Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.

“Nuke”, who it turns out loves editing more than writing, lives in the New South Wales North Coast holiday destination of Nambucca Heads, where he is self-employed in IT training, computer support, desktop publishing, editing, writing, and website implementation. He is also the resident tech-head, skeptic, and board member of community radio station 2NVR, where he produces a number of shows including The AntipodeanSF Radio Show.

Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.

One of Mark’s very best forms of writing procrastination is to produce the eBook series for AntipodeanSF, which he has been doing since issue 175.

Frank Prem has been a storytelling poet for forty years. When not writing or reading his poetry to an audience, he fills his time by working as a psychiatric nurse.

He has been published in magazines, e-zines and anthologies, in Australia and in a number of other countries, and has both performed and recorded his work as ‘spoken word’.

Frank has published two collections of free verse poetry – Small Town Kid (2018) and Devil In The Wind (2019).

He and his wife live in the beautiful township of Beechworth in northeast Victoria (Australia).

Note:

Frank’s mythologically themed and audio recorded poems were produced and accompanied by his wife, singer/songwriter Leanne Murphy.

Publications

Small Town Kid (2018) A free verse memoir of growing up in rural Australia in the 1960s and 70s.

Devil In The Wind (2019) In free verse, the voices of victims and survivors of the horrendous Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria (Australia) in 2009

The New Asylum – a memoir of psychiatry (scheduled November 2019) A free verse memoir of a lifetime growing up with and experiencing public sector psychiatry in Victoria (Australia), from the 1960s to the present day.

Herja, Devastation (2019) an experimental fusion of free verse poetry and prose by Australian authors Frank Prem and Cage Dunn to tell the story of a Valkyrie and her mortal assassin/accomplice as they mete justice and vengeance.

Frank Prem Contacts and Social Media

Author Page (Newsletter sign up): <https://FrankPrem.com>.

Facebook page: <https://www.facebook.com/frankprem2>.

YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvfW2WowqY1euO-Cj76LDKg>.

Twitter: @frank_prem <https://twitter.com/frank_prem>.

Amazon: <https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07L61HNZ4>.

Goodreads: <https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18679262.Frank_Prem>.

Dr. del Sur left his practice in the Barrow straits of Alaska after taking a sabbatical in Jerusalem to explore the chattels of binding, a branch of experimental dentistry that references the Maquilas teeth worn round necks in invisible servitude.

In his increasing role as an international troubleshooter he was involved thereafter with various dentitions of radioactive speech, but has not left dentistry behind, even if his present post in Antarctica is in a location undisclosed, near the trans Antarctic mountains that divide east and west, the vicinity of the Leveett Glacier of the Queen Mauds planned route for overland supply joining McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott Stations.

Such research is conducted far from observed eye where removals in the dental cosmos of the invisible chattels of liberation are well represented in the innocent teeth-mountains, although certain culpable agencies are not to be named.

Jack Beltane is a resident of Melbourne, born 1973 in Perth, grew up traveling the country following his navy father on various postings.

Growing up with Doctor Who, Lost in Space, Twilight Zone and Star Wars all influence Jack's writing style. He started writing at age of 13, choose your own adventure books, poetry by age 17 and retired from writing at age of 18 to follow a career in the military and railways, which both involved travelling interstate to find work.

Fast forward 24 years to 2014, fiscal crisis at work meant poverty or study, enrolled in University of Tasmania, studying for the next three years a Bachelor of Arts History major.

Moved interstate again in 2017, Jack began in 2018 a Bachelor of Arts Writing Major at Victoria University. The two study fields of history and writing have seen Jack write across many genres from Sci Fi, poetry, non-fiction (lyric essays), playwriting and memoirs. You can find out more at his website: <www.jackbeltane.com>.

Maree Collie loves the idea of Flash Fiction. So much to say in such alittle space. She also dabbles in short stories, monologues and plays.

Maree has had pieces published in anthologies, a play performed in 2018, and a monologue slated for performance October 2019.

She hascompleted a BA in Professional and Creative Writing at DeakinUniversity.

Triffooper Saxelbax is an emerging (and often grating) voice in the unsplatterpunk subgenre. He attempts to write stories that are too “too scatological for human consumption” and “excessively excessive.” When he is not writing, he stir-fries vegetables and decorates pine cones. His work has not been translated into any other languages. Neither has it been nominated for nor appeared in the year’s best so and so. Saxelbax’s mental exertions have caused numerous regional power outages.

Michael Connolly lives in Bowraville NSW, Australia. He has worked as an art teacher, music teacher, printer and illustrator among other things (such as chicken de-beaker), and has a keen interest in science-fiction and the natural sciences. He has illustrated for the magazine Tabula Rasa, which specialises in the horror genre, and is a regular contributor to AntipodeanSF.

Robert writes about himself:

You can also find this story in my collection The Other Side of Forever, on Amazon.

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a cat that sometimes gets in the way of my typing. I am also a photographer. At 48 years of age I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism. Recently I have become a self advocate.

