to the horrific.
Leave the lights on tonight. So you’ll see them coming.
AWARDS
Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work, 2014
Winner – Australian Shadows Award for Edited Publication, 2014
Winner – Australian Shadows Award for Short Stories, 2014: Debbie Cowens, “Caterpillar”
Finalist – Australian Shadows Award for Short Stories, 2014: JC Hart, “The Dead Way”
Use Only As Directed, edited by Simon Petrie and Edwina Harvey
A varied mix of 14 speculative fiction stories by some of the best Australian and New Zealand authors in the genre in settings that range from the back yard to the depths of space.
Authors: Stephen Dedman, Dirk Flinthart, Dave Freer, Michelle Goldsmith, Alex Isle, Lyn McConchie, Claire McKenna, Charlotte Nash, Ian Nichols, Leife Shallcross, Grant Stone, Douglas A Van Belle, Janeen Webb, M Darusha Wehm.
216 pages.
Also available on Amazon
“Growth” by A.C. Buchanan in Fierce Family anthology from Crossed Genres
All around, the wind swayed the grass, bringing out ever-changing tones of red and purple. Still used to the vegetation of Earth’s temperate zones, it was hard for me to break myself from the idea that these colours were autumnal, dry, that the whole place was ready to go up in smoke. But here the leaves and blades were broad, the vegetation damp. Though the sun shone brightly, my legs were as sticky from the grass as they were from sweat. The wind was picking up, and I smoothed out my skirt as the navy fabric rippled.
Silver Sharp as Silk, by Dan Rabarts in Dreaming of Djinn
“It is sharp, and beautiful, and awful to watch them burn, but burn they must, wrapped up in dust and flame, writhing and curling and dying, thin hard men who wear cold steel at their belts while trading silk for silver, spices and myrrh. Sometimes, as they cry in anguish before the dust chokes their voices forever, I savour the sound, relishing that it is not I who cries in anguish for that which I have lost – not this time. Over rock, across dunes, between the sleeping canvasses of their caravans and the snorting of dromedaries, I blot out the sky before them, judge them, and deliver my sentence, or my mercy, as I see fit. I come upon them in the brutality of screaming wind and shredding sand, descend on them in a howling rage, summoning the nightmares of their sweating half-sleeps to their eyes, their throats. I swirl and thrash about them, knowing their bright Arabian steel, Damascan gold and Grecian silver will not shine so bright when I am done, when I have blasted the skin from their flesh and the flesh from their bones.”
A Foreign Country, Anna Caro & Juliet Buchanan (editors)
A Foreign Country brings together the work of established authors and fresh voices to showcase the range of stories produced by New Zealand’s growing community of speculative fiction writers. Humorous, disturbing, intriguing, cautionary, and ultimately hopeful, these tales tell of worlds where the boundaries between human and animal are blurred, babies are not what they seem, desperate measures are in place to ward off disaster, and flying standby can be a big mistake.
Blueprints by Anna Caro in Fat Girl in a Strange Land
Cherry seems to be under the impression that she’s going to be spirited away to Terra Nova any day now. Poor kid. Even if she did lose the weight – and let’s face it, if there was any chance of that she’d be at one of the Health Camps, not No Hopers’ High – there’s still her history of cancer. There’s no way in hell she’s going with just one lung.
Millie by Anna Caro in Outlaw Bodies
When my father died, I inherited my coffin. My parents would be horrified to hear me refer to it as such; more so to know I had been doing so jokingly since my mid-twenties. It doesn’t even look like a coffin; it’s a cedar chest that had been my maternal grandmother’s, with carved feet and an inlay of what looks like mahogany. But I’ve always known what it was.
The Bone Plate by Dan Rabarts in Bloodstones
“Back in the black old days, we called it the Bone Plate. Wasn’t worth your life to touch the Bone Plate. It made men kings, back in the black old days. Mine was a trashcan lid, piled high with gnawed, soot-stained remains, the bones of rats and cats and stray dogs and pigeons. Only the bones of that which you had killed and stripped clean with your own biting, smiling teeth were allowed on your Plate, and whoever had the biggest Plate ruled the windswept world of trash and frost that sprawled beneath the overpasses. I remember jamming more and more bones on top of each other, wrapping them up with wire and twine and whatever else I could find amongst the trash, until mine towered taller than anyone else’s under the ‘pass. It had made me king, and Hania my queen.
Mary Had a Unicorn by Ripley Patton in Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear
The last thing on earth Mary Maloney wanted was a unicorn. She wasn’t an addict, no matter what they said at the clinic. Sure, she used sometimes just to have some fun, or when she was down. But who didn’t? It wasn’t any different than the booze her dad tanked. Or the pot he smoked. But you didn’t see anyone assigning him a freakin’ genetically engineered, one-horned parole officer.