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Reviews Plato having defined man to be a
two-legged, animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought
it into the Academy, and said, 'This is Plato's man.' On which account
this addition was made to the definition: 'With broad flat nails.'
A Scar for Leida Magic doesn’t often seem to have real repercussions for its practitioners. Enter Deborah Biancotti, with “A Scar for Leida”. Here, every time Katya practises magic, she gets a new scar - and this is basically her advertising too. With Leida, though, Katya has made a mistake: Leida has imagined her relationship with Tarakh, and therefore his betrayal. It takes a quite unexpected tack towards the end, but it works. Review by Alexandra Pierce, ASiF The Dying Light Deborah Biancotti's "The Dying Light" takes the reader into a world where tribal life revolves around the individuals' premonitory visions of their death. The relationship this population has with life forms a unique foundation for a melancholy, character-centred tale. Review by Miranda Siemienowicz, OzHorrorScope Stealing Free And then there is “Stealing Free” by Deborah Biancotti, involving a hero, a sorceress and a queen who happen to be a salamander, an octopus and a spotted gudgeon. There are some pelicans as well, and gorgeous writing. Review by Kyla Ward, ASiF Deborah Biancotti’s “Stealing Free” is an almost pseudo-mythological story of a salamander seeking to find freedom from its bargain with a terrible queen. Biancotti avoids the humourless pomposity too often evident in mock-mythological tales, instead delivering perhaps her most readable and wryly amusing story to date. Typically, for Biancotti, though, the story is also full of philosophical and psychological depth, and while it can be read as quite a satisfying story at a surface level, readers looking for more will find plenty to ponder over later on. Review by Ben Payne, ASiF Surrender 1: Rope Artist Beautiful, deadly, precise - Surrender 1: Rope Artist by Deborah Biancotti has a sparsity and economy of words that is just amazing. As in the best tradition of Great Eastern Writings so much is said by what is not said. Yeah, all very Zen, I know, but true. Oh, and don't miss the rollover notes scattered throughout the story. They add a whole extra layer to the tale and you'll miss out on the full 'ending' if you skip them. Review by Andrew McKiernan, Oz HorrorScope
Biancotti’s “Summa Seltza Missive” was infinitely more entertaining and wonderfully humorous, a tale for the mailroom worker in us all. It is every now and again that one comes across a story that is written with such simplicity yet that resonates long afterward and it is here that Biancotti succeeds with aplomb. Review by Mark Deniz, ASiF, July 2006 Deborah Biancotti delights with her story ‘Summa Seltzer Missive’, about a lonely mail worker who gets the chance meeting of a lifetime. Polly works in the mail room; she’s bored with her life and longs to shed the stagnant image of the ‘overlooked’ woman. So one day she heads out and gets a new dress and a fancy pair of shoes, at a party she gets to present her ‘new look’. It is here, at this party, she gets the chance to believe in magic again, when she meets a man who claims to be Santa, who knows all about her and wants her to know all about him. This was quite a fantastical story that resonates a sense of fantasy and euphoria. Review by Ad_John, Oz HorrorScope
Orb #6 is a massive 216 pages of Aussie speculative fiction, articles and reviews. Favourites were Deborah Biancotti's offbeat urban fantasy about the Sandman, Andrew Macrae's SF tale about sentient buildings, and Geoffrey Maloney's thought-provoking story about a society where people have extended lifespans and are addicted to youth. Review by James Cain, Aurealis Express
Deborah Biancotti’s 'Number 3 Raw Place' is edgy and uncomfortable. It explores the links between houses and people and the needs of people. To say more is to spoil it. Half the joy of this story is its uncertainty: not quite knowing where it will lead you. Review by Gillian Polack, ASiF (Review : The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy #1) ‘Number 3 Raw Place’ by Deborah Biancotti is another step upwards, more slipstream than MR: understated, elegantly strange and I’m not altogether sure what happened in the end, but it worked. If it made marginally less sense (and featured a backwards-talking dwarf and a giant), David Lynch would buy the movie rights. Review by Ian McHugh, Strange Horizons, 12 December 2005 As always, the anthology offers the perfect introductory course to the geographically locked-in, with familar names, such as Deborah Biancotti, Sean McMullen, and Simon Brown, and “new” authors .... To put it simply: bad work does not make it into Sparks’ books. That’s not to say, however, that some stories don’t shine even more brightly than the rest. There is the haunting imagery of a world lost in Trent Jamieson’s mournful “Endure.” The echoes of loss and fear in “Water Babies,” a murder mystery lyrically unwound by Simon Brown, in his own blend of grit and fantasy that never fails to snare the reader. And Biancotti does not disappoint, either, with her perplexing and pain-filled story of hope and the loss of hope, in “Number 3 Raw Place.” Each work carries it’s own, distinctive resonance that lifts it to another level against some stiff competition. Review by Lisa DuMond, SF Site & MEviews While there isn't a story in here I didn't enjoy, the best for me were the ones which gave ... pessimism and dislocation the sharpest focus, either through tight, well-characterised relationship studies -- as in Deborah Biancotti's haunting evocation of conflicting expectations and desires in "Number 3 Raw Place", ... Review by Ben Payne, Orb #6 All in all, this is a must for lovers of short SF/F and those who