Centaurus: The Best of Australian SF

Bys: Damien Broderick and David G. Hartwell

Hartwell and acclaimed Australian anthologist Damien Broderick are bringing a higher profile to Australian SF with Centaurus, a showcase of some of the most original voices in SF. Included are stories... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312865562
• ISBN13: 9780312865566
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 525 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Australian SF Reader

Really bloody good, mate. This is a very impressive collection. Average rating 4.15 out of 5. The editors are fairly aggressive in saying that this is the best oz sf collection put together, but it appears they are pretty much right. Van Ikin's Australian Science Fiction, taking the 'modern' section and not the excerpts, which would be an unfair comparison, is a touch under 4. Looking at what I have read of Gerrand's Best Australian Science Fiction Writing that will be be a decent score, but not likely this high. Not that I have read all the older anthologies, either, but I will sometime. The fact is though, that Egan and Dowling mostly were not in those. The second editions of the Strahan and Congreve et. al. Year's Bests in each case are around the 3.75 mark or so, and the McNamara collections a bit under that. However, that is to be expected, given they are looking at the 'new', not the best of what is available, and all are collections that a fan (or student) of oz sf will want to have. Centaurus : Flowering Mandrake - George Turner Centaurus : The Mountain Movers - A. Bertram Chandler Centaurus : Things Fall Apart - Philippa C. Maddern Centaurus : Written in Blood - Chris Lawson Centaurus : Pie Row Joe - Kevin McKay Centaurus : A Map of the Mines of Barnath - Sean Williams Centaurus : My Lady Tongue - Lucy Sussex Centaurus : Wang's Carpets - Greg Egan Centaurus : The Dominant Style - Sean McMullen Centaurus : Borderline - Leanne Frahm Centaurus : Privateers' Moon - Terry Dowling Centaurus : Re-deem the Time - David J. Lake Centaurus : Matters of Consequence - Shane Dix Centaurus : The Total Devotion Machine - Rosaleen Love Centaurus : The Colonel's Tiger - Hal Colebatch Centaurus : The Soldier in the Machine - Russell Blackford Centaurus : From Whom All Blessings Flow - Stephen Dedman Centaurus : Looking Forward to the Harvest - Cherry Wilder Centaurus : The Magi - Damien Broderick Centaurus : The Chance - Peter Carey Vegetable methuselah's Kal-Elesque odyssey, and brief Phoenix rising. 5 out of 5 A Waltzing Spaceshipa goes The Rock. 4.5 out of 5 Dying bequest gives hope to bizarre scientific research. 4 out of 5 Religious DNA transcription is a killer vulnerability. 4.5 out of 5 Firestarter's mistake, mate. 4 out of 5 A man goes looking for his brother, but all is definitely nowhere even close to being remotely anything like it seems in a really large, very strange underground structure. 3.5 out of 5 Separatist scout girl breaks leg, nicks rescuers Shakespeare, does him, leaves, gets married. 4 out of 5 A conservative transhuman polis sets out to search for alien life on other planets. The planet they find surprises them in a bit way, as the carpetlike inhabitants seem to grow by a pattern described by an obscure mathematician. Their nature allows them to perform as a Turing machine, and they are running one pretty impressive simulation. A story you might just have to read a bit of twice. 5 out of 5 Geneticall

Aussie sf writers - what's all the fuss about?

I am one of the authors represented in Centaurus, and obviously I'm biased to that extent.All right...now that's out of the way, I honestly believe that this is one of the better science fiction anthologies around and that the authors whose work it contains are worth getting to know. Since the start of the 1990s, Australian science fiction has had a huge renaissance, with such writers as Greg Egan, Sean Williams and Sean McMullen becoming prominent internationally and others having success on a lesser scale, both at home and overseas. This book includes work from all the main Aussie writers of the past few decades, and includes some of their best pieces going back to the 1970s. Most of these are substantial stories - they are robust and gutsy, with some strong themes and characters. What's more, you won't find a better opportunity to sample good work by all the Australian writers in one place, and to judge for yourself what the fuss is about.