The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (volume 1)

by Paul Haines

  Jessica Shrivington found publication with the first book in The Violet Eden Chapters, Embrace (Lothian), a YA paranormal romance with avenging angels; Shrivington had outstanding Christmas sales. Robert N Stephenson’s Uttuku (Altair), the first in the Dark Books series, tells of a writer battling suicide survivor guilt and a Mesopotamian demon. Kim Wilkins’ debut novel, The Infernal, was published as a limited, signed and numbered hardcover edition by Ticonderoga Publications.

  Collections

  A US edition of Leigh Blackmore’s weird poetry collection was published by Rainfall Books with the revised title Sharnoth’s Spores and Other Seeds. The collection was first published as Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses by P’rea Press. P’rea Press also issued a numbered limited reprint, with an updated bibliography, and a foreword by noted critic ST Joshi. The U.S. and Australian editions feature some variations in the selection of poems. Red Blade Press published Bill Congreve’s wonderful collection Souls Along The Meridian. Well known stand-up comic Bob Franklin made a very successful transition into print storytelling, with his collection Under Stones (Affirm Press). Twelfth Planet Press published a boutique collection of stories by Marianne de Pierres, Glitter Rose. The edition is hardcover, limited edition, signed, and with interior illustrations.

  A bumper year for Angela Slatter, as Ticonderoga Publications published The Girl With No Hands, and Tartarus Press published Sourdough and Other Stories; both to deserved critical acclaim. Ticonderoga Publications published Kaaron Warren’s Dead Sea Fruit, a powerhouse collection of 27 of Warren’s greatest hits.

  Anthologies

  Allen & Unwin published a teen anthology Zombies Vs Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier (zombies) & Holly Black (unicorns). The anthology included stories from Margo Lanagan, Scott Westerfeld, and Garth Nix.

  Brimstone Press produced the massive anthology devoted exclusively to Australian horror, Macabre: A Journey Through Australia’s Darkest Fears. Reading almost as three volumes in one—Classics (1836–1979), Modern Masters (1980–2000), and The New Era (first publications of stories by authors active since 2000)—this anthology is an essential cornerstone for any serious private collection of Australian horror. The anthology is prefaced with an introductory essay and boasts an array of authors too extensive to list here. While Brimstone will be sadly missed as the publishers move on to other endeavors, Macabre is such an excellent primer on uncanny fiction in Australia, that it is worthy of acquisition by academic libraries for use in coursework in the fields of cultural studies, literature, professional and creative writing. No higher compliment can be paid to editors Angela Challis and Dr Marty Young.

  Cthulhu’s Dark Cults: Ten Tales of Dark & Secretive Orders was released by Chaosium; edited by David Conyers, the anthology included fiction from David Witteveen, Penelope Love, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, and David Conyers. Dark Prints Press launched An Eclectic Slice Of Life edited by Craig Bezant, an anthology of the best stories and poems from the online magazine Eclecticism, divided into Dark Little Oddities, Fantastical Twists, and Obligatory Dramas. Chinese Whisperings: The Yin & Yang Book (Emergent Publishing), edited by Jodi Cleghorn and Paul Anderson, was an interesting experiment in gender voices—the male anthology half edited by Jodi, and the female edited by Paul. Benjamin Solah contributed an interesting piece engaging with paranoia about terrorism.

  Eneit Press published an anthology that was sadly to be their last. Baggage, edited by Gillian Polack, is a beautiful swan song, with very personal interpretations of cultural baggage. The anthology is a true showcase of strong female voices in the speculative field. Morrigan Press published a concept anthology based on an album of the same title by industrial act The God Machine. Scenes From The Second Storey came in two different editions, one comprised exclusively of Australian authors. Horror had a strong showing here, with stories by David Conyers, Kirstyn McDermott, Felicity Dowker, Paul Haines, Andrew J McKiernan, Martin Livings, LJ Hayward, Robert Hood, Stephanie Campisi, and Kaaron Warren.

  Dark Pages: Tales of Dark Speculative Fiction (Red Blade Press) was Brenton Tomlinson’s first outing as anthology editor, and included tales from Marty Young, Felicity Dowker, Martin Livings and ex-pat Naomi Bell. The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, & Evolution marked the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and featured a story from Christopher Green.

  Tasmaniac Publications produced a rather macho Christmas themed anthology, Festive Fear, which included a number of antipodean authors such as Michael Radburn, Daniel I Russell, GN Braun, Steve Cameron, Matthew R Davis, and Scott Tyson.

