Cirrus@Austlit

'Catastrophic climate change sparked by the fossil fuel industry leaves us no choice: we must decarbonise. To create another world we need different narratives. With visions spanning from transhuman planet-hopping through post-cyberpunk paranoia to solarpunk ecotopianism, this collection dislocates our present energy regimes to imagine energy transitions and futures in all their complexities. These are stories of phase change.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

 From the award-winning author of Cookie Cutter Superhero and Kid Dark Against the Machine comes a brand new novella about girl reporters, superheroes, and interdimensional travel

'In a world of superheroes, supervillains, and a machine that can create them all, millennial vlogger and girl reporter Friday Valentina has no shortage of material to cover. Every lottery cycle, a new superhero is created and quite literally steps into the shoes of the hero before them--displacing the previous hero. While Fry may not be super-powered herself, she understands the power of legacy: her mother is none other than the infamous reporter Tina Valentina, renowned worldwide for her legendary interviews with the True Blue Aussie Beaut Superheroes and her tendency to go to extraordinary lengths to get her story.

This time, Tina Valentina may have ventured too far.

'Alongside Australia's greatest superheroes--including the powerful Astra, dazzling Solar, and The Dark in his full brooding glory--Friday will go to another dimension in the hopes of finding her mother, saving the day, maybe even getting the story of a lifetime out of the adventure. (And possibly a new girlfriend, too.)'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'What if the apocalypse isn’t the end of the world? 

'In this follow-up to Defying Doomsday, disabled and chronically ill protagonists build new worlds from the remains of the old. Read new perspectives on life after the apocalypse from authors Janet Edwards, Lauren Ring, K L Evangelista, S. B. Divya, TJ Berry, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Andi C. Buchanan, Fran Wilde, Octavia Cade, Stephanie Gunn, Tyan Priss, Emilia Crowe, E. H. Mann, Katharine Duckett and Bogi Takács.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When Maddy discovers a love note scrawled on the toilet cubicle wall at work, she decides to go on a quest to find out who wrote it and to see if, just maybe, it was intended for her.

'This sweet Christmas holiday romance set in Hobart, Tasmania, is just the thing you need to ease into the festive season this year. BYO cup of hot chocolate and slice of cake!'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Norse myth and magic collides with a small town Tasmanian Christmas in this festive romantic fantasy!

'Lief Fraser has mixed feelings about returning home to Matilda, the only Australian town where it always snows at Christmas. As a TV weather presenter, it’s her job to report on the strange holiday phenomenon… but as a local, it’s her duty to preserve Matilda’s many magical secrets.

'Then pretty Audrey Astor rolls into town to shoot the ultimate romantic Australian Christmas movie with her film crew. Sparks fly, secrets unravel… and soon everyone will know exactly how Mt Valkyrie got its name.' (Publication summary)

'An ambitious anthology from award-winning Australian publishing house Twelfth Planet Press, Mother of Invention will feature diverse, challenging stories about gender as it relates to the creation of artificial intelligence and robotics.

'From Pygmalion and Galatea to Frankenstein, Ex Machina and Person of Interest, the fictional landscape so often frames cisgender men as the creators of artificial life, leading to the same kinds of stories being told over and over. We want to bring some genuine revolution to the way that artificial intelligence stories are told, and how they intersect with gender identity, parenthood, sexuality, war, and the future of our species. How can we interrogate the gendered assumptions around the making of robots compared with the making of babies? Can computers learn to speak in a code beyond the (gender) binary?

'If necessity is the mother of invention, what exciting AI might come to exist in the hands of a more diverse range of innovators?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Mountain on the planet of Icefall holds the mystery to a lost colony and an irresistible, fatal allure to the climbers of the universe. Maggie is determined to be the first to make the summit. Aisha, injured in a climbing incident herself, has always supported her wife, trusting Maggie would return from her adventures. But no one ever returns from the Mountain.'

Source: Press release (http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com/news/announcing-new-novella-icefall-stephanie-gunn). (Sighted: 18/01/2018)

'Dark Tides is an exciting genre-spanning collection featuring science fiction and fantasy, surrealism and magic realism. A man listens to his mysterious neighbour’s constant weeping; a future revolutionary faces terrible moral choices in the face of a surrounding enemy army; in the city of Caeli-Amur, a man visits the ghost-haunted ruins of the ancient forum; an immigrant searches for intimacy in a fascist Paris; a researcher joins an expedition to capture a Siren; a lost soul is hired to guard a corridor with six permanently closed doors—these and many more stories intrigue and sparkle, swing us from melancholy to triumph, and set our minds alight with ideas. Dark Tides is a collection that unveils the contradictions of life and turn them on an angle so that we might see them—and ourselves—more clearly.'

Source: Twelfth Planet.

'Alex doesn't know what he wants to do, how to connect with people or what's good for him. He drifts his way through dead-end jobs and fumbled relationships, unable to find a way out of the rut his life has become. Then he runs into Madigan Sargood and everything changes.

