Metaworlds: Best Australian Science Fiction

A MAN ATONES FOR THE SLAUGHTER OF AN alien race by turning himself into one of them; a mother’s robot substitute solves domestic crises by blackmail; a scientist pregnant with his dead wife’s child prepares to give birth to something less than human; a 600-year-old space crew returns to a post-nuclear Eden – which is no longer ‘home’…

By turns chilling and satirical, visionary and elegiac, twelve Australian masters of SF explore our past and future, shaping tales of transmutation and rebirth.

This is an anthology of recent Australian science fiction by 12 well-known authors including Jack Wodhams, David Lake, Damien Broderick and Greg Egan.

• vii – Foreword (Metaworlds: Best Australian Science Fiction) – essay by Paul Collins
• 1 – Learning to Be Me – (1990) – short story by Greg Egan
• 20 – Re-deem the Time – (1978) – short story by David J. Lake [ as by David Lake ]
• 38 – Waiting for the Rain – (1992) – short story by Dirk Strasser
• 50 – Reichelman’s Relics – (1990) – novelette by Leanne Frahm
• 81 – The Last Elephant – (1987) – short story by Terry Dowling
• 97 – The Token Pole – (1990) – short story by Jack Wodhams
• 105 – But Smile No More – (1990) – short story by Stephen Dedman
• 117 – A Tooth for Every Child – (1985) – short story by Damien Broderick
• 145 – The Total Devotion Machine – (1989) – short story by Rosaleen Love
• 154 – The Wired Kid – short story by Paul Collins
• 172 – An Empty Wheelhouse – (1992) – novelette by Sean McMullen
• 197 – I Still Call Australia Home – (1990) – short story by George Turner