Along with the usual fictiony goodness one can expect from Australia’s pulpiest SF magazine, this edition features my review of Eugen Bacon’s short fiction collection, Dying & Other Stories. Here’s an excerpt:
‘Literary fiction’ carries certain connotations, chief among them a focus on language, character, and theme at the expense of plot. Since detailed storylines and high concepts are often integral to speculative fiction, ‘literary speculative fiction’ could be considered a contradiction in terms. Such a self-applied label is intriguing.
Prior to reading this short story collection, my only acquaintance with Eugen Bacon’s work was ‘A Mage’s Prophecy’ in Andromeda Spaceways #68 (co-authored with E. Don Harpe), which tells the tale of a mighty warrior king whose life is turned upside down after he encounters a beautiful woman on the battlefield. Similar romantic concerns, similarly cloaked in fantasy trappings, figure highly in Dying & Other Stories.
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