The George Turner Prize
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

Sponsored by Transworld Publishers and inaugurated in 1998, The George Turner Prize was awarded to the best unpublished Australian SF/fantasy. The winner received a contract for publication and a $10,000 cash award as an advance against royalties. (The Canberra Times, 24 January 1999 p18)

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2000

winner y separately published work icon Blue Silence Michelle Marquardt , Sydney : Bantam Books , 2002 Z955102 2002 single work novel science fiction

'A mysterious craft docks unexpectedly on a space station in orbit around the Earth –could this be humankind's first contact with an alien civilisation? Eerily, the ship that sits silently in the dock is similar–with a few significant differences–to the Orion, a spacecraft launched from Earth into deep space 180 years before and never heard from again. What Senator Maya Russini discovers when she leads a team to board the ship will change her life, and the course of human civilisation, forever: five hundred life forms poised to wake from stasis. While they are genetically human, unnerving violet eyes and predatory teeth and claws suggest otherwise. And, as Maya comes to discover, they have no empathy, no memories, no names–and they don't know where they came from or why. She and the newcomers become pawns in a dangerous game between rival space stations desperate to get their hands on whatever technological secrets they and their spacecraft might hold.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 1999

winner y separately published work icon Time Future Maxine McArthur , Milsons Point : Random House , 1999 Z308640 1999 single work novel science fiction

'In the universe of enigmatic aliens & complex politics, one woman must entangle interlocking mysteries in a race against time. Halley must solve the mystery of a locked room in closed space, before Jocasta erupts in an explosion of terror & death.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 1998

winner y separately published work icon Splashdance Silver Tansy Rayner Roberts , Sydney : Bantam Books , 1998 Z188689 1998 single work novel humour fantasy Splashdance Silver tells the story of Kassa Daggersharp's struggle to find her place in the world, not wanting to step into her father's world of piracy or her mother's world of witchcraft.

Works About this Award

Unanswered Questions Marianne de Pierres , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Courier Mail , 20 April 2002; (p. 7)
Tansy's Winning Fantasy Sue Bailey , 1998 single work column
— Appears in: The Mercury , 13 July 1998; (p. 1)
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