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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Rhyme & Reason

A study of Independent Publishers in Australian SF

Jennifer Lusk

[Editor's note: this piece was written in December 2006]

First Impressions

A number of Australians have debuted on fantasy shelves in major bookshops around the country over the last ten years. Sara Douglass was the first to draw serious attention in the mid-nineties with her BattleAxe trilogy, the second two books winning the 1997 Aurealis Award for excellence in the category of full length fantasy. Since her success, a number of other Australians, mostly female, have added their epic trilogy fantasy to the mix, published primarily by Voyager/HarperCollins, but also by Pan McMillan and Random House. Last year, HarperCollins alone published twenty Australian speculative fiction titles[1]. While the shiny covers and large print runs have done much to seemingly aid the speculative fiction genre in this country, the very loyal ‘genuine’ speculative fiction community is not so certain.

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Autumn 2007 (#11). Fiction by Carol Ryles, Jarrah Moore, Ben Payne and Simon Brown. Interviews with Angela Challis and Alisa Krasnostein. Non-fiction by Cory Doctorow. Reviews of latest books by Martin Livings, Terry Brooks, K.A. Bedford and others.