Belong – Russell B Farr (ed)
Ticonderoga Publications, 2010
370 pages
RRP: AU$35 (pbk) AU$75 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-9803531-2-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-9803531-1-2 (hbk)

Review by Liz Grzyb

Belong, an anthology of stories exploring the idea of home, belonging and immigration, covers a lot of ground. There are twenty three stories here, and with subjects ranging from zombies, magic, space travel and alternative looks at Australia, there is something for everyone.

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The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K Dick
Hachette Gollancz Orion, 2007
256 pages
RRP: AU$22.99
ISBN 978-0-575-07997-7

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K Dick
Hachette Gollancz Orion, 2007
224 pages
RRP: AU$22.99
ISBN 978-0-575-07993-9

Review by Russell B Farr

Much as been written about Philip K. Dick, both about the man and his writing. There are probably hundreds of theses dealing with the themes explored in works such as these two classics. PKD was either well past barking mad, or a genius: probably both. His stories have inspired quite a few great Hollywood movies (and quite a few bad ones), including Blade Runner and its associated plethora of Director’s cuts.

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World’s Next Door – Tehani Wessely (ed)
Fablecroft, 2010
222 pages
RRP: AU$19.99
ISBN 978-0-9807770-1-7

Reviewed by Russell B. Farr

World’s Next Door is a refreshing attempt by an Australian independent press to target the young adult market. There is certainly a buzz going on with YA right now, and it’s a very savvy business approach for a press to make.

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Sprawl – edited by Alisa Krasnostein
Twelfth Planet Press, 2010
340 pages
RRP: AU$29.95
ISBN 978-0-9804841-8-2

Reviewed by Russell B Farr

Sprawl is an anthology of 16 stories, 1 cartoon and 1 poem by a number of notable and critically acclaimed Australian SF writers, put together and published by the team at independent press Twelfth Planet. The anthology seeks to explore urban fantasy in an antipodean setting.

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Slights – Kaaron Warren
Angry Robot Books, 2009
502 pages
RRP: £7.99
ISBN 978-0-00732-242-8

Review by Russell B Farr

Slights is a dark, dark book that you won’t be able to pull your eyes away from.

Stevie is a troubled young woman. Her police officer father was killed in the line of duty when she was a child, and five pages into the first chapter, eighteen-year-old  Stevie drives into a wall, killing her mother. Stevie then starts digging; digging up her family’s past, and digging up the overgrown backyard of her house, uncovering a number of forgotten secrets in the process.

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The Best of his Macabre Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
Crows Nest Allen & Unwin, 2009
652 pages
RRP: AU$29.99
ISBN: 978-1-74175-850-4

Reviewed by Russell B. Farr

It should have been an easy, quick review. Get in, talk about how great it is to have a big, hefty, fine looking volume of Poe, collecting so many fine stories, including all the big ones. Talk about how great it is to have them all in one place, complete and unabridged (I always wonder how much of my childhood was abridged). If I felt like putting myself into the review, I could throw something in about the merits of reviewing the work of someone who has been in the ground for 160 years, after all, it’s not like he’ll really care what I say.

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2012 – edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Ben Payne
Twelfth Planet Press, 2008
118 pages
RRP: AU$20
ISBN 978-0-9804841-0-6

Reviewed by Russell B. Farr

Where will we be in 4 years’ time?

If 2012 is anything to judge by, very unhappy. In the debut anthology from Twelfth Planet Press, 11 writers give a pretty bleak vision of the future.

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Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth – Ben Peek
Wheatland Press, 2006
152 pages
RRP: US$14.95
ISBN 0-9755903-8-3

Reviewed by Russell B. Farr

This book bills itself as an “autobiography of a man who has been nowhere, done nothing and met nobody”, and with such a low goal to aspire to, accomplishes this. It consists of a number of short pieces, sometimes arbitrarily grouped around the alphabet, that overall form several plot lines. Thrown into the mix are examples of literary fraud.

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Welcome back to the glamorous and sexy world of publishing!

The hiatus, from March 2007 to now, has been entirely because of me. Without boring with details, in this time I’ve been diagnosed with a fairly common and rather debilitating illness, and started treatment, and had some ups and downs. I can’t rule out future breaks in transmission, but I’m happy to say, right now, that ticon4 is back.

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Is online reading replacing hard copy publications for reading pleasure?

Russell Farr

Barely a year goes by without someone, somewhere, proclaiming the death of publishing hard copy books. If it isn’t the internal machinations of the publishing industry causing this talk, the endless merging of publishing houses seemingly in a quest to form an Uber-Publisher, then it’s usually the words of a doomsaying geek on Slashdot or Boing Boing proclaiming the newest technological marvel that will replace books within the decade/ year/ month/ hour/ nanosecond.

Science Fiction fans the world over seem to be well placed among the harbingers of this movement, readily embracing PDAs and laptops and e-books if only to discard them for this year’s fad.

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