  Liz Grzyb made her editorial debut with Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications) a whimsical paranormal romance anthology, which among the lighter moments included some gritty horror from Felicity Dowker and Martin Livings, gothic wit from Kyla Ward, and a bleak suicide letter from Ian Nichols. Belong (Ticonderoga Publications), edited by Russell B Farr, included one strong zombie story from Penelope Love. Sprawl (Twelfth Planet Press), edited by Alisa Krasnostein, explored the urban landscape and odd intersections of wilderness and suburb, and featured darker tales from Angela Slatter, Ben Peek, Pete Kempshall, Paul Haines, and Deborah Biancotti.

  A number of Australian horror writers saw publication in significant overseas anthologies. Most notably Robert Hood’s excellent tale Wasting Matilda appeared in The Mammoth Book Of The Zombie Apocalypse, edited by Stephen Jones, and Narrelle M Harris’ zombie YA story The Truth About Brains appeared in Canadian anthology Best New Zombie Tales: Volume 2, edited by James Roy Daley. Stephen Dedman and Kaaron Warren both had fine ghost stories in Haunted Legends, edited by Ellen Datlow.

  Magazines

  Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine published six issues in 2010; of these, issues 46, 48, and 44 all sported horror content. Issue 44, edited by Felicity Dowker, featured a comic zombie flash from Chuck McKenzie. Issue 46, edited by Mark Farrugia, was very horror oriented, with stories from Christopher Green, Jason Fisher, Pete Kempshall, and Felicity Dowker, and a poem from Grant Stone. Issue 48, edited by Juliet Bathory, featured fiction from Mark Farrugia, Marty Young, Amanda Spedding and Mark Welker.

  Aurealis magazine celebrated 20 years in print with issue 44 in September, which featured horror fiction from Christopher Green and Kirstyn McDermott. Issue 43 in June featured horror fiction from Bill Congreve, Felicity Dowker, and Geoffrey Maloney.

  Eclecticism e-zine published four issues in 2010. Issue 11 was the ghost story themed issue, with fiction from Mark Smith-Briggs, Trost, Allan Wilson, and Lynley Stace. Issue 12, Obsession themed, featured stories from Mark Farrugia, Alice Godwin, Michael Clifton, Lana Harris, Simon James, Susan Adams, and Dam Frederick Hellmons. Issue 13 was appropriately themed Superstitions, and featured creative writing from Brett McBean, Sally Franechevich, Geoffrey Maloney, Simon James, Andrew J McKiernan, Martin Livings, and Shane Jiraiya Cummings. Eclecticism 14: Freedom included stories by Deborah Sheldon, Trost, Dianne Dean, Simon James, Shane Griffin, and poetry by Juliette Gillies.

  The AHWA launched issue 4 of Midnight Echo, edited by Lee Battersby; this issue included fiction by Jason Crowe, Christopher Green, Lisa L Hannett, Patty Jansen, Geoffrey Maloney, Andrew Baker, and Steven J Stegbar, poetry by Jude Aquilina and Jenny Blackford, as well as illustrations from Justin Randall, Ian Van Gemert, and Harold Purnell.

  Ben Payne launched Moonlight Tuber, featuring fiction from Gitte Christensen, Peter M Ball, Adam Browne, and Matthew Chrulew. Twelfth Planet Press released the final issue of YA zine Shiny, featuring fiction from Dirk Flinthart and a reprint of Deborah Biancotti’s award-winning story “A Scar for Leida”.

  Comics & Graphic Novels

  Black House Comics published the second volume of their zombie apocalypse After The World graphic novel series of novellas set in a shared world—Gravesend by Jason Fischer.

  Dark Oz Productions published three issues of horror comic series Decay, edited by Darren Koziol. Stories by Darren Koziol, Dave Heinrich, Tanya Nicholls, Mark Hobby, Steve Colloff, Steve Cart
er, Antoinette Rydyr, Courtney Egan and Shane Jiraiya Cummings. U.S. publisher Asylum Press continued the retro EEK! comic series written and inked by Australian Jason Paulos, and distributed to newsagents in Australia by Black House Comics. Five Wounds (Allen & Unwin), written by Jonathan Walker and illustrated by Dan Hallett, is a graphic novel where five supernatural orphans come to terms with strange origins.

  Rocky Wood had his first graphic novel released—Horrors! Great Tales of Fear and Their Creators (McFarland). Illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne, Horrors! explores the premise of genre masters (including Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe) being haunted by their supernatural creations.