can look beyond the boundaries of Oz. I can't mention all those I liked, but of note are Deborah Biancotti's 'Number 3 Raw Place', Justine Larbalestier's 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night', and of course Sean McMullen's 'The Cascade'. I see a number of these stories making shortlists for awards in many places. Get a copy today from www.bookworm.com - a bloody good read! Review by Robert N Stephenson, Aurealis Express In a world where nearly a dozen international best-of volumes attempt to show what the year's SF, fantasy and horror field has to offer in the short-fiction stakes, it's heartening to have the Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy (MirrorDanse Books, 255pp, $19.95) do the same for the local scene. Editors Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt present their 12 choices from last year's crop, together with a list of recommended works and a handy appendix of local publications. Heading the line-up is Margo Lanagan's moving, horrific and unforgettable Singing My Sister Down, but there's also a zany medieval romp from Brendan Duffy and fine work from Geoffrey Maloney and Deborah Biancotti among others, making this diverse and pleasing first instalment a useful benchmark volume and worthy addition to any library. Review by Terry Dowling, Weekend Australian, October 1-2, 2005 Stone by Stone Good horror stories are thin on the ground ... this is a wild mix of different voices, demonstrating a wide spectrum of approaches available to the genre. Southern Blood packs sixteen tales between its covers, each one an absolute pearl ... the macabre murder suicide with a delicious twist of Deborah Biancotti's 'Stone by Stone' Review by Keith Stevenson, Aurealis #32 The Singular Life of Eddy Dovewater Deborah Biancotti, who's won several Australian awards for her short fiction, delivers a strange surreal piece of science fiction in "The Singular Life of Eddie Dovewater" which relates the story of somebody who is running from the moment he leaves the womb until the moment he leaves human ken altogether. Review by Jonathan Strahan, Locus #509 Deborah Biancotti turns in a devilishly playful myth in “The Singular Life of Eddy Dovewater” that only adds to her already impressive body of work. Review by Lisa DuMond, SF Site, MEviews The Razor Salesman "The Razor Salesman" by Deborah Biancotti is a horror-tinged, very British-feeling SF/fantasy story. Strange, repressed mother Ellen struggles to feed her sons while resenting the neighbor boy, Andy, who's always wanting to stay for dinner. Biancotti misdirects the reader during the course of the story; the razor salesman's wares don't turn out to have the purpose that the reader originally believes. "The Razor Salesman's" world is an odd, disturbing one that exists outside of any "real" time, with elements of past, present and future combined, creepy, weird and "grey" in the tradition of a great number of British stories of loss of identity and social malaise. Review by Amy Sterling Casil, SF Reader King of All and the Metal Sentinel With so little room to discuss Agog! though, let me concentrate on the touches of brilliance. Starting with Deborah Biancotti's "King of All and the Metal Sentinel." There is something unbearably tragic about machines who outlive their owners and lose their purpose. Review by Lisa DuMond, SF Site, MEviews I wish I had the space to synopsize and comment on all the fine stories in Agog! Fantastic Fiction, but, alas, such is not the case. Let me nonetheless try to convey the merits of this important showcase from Down Under, compiled by editor Cat Sparks. Nearly thirty Australian writers–including such well-known names as Stephen Dedman, Damien Broderick, and Terry Dowling–contribute original stories in nearly every conceivable genre mode and style, proving that our austral neighbors understand and practice SF as wholeheartedly and inventively as we do here. There’s not a loser in the lot, and it’s unfair to cite just a few, but I’ll do so anyway. Claire McKenna’s "Stealing Alice" is a blend of Greg Egan and Cordwainer Smith. Deborah Biancotti’s "King of All and the Metal Sentinel" conjures up memories of Brian Aldiss’s "But Who Can Replace a Man?", Kate Orman’s "Ticket to Backwards" dramatizes inadvertant time-travel in the manner of Michael Bishop’s "The Quickening." And Geoffrey Maloney’s "The Imperfect Instantaneous People Mover" is a PKD-Sheckleyan romp. Send away for this collection and feel a new kinship with our Australian peers. Review by Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Silicon Cast There were many talented authors lining up for this award and amongst those that deserve Honourable Mentions are Deborah Biancotti, who continues to impress with 'Silicon Cast' (Redsine 7) and 'Life's Work' (Passing Strange),... 2002 Aurealis Awards: Judges' Report Editors Trent Jamieson and Garry Nurrish have wisely chosen a broad array of material to fill the coveted slots in the fiction section. As in the best stories, some of these selections leave the reader unsure whether to laugh, shudder, or vomit. Cases in point: "Silicon Cast" by Deborah Biancotti and "Mesh of Veins" by Brendan Connell, both tales of vanity taken to the ultimate extreme. Perhaps the proper reaction to these stories would be a shudder of revulsion, but that's your call, really. Review by Lisa DuMond, SF Site Two stories that build upon present day trends in vanity -- though from decidedly different perspectives -- are "Mesh of Veins" by Brendan Connell and Biancotti's "Silicon Cast". The former notes how such body 'alterations' as tattooing and piercing lead to a perhaps unexpected personal transformation, while in the latter the price to be paid for perpetual beauty may be even higher for those who support the façade. Review by David Soyka, SF Site
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