Cirrus@Austlit

'In her story "Memory of Breathing," Lyn Battersby posits a future where criminals are executed then reanimated in order to work as slaves. It’s an intriguing blend of modern sci-fi and a more classical conception of zombies, but the story plays out — predictably but poignantly — as a more intimate human drama, in which a hardened death camp commander gradually develops fatherly fondness for a reanimated child-corpse' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

'"My Daniel’s out there." Mother Beet crossed her stick-thin legs, lit a cigarillo, then offered me one. I shook my head, staring into the black hollows where her eyes should be. Black hollows that held my measure, nonetheless, and stared back. Tiny brown cockroaches nested in the right orbit. They bubbled and hissed, irritated by the smoke perhaps. "I can feel him, sure’s the memory of spittin’ the bastard, bloody and blind-eyed, out of me womb."

I sat, and her smoke-bound mutterings washed against me. Folk like that, their words are weighty. You listen and not without fear.

[Source: Pseudopod]

A recently bereaved widow 'holds a revered position in a mythical village: her all-important task is to sheath the newly dead in clay, so that they can be built into the wall that surrounds the village. This morbid but honourable task is reflected in Warren’s own writing: she’s taken a potentially gruesome topic and rendered it in such beautifully crafted prose that it becomes a work of art. Her juxtaposition of the villagers — with their religious fervour and long-held traditions — and her grieving central character’s budding cynicism, creates a poignant, melancholy dichotomy' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

In this nightmarish and surreal story, Rjurik Davidson’s first-person narrator is kept awake at night by the anguished cries and mysterious, noisy construction work of an upstairs neighbour.

'Chris Lawson’s “Body Parts” provides both a history of anatomy and a reflection on changing social, ethical etc. attitudes towards human flesh as both a physical and metaphysical entity' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

'Lee Battersby’s "Pater Familias" is an example of the flash fiction medium at its best. In it, a retired surgeon meets with a young visitor and describes an archaic form of late-term abortion called "craniotomy" .... The story moves with a crackling economy of language and, when its inevitable surprise ending appears, it’s not as a punchline-style twist, but as a slowly dawning sense of horror that will leave you gutted' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

Four fanatical strangers volunteer for a dangerous medical experiment.

'Robert Hood’s essay on "The State of the Zombie Film" not only paints a vivid portrait of its titular subject; it also puts it into its historical context, and explores the technical, social and cultural factors that have brought it to where it is today' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

Two time-travellers set out to rescue a re-imagined 1986 Sydney from a menacing glacier.

'At once an epic action showpiece and an ode to the passing of time and to the maintaining of honour up until death, Harland’s hero is Saito Saku, a samurai warrior and appointed protector of his village, who sets out to fight a final, fateful battle against a colossal fire beast (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).

In the 'The Outback Bites Back' David Levell examines 'the fluctuating successes of Australian horror on film, offering both a snapshot history of the genre, an exploration of its fertile present and speculation on its promising future' (Tim Kroenert, Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus).