I have a new short story in War of the Worlds: Battleground Australia, a brand new anthology from Clandestine Press that looks at what might have happened, or might still happen, if HG Wells martians had landed in Australia. The book is filled with stories by some of Australia’s biggest name SF authors, including Kerry Greenwood, Jack Dann, Carmel Bird, Jenny Valentish, Janeen Webb, Sean Williams, Kaaron Warren and Angela Meyer. And there’s an introduction by Alex Proyas! My piece, A Fair Go to Mars, follows two Environmental Protection Agency workers as they investigate an outbreak of the red weed,...
Here for your delectation and delight, courtesy of Argonautica Press and Free Comic Book Day, is a free 34 page comic, SKELLINGTON #1. A skellington picture by me and Mrs Franks! The book is composed of four stories: “The Key in the Wall” is a dark look at a school for the mystical arts, written by me and illustrated by Nicholas Hunter. This story is in fact the first chapter of Shadomancy, which is the first original-printing novel coming up on the Argonautica slate. This story was originally supposed to be a serialized comic, and many of Nic’s amazing illustrations...
https://curiousfictions.com/stories/1989-jason-franks-into-the-adlight Published in 2012, this is a cyberpunk satire about guerilla documentary-making, advertising, and data security. I posted it on Curious Fictions because I saw this article, which makes it look as though the central conceit of the story might soon be a reality: https://futurism.com/startrocket-giant-ads-night-sky-cubesa… Sigh. Obvious influence here from Blue Ant era William Gibson and also Bill Hicks (don’t @me, I’m a Gen Xer), who once said that advertising is the “ruiner of all things good.” In hindsight, the callout to Robert Heinlein’s “The Man who Sold the Moon” is way too obvious, but I guess that’s what advertising...
So, uh, quite unexpectedly, my novel Faerie Apocalypse has made it onto the preliminary ballot for the Ditmar Awards. The Ditmars are not a juried award, they are voted-on by fandom and Australia’s speculative fiction community, so… I owe this nomination to you, my filthy readers. Thank you very much! To celebrate, my publisher IFWG Australia has discounted the price of the Kindle book on Amazon (excluding North America, sorry!) and Gerry Huntman will have discount coupons for the book for attendees at Continuum convention in June if you would like to get a copy. Unfortunately I won’t be at...
