Rem Wigmore, also published under Summer Wigmore, is a speculative fiction writer based in Wellington. Their first novel The Wind City was published in 2013 by Steam Press, and their stories appear in the Sharp & Sugar Tooth anthology and the Capricious Gender Diverse Pronouns Issue. Rem likes coffee, friendship, and fighting capitalism. They can be found on twitter as @faewriter.
Zoë Meager is from Ōtautahi and has a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. Her short stories have been commended and published at home and abroad, including winning the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific Region, 2013. Recent work has appeared in Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand, Turbine | Kapohau, Landfall, and been highly commended for the 2019 Sargeson Prize. There’s more at zoemeager.com
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NOVELS AND NOVELLAS
The Stone Wētā, by Octavia Cade
We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country. That distance will not save us.
When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.
Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonise Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.
How far would you go to save the world?
*
From a Shadow Grave, by Andi C. Buchanan
People will say that you are just a ghost story. Something that needs to be sent away. You’re a memory of memories they’d rather forget.
They name you not with your name, but with the site of your murder. They don’t remember any of your other stories. To them, you will never be a lonely, angry, confused teenager, who liked to go to the movies and hoped she was in love, who fought with her siblings and always had a tune in her head. You’re a ghost story, and all other stories of you have been told and ended.
You deserve more stories than you get.
*
No Man’s Land, by A.J. Fitzwater
While her brother fights a war on the other side of the world, Dorothea ‘Tea’ Gray joins the Land Service and is sent to work on a remote farm in the golden plains of North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand.
But Tea finds more than hard work and hot sun in the dusty North Otago nowhere—she finds a magic inside herself she never could have imagined, a way to save her brother in a distant land she never thought she could reach, and a love she never knew existed.
*
The Ghost of Matter, by Octavia Cade
1886. Two young boys disappear in the Sounds. Their mother grieves, all the music cut out of her heart; their father wanders the coast for a year, wanting and not wanting to find any part of them left behind. And their brother Ern, faced with a problem to which no solution can be found, returns to his laboratory – and to the smell of salt, soft voices in his ear, wet footprints welling seawater in the darkness.
*
Bree’s Dinosaur, by AC Buchanan
Cam’s ambitions are straightforward: study Business English in Wellington for six months, then return to Vietnam to build a promising career. She doesn’t need any complications. But when a dinosaur is being (very noisily) built in the bedroom next to yours, and a meteor-strike is threatening, it’s not always possible to avoid being sucked in – especially when her own past surfaces, half a world from where she left it submerged.
*
The Last, by Grant Stone
Rachel Mackenzie has travelled to New Zealand to interview the reclusive musician Katherine St. John about her first album in nearly thirty years. But strange things are happening at St. John’s farm and soon Rachel finds herself caught up in something far larger than the world of music.
*
Landfall, by Tim Jones
When the New Zealand Navy torpedoes a Bangladeshi river ferry full of refugees fleeing their drowning country, Nasimul Rahman is one of the few survivors. But even if he can reach the shore alive, he has to make it past the trigger-happy Shore Patrol, set up to keep the world’s poor and desperate at bay.
*
Mika, by Lee Murray and Piper Mejia
Mika Tāura arrives in New York in the middle of a storm, where she accidentally kills a motorist and lands herself with an injured child. And with time running out for those she left behind, those are the least of her problems.
*
The Pocket Wife, by IK Paterson-Harkness
Carl’s work requires him to travel extensively, but he and his wife Jenny stay connected through their Tinys – four-inch-tall replicas of themselves which, when turned on, transmit whatever sensory information they are receiving directly into their living counterparts’ minds. Through his Tiny, Carl can see his wife, speak to her, even feel her touch. But when Jenny’s Tiny malfunctions and she can’t turn herself off, Carl has a major problem. He’s having an affair, and he’d rather his wife wasn’t around.
*
Murder & Matchmaking, by Debbie Cowens
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mother in possession of unmarried daughters must be in want of eligible bachelors. Less well known are the lengths to which she might go to attract them…
*
ANTHOLOGIES
Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume I, edited by Marie Hodgkinson
Thirteen of the brightest stars in New Zealand SFF.
For the first time ever, the best short SFF from Aotearoa New Zealand is collected together in a single volume. This inaugural edition of the Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy brings together the very best short speculative fiction published by Kiwi authors in 2018.
*
At the Edge, edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray
From the brink of civilisation, the fringe of reason, and the border of reality, come 22 stories infused with the bloody-minded spirit of the Antipodes, tales told by the children of warriors and whalers, convicts and miners: people unafraid to strike out for new territories and find meaning in the expanses at the edge of the world.
*
SHORTCUTS: Track 1, edited by Marie Hodgkinson
Writing on the theme of strange tales of Aotearoa New Zealand, seven Kiwi authors weave stories of people and creatures displaced in time and space, risky odysseys, and even more dangerous discoveries.
*
Baby Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror, edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray
Kids can say the creepiest things. 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.
Copyright
Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume II
edited by Marie Hodgkinson
First published in paperback and ebook in 2020
ISBNs: paperback 978-0-9951355-6-7 epub 978-0-9951355-8-1 kindle 978-0-9951355-7-4
Paper Road Press
paperroadpress.co.nz
This collection © 2020 Marie Hodgkinson
All stories © 2019 their respective authors:
‘Good Dog, Alice’ © 2019 Juliet Marillier
‘Te Ara P
outini’ © 2019 Nic Low
‘Inside the Body of Relatives’ © 2019 Octavia Cade
‘Henrietta and the End of the Line’ © 2019 Andi C. Buchanan
‘Hearts made Marble, Weapons Shaped from Bone’ © 2019 A.J. Fitzwater
‘Who Watches’ © 2019 Rem Wigmore
‘The Fisher’ © 2019 Melanie Harding-Shaw
‘Fission’ © 2019 Nicole Tan
‘A Shriek Across the Sky’ © 2019 Casey Lucas
‘Moving House’ © 2019 Alisha Tyson
‘Proof of Concept’ © 2019 James Rowland
‘Spontaneous Applause’ © 2019 Zoë Meager
‘First dispatch from the front’ © 2019 Zoë Meager
The authors have asserted their moral rights.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publisher. The authors have asserted their moral rights.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand
Cover art by and © Laya Mutton-Rogers 2020
Cover and internal design by Marie Hodgkinson
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Page 13
