David Kowalski’s The Company of the Dead, has won the Aurealis for best novel. The Aurealis awards are given out for Australian speculative fiction, and often go to books and short stories those of us in Europe and the States have never heard of. That said, the Aurealis winners are a great place to start to delve into the world of Australian SF/F which often indulges in very different tropes and styles that what we’re used to here.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
And yet, Kowalski’s ‘Company’ is set predominantly in the US (two different versions of the US), and in my interview with him he says: “There’s a history of a lot of Australian work being based in Australia, but I think speculative fiction by definition knows no borders or boundaries. It’s a shame there’s an assumption that as an Australian you’re not going to have a vision for other worlds.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/26/2147358.htm?section=entertainment