Dreaming Down-Under edited by Jack Dann and Janeen Webb 1998

Dustjacket synopsis:
Internationally acclaimed author Harlan Ellison recently declared that this is the Golden Age of Australian science fiction.

Dreaming Down-Under showcases this "Golden Age" with exciting, never-before-published short stories by acknowledges masters and hot new writers of Australian speculative fiction.

This provocative anthology has it all! Editors Jack Dann and Janeen Webb have collected the very best of new Australian contemporary "wild-side fiction" - fantasy, horror, magic realism, cyberpunk and science fiction."

Contents:
"Preface" - Harlan Ellison
"Introduction" - Jack Dann and Janeen Webb
"Entre les Beaux Mort en Vie (Among the Beautiful Living Dead)" - Sean Williams
"The Dancing Floor" - Cherry Wilder
"Descent" - Cecily Scutt
"The Soldier in the Machine" - Russell Blackford
"Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies" - Lucy Sussex
"The Womb" - Damien Broderick
"A Walk-On Part in the War" - Stephen Dedman
"Wired Dreaming" - Paul Collins
"The Body Politic" - Tess Williams
"The Truth About Weena" - David Lake
"The Marsh Runners" - Paul Brandon
"Prelude to a Nocturne" - Rowena Cory Lindquist
"Real Men" - Rosaleen Love
"The Latest Dream I Ever Dreamed" - Norman Talbot
"Ma Rung" - Steven Paulsen
"Dream, Until God Burns" - Andrew Enstice
"Night of the Wandjina" - Wynne Whiteford
"To Avalon" - Jane Routley
"He Tried to Catch the Light" - Terry Dowling
"The Third Rail" - Aaron Stevens
"Jetsam" - Kerry Greenwood
"And Now Doth Time Waste Me" - George Turner
"The Man Who Lost His Shadow" - Isobelle Carmody
"Unborn Again" - Chris Lawson
"The Evil Within" - Sara Douglass
"Two Recipes for Magic Beans" - Rosaleen Love
"Tamed" - Robert Hood
"Queen of Soulmates" - Sean McMullen
"The Last Dance" - Ian Nichols
"With Clouds At Our Feet" - Simon Brown

Quotes:
"The most important anthology of Australian speculative fiction ever published" - Jonathan Strahan
"It defines and concentrates and refines the 'wild side' of Australian fiction: magical realism, fantasy, science fiction. Heady stuff." - Peter Goldsworthy

First Paragraph from the Preface:

How do you do? Or, if I were trying to ingratiate myself as some overcompensating tourists do, I'd say, "G'day". But since it is not my intention to hold you long, here at the beginning of this most excellent book, I will merely state that which is never nakedly spoken: I am an intruder here, and this book is the least book that ever needed a preface.

I am a Person from Porlock, an interloper, a figurehead and "loss leader" whose brief ramblings have been solicited, and are tolerated, only because I have known Jack Dann for more than thirty years, because we are close friends, because I was lucky enough to have been at the right spot at the right time in the late sixties when editing a book like Dangerous Visions made me appear to be some sort of firebrand, cutting edge Champion of the Bold New Word. Well, that was then, and as the saying goes, this is now...and my pal Jack has found himself at the right spot, at the right momemt; and I am the resonating shadow that serves the purpose of foreshadowing echo.

From the HarperCollins paperback edition, 1998.

This page and its contents are copyright © 1999-2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: April 10, 2001.