  Theatre

  Dancing On Your Grave, a vaudevillian musical from director/choreographer Lea Anderson, graced the Perth International Arts Festival. Bare Elements Productions’ horror-themed musical whodunit Vincent Lyce’s Final Curtain directed by Simon J Robinson was revived for performances in Melbourne. PMD Productions presented the Australian premiere of Liz Lochhead’s Blood And Ice, originally premiering in the UK in 1984. The play concerns the life and fiction of Mary Shelley. The Australian production was directed by Jennifer Innes in Melbourne.

  Sydney-based repertory company Theatre of Blood performed Stephen Hopely’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart (Director: Masie Dubosarsky), an original black comedy penned by ensemble member Kyla Ward entitled Chocolate Curses (Director: Steven Hopley), and The Torture Garden (Director: Irving Gregory), a visceral classic of the Grand Guignol tradition written by Pierre Chaine and Andre de Lorde.

  Film & TV

  Carmilla Hyde, directed by Dave de Vries won the Best International Feature award at the Swansea Bay Film Festival and Best Feature at the 2010 South Australian Screen Awards. It saw an indie cinema release in Australia including the Indie Gems Film Festival and Supanova Brisbane Directors Day, and international festivals in South Africa, Thailand, Ireland and the Heart of England International Film Festival. The Dark Lurking (2010), directed by Gregory Connors, toured Australia in conjunction with the Supanova pop culture expo. Damned By Dawn (2009) written and directed by Brett Anstey, was released in Australia in April, and in the U.S. on Blu-ray and DVD by Image Entertainment in November. A young woman Clare (Renee Willner) fights to save her family from a revenant known as “The Banshee” (Bridget Neval).

  El Monstro Del Mar (2010), directed by Stuart Simpson, is a rockerbilly-styled exploitation horror film blurbed as ‘three vixens versus the creature from the deep’. The Horseman (2008), directed by Steven Kastrissios, came out on DVD and Blu-Ray in March in the UK, had festival screenings at Sitges Film Festival, Fantasia Festival, and FrightFest, and saw limited theatrical run in the U.S. in June through Screen Media Ventures. The Loved Ones (2009), directed by Sean Byrne, had an Australian cinema release through Madman Entertainment in November 2010. Festival screenings included the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Dallas International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival in Texas, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Needle (2010), starring Ben Mendelsohn and directed by John V Soto, premiered at Cinefest OZ in August, and screened at the British Horror Film Festival and Screamfest Horror Film Festival in the USA.

  Prey (2008), directed by George T Miller and staring Natalie Bassingthwaighte, had a U.S. DVD release in July 2010 through Xenon Pictures under the new title The Outback. The Tunnel, directed by Carlo Ledesma, is a documentary style horror film set in the subways of Sydney. The film won in the categories of Best Use Of Social Media, Viral Or Word of Mouth and Peoples Choice Award at the 17th Australian Interactive Media Industry Association awards. The film won in the category of Cross Platform Interactive in the 2010 Australian Directors Guild Awards. The film is notable for being made available legally via Bittorrent download, simultaneous with conventional modes of release. Uninhabited (2010), directed by Bill Bennett, premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and in Australia at the Melbourne International Film Festival. A couple holidaying on a coral island encounter a vengeful ghost.

  Classic Australian horror film Wake in Fright (1971) directed by Ted Kotcheff was released by Madman Entertainment in a delux edition on DVD and Blu-ray. Starring Chips Rafferty, Jack Thompson, Donald Pleasance and John Meillon, the film is considered a landmark in Australian horror cinema, but has been previously only available from degraded prints. The package includes special features and a full-colour 32-page booklet contextualizing this piece of Oz horror history, which found some critical acclaim overseas in the 70s under the alternate title Outback.

  Screening on TVS, the Independent Inkwell documentary by Max Rowan, explored indie publishing in Australia, and included interviews with Alan Baxter (Red Blade Press) and Keith Stevenson (coeur de lion Publishing). Pay television Channel W saw the first season of TV series Spirited, a paranormal romance between a divorced dentist and the ghost of a 1980s English rockstar.

  The Year In The Industry

  In a new Literature Board initiative from the Australia Council for the Arts, the Tasmanian, NSW, Victorian, South Australian, and the ACT writers centres combined to form a national organization called Writing Australia, with writing centres from the remaining states participating as associate members. The goals of the new organisation include professional development and interstate promotion for mid-career writers, a program of residencies, a national conference, and linking to similar international programs.

