AWWC 2014: The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood.

In a post-apocalyptic Melbourne of fuel rationing, power outages and with curfews in place, Salisbury (Sal) Forth works as a bicycle courier delivering illegal hormone supplements for Ethical Hormones, a company which only sells cruelty free products not made from animals. The demand is high with much of the population rendered infertile due to a faulty flu vaccine. In the view of the ultra conservative religious Nation First party now in government this is a punishment for the sins of the past and they have enacted laws to enforce their beliefs but, driven by the desire for children, many defy them. As a gender transgressive person Salisbury is forced to live in the shadowy underworld. She has no time for these laws or beliefs but thrives on the physical activity and risks of her courier job, joining with animal rights activists to rescue ill treated horses in her spare time. Then fake drugs, poorly made, contaminated and bearing the logo of her employer's company start to appear and Sal finds herself trying to uncover how and why this is happening.

There's much to like in The Courier's New Bicycle. Westwood has created a dark, dystopian society with a well realised underworld populated by a mix of those who don't fit in society for many reasons and Salisbury is an engaging protagonist. She has a strong moral compass surviving in a world where she walks a difficult path due to her gender identity. She's a fully rounded character whose relationships are believable and there's not a whiff of stereotyping. I liked her employer, Gail, too. Her business may be illegal in the current circumstances but her ethical stance marks her as more than someone just trying to make a buck.

It's hard to fault The Courier's New Bicycle (although some may find the first person present point of view challenging at times) and it was a worthy winner of the 2011 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and 2012 Ditmar Award for Best Novel as was its shortlisting for the 2011 James Tiptree  Jnr Honor List.

Published originally as a paperback by Harper Collins Australia in 2011 The Courier's New Bicycle is available in an e-book from Amazon.com.

Kim Westwood's website is at www.kimwestwood.com

Aurealis Award Winners 2011

The winners of the Aurealis Awards 2011were announced last night and it's exciting to see so many Western Australians featuring. They are for:

Young Adult Short Story:  Nation of the Night by Sue Isles  published in Nightsiders story collection (Twelfth Planet Press). The author and publisher are both Western Australian. This is a book I can highly recommend having just finished it. Sue Isles has created a believable post apocalyptic world where, having rejected evacuation to the wetter eastern seaboard cities, a stubborn group of individuals hang on to their home land despite it being devastated by climate change.

Collection: Bluegrass Symphony by South Australian Lisa L. Hannett and published by Western Australian publisher Ticonderoga Publications.

Horror Short Story: The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds by Lisa L. Hannett in Bluegrass Symphony (Ticonderoga Publications)

Fantasy Short Story: Fruit of the Pipal Tree by Thoraiya Dyer in After the Rain (FableCroft Publishing). At the time this anthology was published Fablecroft Publishing was WA based.

Peter McNamara Convenor's Award: Galactic Suburbia podcast: Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce and Tansy Rayner Roberts, (producer). Alisa Krasnostein founded Twelfth Planet Press in Western Australia.

It's also heartening to see that all the short fiction awards were published by small independent presses.

The complete list of winners can be found here.

Congratulations to all.

Stormlord's Exile

I've reviewed Glenda Larke's latest novel, Stormlord's Exile, Book Three of the Watergivers trilogy (released other than in Australia as the Stormlord trilogy) over at The Specusphere. I'm guessing when the Aurealis Awards finalists list comes out that it's going to figure among them.

Aurealis Winners Announced

Out of my sick bed for just long enough to check this out.

The Aurealis Awards were announced last night and I'm delighted to see among them two of my Clarion South mates.

Peter M. Ball Best Science Fiction Short Story for 'Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens' Apex Magazine May 2009.
Christopher Green joint winner Best Fantasy Short Story for 'Father's Kill' Beneath Ceaseless Skies #24 Congratulations.

Others include fellow West Australian Jonathan Strahan (ed) Eclipse 3 Night Shade Books for Best Anthology and Cat Sparks receiving a very well deserved Best Young Adult Short Story for her haunting tale 'Seventeen' in Masques CSFG.

The rest of the list is a catalogue of good writers which you can see here. Congratulations to all.

Aurealis Awards

Well deserved congratulations to all the winners, especially Western Australians, K. A. Bedford, Best Science Fiction novel for Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, Jonathan Strahan, editor Best Anthology for The Starry Rift and Shaun Tan, Best Illustrated Book for Tales From Outer Suburbia (even if he has abandoned us for brighter lights). Best collection winner, Magic Dirt by Sean Williams was published locally by Ticonderoga Publishing run by Russell B. Farr and also deserves a mention in the West Aussie list of achievers.

Edit: In West Aussie successes I omitted to mention Trent Jamieson who is not a West Australian but took out Best Young Adult Short Story for Cracks in Shiny Issue 2 put out by Twelfth Planet Press which is Western Australian.

It was good to see Simon Brown, one of the Clarion South 2007 tutors, win Best Science Fiction Short Story for The Empire in Dreaming Again. Coincidentally I had just finished reading this without realising it was a finalist and enjoyed it thoroughly.

The complete list of winners is here but after looking at that you could go here and make the list of finalists a reading checklist. This was a extremely strong field and the judges must have had a very difficult time separating out the winners from such quality. I've read enough of the finalists to want to read the rest. I think you'd enjoy them too.