'A ray of light shining from an almost-forgotten past, Madigan is beautiful and impulsive, enigmatic and passionate beyond measure. This is what it means to live, Alex realises, and to love. Never mind that she can be somewhat possessive. Never mind that his best friend thinks there's something wrong with her, something dangerous even. Never mind that the creepy band of misfits she attracts have all but taken over his home. Madigan fills Alex's life with significance; he will put up with anything to be with her.

'Until, without any warning, she kills herself.

'Now Alex can't seem to get her out of his head, and his world - along with his sanity - begins to disintegrate. Black outs and missing time, conversations he can't recall, people he can't remember. Is this the product of a diseased and lovesick mind, or can Madigan really be trying to communicate with him?

'When the past threatens to obliterate the future, Alex is forced to take action. To save himself and those he loves, he must discover the sinister reason why Madigan took her own life - and why she won't lie still in her grave.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Tara Sharp should be just another unemployable, twenty-something, ex-private schoolgirl . . . but she has the gift - or curse as she sees it - of reading people's auras. The trouble is, auras sometimes tell you things about people they don't want you to know.

When a family friend recommends Mr Hara's Paralanguage School, Tara decides to give it a whirl - and graduates with flying colours. So when Mr Hara picks up passes on a job for a hot-shot lawyer she jumps at the chance despite some of his less-than-salubrious clients.

Tara should know better than to get involved when she learns the job involves mob boss Johnny Vogue. But she's broke and the magic words "retainer" and "bonus" have been mentioned. Soon Tara finds herself sucked into an underworld 'situation' that has her running for her life. Sharp Shooter is a hilarious, action-packed novel and Tara Sharp is Triple F: Funny. Fast. Feisty.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Teens form an all-girl band in the face of an impending comet.

 A woman faces giant spiders to collect silk and protect her family.

 New friends take their radio show on the road in search of plague survivors. 

A man seeks love in a fading world. 

How would you survive the apocalypse?

Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive - it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost' (publication blurb).

'Fans of Kaleidoscope will find more tales of wonder, adventure, diversity, and variety in this collection devoted to stories with teen protagonists. ' (Publication summary)

'In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Alice Sheldon’s birth, and in recognition of the enormous influence of both Tiptree and Sheldon on the field, Twelfth Planet Press is publishing a selection of thoughtful letters written by science fiction and fantasy’s writers, editors, critics and fans to celebrate her, to recognise her work, and maybe in some cases to finish conversations set aside nearly thirty years ago.' (Publication summary)

'Tulliæn spans a fractured mountaintop, where the locals lie and the tourists come to die. Try the honey.

'Briskwater crouches deep in the shadow of a dam wall. Ignore the weight of the water hanging overhead, and the little dead girl wandering the streets. Off with you, while you still can.

'In Haverny Wood the birds drink blood, the dogs trade their coughings for corpses, the lost children carve up their bodies to run with the crows, and the townsfolk stitch silence into their spleens. You mustn't talk so wild.

'The desert-locked outpost of Boundary boasts the famed manufacturers of flawless timepieces; those who would learn the trade must offer up their eyes as starting materials. Look to your pride: it will eat you alive.

'Sooner or later, in every community, fate demands its dues — and the currency is blood.' (Publication summary)

'It’s been over ten years since the release of Tambour’s first collection, Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales . Her novel, Crandolin, published by Chomu Press was shortlisted for the 2013 World Fantasy Award. All of Tambour’s books have been Locus Recommended Reading List selections. The world is well and truly ready for this latest instalment of Tambour’s weird and fantastic.

'The Finest Ass in the Universe will comprise over two dozen stories including four new works.

'Elation, compulsion, exploration, love and exquisitely timed bullying, a lascivious oyster, a man called Eggplant, the dangers of smelling like honey pudding, the enticement of innocent toadlets, the unending day of deadness. The daughter of a part-time magician and a Las Vegas showgirl turns to science. Destiny points a young man to brassiere design. Suddenly orphaned siblings try to protect their most vulnerable. Fortunes craze in neighbourhoods living cheek-by-jowl. Unintendeds abound, as life cavorts in all its unclassifiable contrariness.' (Publication summary(

'In The Female Factory, procreation is big business. Children are a commodity few women can afford.

'Hopeful mothers-to-be try everything. Fertility clinics. Pills. Wombs for hire. Babies are no longer made in bedrooms, but engineered in boardrooms. A quirk of genetics allows lucky surrogates to carry multiple eggs, to control when they are fertilised, and by whom—but corporations market and sell the offspring. The souls of lost embryos are never wasted; captured in software, they give electronics their voice. Spirits born into the wrong bodies can brave the charged waters of a hidden billabong, and change their fate. Industrious orphans learn to manipulate scientific advances, creating mothers of their own choosing.

'From Australia’s near-future all the way back in time to its convict past, these stories spin and sever the ties between parents and children.' (Publication summary)