  The Aurealis Awards ceremony moved to Sydney; the awards’ new administrator, SpecFaction NSW, signed publisher HarperVoyager as exclusive major sponsor.

  The Australian Horror Writers Association’s (AHWA) annual literary prize, the Australian Shadows Awards, introduced a prize pool of $750. Craig Bezant, Stephanie Gunn, and Jeff Ritchie comprise the preliminary judging panel, and Chuck McKenzie, Kaaron Warren, and Rocky Wood were the final judges. The 2010 Awards Director was Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

  HarperCollins publishers announced that Eos Books, a US imprint, would be rebranded as Harper Voyager, to consolidate with the Voyager imprints in Australia/New Zealand and the UK.

  The Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand organization was officially launched in April, and The Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association became open to memberships in August.

  The Specusphere webzine announced the launch of a new small press, leading with a Myths and Legends anthology.

  Tehani Wessely launched Fablecroft Publishing, with the children’s anthology Worlds Next Door, and the reprint anthology Australis Imaginarium.

  Author Narrelle Harris launched the Melbourne Literary iPhone application, a virtual tour guide to literary locations, local authors, and books set in Melbourne.

  E-Readers were marketed in a big way in Australia in 2010. Angus & Robertson and Borders introduced the Kobo platform. Amazon’s Kindle device became available in Australia. Google ebooks announced plans to open to the Australian territory. Sony also weighed in as a provider, and various reader applications became available for smart phones such as iPhone and Android, some with work arounds for territory restrictions in Australia.

  Obituaries

  Donald H(enry) Tuck, 89, Australia’s first Hugo Award winner, editor of the first Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction. Alinta Thornton, writer, Clarion South graduate, whose first story was published at TiconderogaOnline in 2000. Randolph Stow, 74, Miles Franklin Award winner. Patricia Wrightson, 88, winner of the Ditmar and Hans Christian Andersen Awards. Ruth Park AM, 93, Miles Franklin Award-winning writer of Swords and Crowns and Rings, Playing Beatie Bow, and The Muddle-Headed Wombat. Norman Hetherington, 89, creator of iconic Australian TV show Mr Squiggle and Friends. John Cleary, 92, Ned Kelly Award-winning and winner of the Australian Crimewriters Lifetime Achievement Award. Lynn Bayonas, 66, TV writer and producer, produced the mini-series of Patricia Wrightson’s The Nargun and the Stars.

  The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror

  ~ 2010 ~

  The First Annual Collection


  After The Jump

  Felicity Dowker

  Commercial Diver.

  That’s what I scribble on my tax return every year, in the box titled occupation. And, strictly speaking, it’s the truth.

  But it’s not the whole truth; not even close.

  If I told you I was a HAZMAT Diver, it would be more technically accurate, but would still only steer us further away from the reality of what I do. You see, the diving isn’t important. It’s the most basic essential facet of my work, but it’s ultimately meaningless.

  It’s the people that matter. Their empty, broken bodies. Their stories. Their tragic faces. And the swampy mud of the riverbed; deep, rich and wet.

  That mud is like decadent chocolate; the bodies mired in it, the fillings. Sometimes hard. Sometimes soft. Sometimes oozing. Always delicious—at least, the riverbed seems to think so. It holds fast to its prizes, refusing to release them without a struggle. Oh, the power of that dense mud, the incredible suction it exerts, the sound as its treasures are finally pulled loose . . .

  Yeah. The name of what I do is one thing. The experience is quite another.

  * * *

  It’s called the West Gate Bridge. It spans the Yarra River, a harsh slash of grey against the smoggy sky, connecting Melbourne’s inner city to the Western suburbs. It’s a cable-stayed box girder contraption, 2,583 metres long and 58 metres high. It carries four lanes of motor vehicle traffic in each direction.

  But who gives a fuck, right?

  I’m telling you the dry, boring shit only for the sake of context; so that when I tell you there is an average of one suicide on the bridge every three weeks, you can picture the distance those desperate souls need to walk to find the highest point to jump from. You can probably hear the endless roar of the traffic; maybe you can even smell the exhaust fumes, feel the whoosh as the cars go by and the hummmm as the bridge vibrates under their onslaught. And when the soon-to-be-corpse looks down from the great height of the West Gate to the filthy, churning Yarra below, I think perhaps you can feel your own head spin with vertigo and your heart clench with a sort of primal fear that screams without words or sound.