I graduated from Huntingdon College in 1981. I studied photography at night classes held at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. I got an MS degree in Journalism at Murray State University. Then I worked at newspapers and publications without much success before I went to Portfolio Center in Atlanta in 1994 to study Commercial Photography. After one year I left because I did not like the teachers or their teaching methods. Not having very much success finding commercial photography jobs I worked at several retail establishments in Atlanta until I decided to move back to Birmingham Alabama in 2002. I got a degree in Web Design in 2007 From Jefferson State Community College and once again couldn’t find work. I have found a new purpose in life since my diagnoses. I am a Governor appointee on the Alabama Interagency Autism Coordinating Council and the Regional Autism Network as well as volunteering for several activist organizations, all well being a caregiver for my Mother.

Growing up autistic I always had a different angle on things. That may be why my stories are so strange.

Previously in Antipodeon I’ve had "A day In Caaatahlona 1 City Beneath The Waves," AntipodeanSF February 2018

I’ve also had the epic poem “The Blossom War,” published in 18th Wall’s anthology, The Dragon Lord’s Library.

I had a short story “Silver Image,” published in the Daguerreian Annual 2015.

Phill Berrie has had a lifelong love affair with science, speculative fiction and role playing. It was his love of role playing that led him to start writing in the spec-fic genre and his attention to detail (read OCD) that helped him fall into editing.

A life member of the ACT Writers Centre, he is the author of two published speculative fiction novels: The Changeling Detective, an urban fantasy, detective noire story set in and around Canberra, Australia; and Transgressions, a high fantasy tale about life changes, sex changes and petty gods. It is his sincere hope that he can get back to writing both these series as soon as his current magnum opus, an episodic, electronic choose-your-own-adventure story called Choices: And Their Heroes Were Lost (produced by Tin Man Games in Melbourne), is finally completed.

Phill now lives in semi-retirement in Yass, New South Wales. As well as his writing and editing, he commutes to Canberra three days a week to help science teachers teach science in his roles as the digital projects officer and pro tem publications manager for the Australian Science Teachers Association. Despite all his attempts to do otherwise, he has never worked harder in his life and dreams of retiring almost as much as he dreams of the fantastical worlds of his imagination.

Lachlan Walter is a writer and nursery-hand (the garden kind, not the baby kind), and has completed a PhD that critically and creatively explored the relationship between Australian post-apocalyptic fiction and Australian notions of national identity. He writes science fiction criticism for both Aurealis magazine and its offshoot blog, reviews for the independent ‘weird music’ website Cyclic Defrost, and is currently writing a book-length story cycle that aims to take giant monsters seriously. He loves all things music-related, the Australian environment, overlooked genres and working out in the garden.

Zeb writes:

Last week, on a whim I submitted some of my own musings to ‘Nuke’, and when I checked back today — my time in my ‘verse, which is plus six years comparative to you — I saw that he had published some of them! I wasn’t even sure the contrived email and attachment would get through, let alone end up published on your internet of things. (BTW — We have nothing quite like your ‘net, but we’ve gone far further into the solar system than you have. Figure that!) Now that I know a connection is possible, I thought I’d tell you a little more about myself and where I’m from. So, from the beginning…

Hi. My name is Zebuline Carter — that’s Zeb for my friends or Zeb-you-leen if you want to get formal — and I’m a forty-two year old former astronaut now working as an administrator at Farside, on Luna. Farside is a research base, where innerscopes are just starting to peel back layers of our sheath of the local multiverse. Because our work is so sensitive to em influences, Farside is situated within a one hundred klom diameter exclusion zone.

In my late teens I earned a double major in aerospace and business but passed over grad school for civilian astronaut training. As a kid I collected coupons from cereal boxes until I had enough for my first telescope, and built scale models of all the commercial shuttles and orbiters. Growing up, I’d always felt slightly out of place, like I was meant to to be somewhere else and part of me already was — until, that is, I had my first trip into low orbit aboard a high-riding intercont-cruiser, or ICC. That was a high-school graduation present from my Uncle Jim, and during the fifteen minutes of freefall I found that other part of myself, grabbed it tight, and never let go since.

Did I also mention I’m 180 cents tall with bobbed chestnut hair? Or that because of heart damage from a bad landing, I’m also marooned in low gravity? But heh, there are now six bases around Luna, supporting a permanent population of around twelve thousand Lunans, and a transient population of several thousand tourists and stopovers returning form the outer system, so it never gets boring and I don’t get lonely. And living in low G means I won’t age or sag as fast, either.

Until next time —

PS Cottier is a poet living in Canberra, who often writes speculative poetry, and occasionally dabbles in prose.

Retired after 33 years of teaching, Kevin now indulges his passions full-time: weather, reading and writing. His fiction usually embraces darker themes or the new weird, but lately he has gone back to more traditional old school SFF. He has set himself the task of reading every Stephen King novel, in order, and all of the recommended SF reading lists of Locus magazine for the last 35 years <http://www.sfadb.com/Locus_Awards_1983>. His eyes hurt.

she sat at her wheel 
beneath the broad sweep
of open sky

as each bright ray
reached down to touch her
and warm her while she worked
she caught it in a tender grasp
crooned quietly
and applied herself
to the repetitions

warm and spin
warm and spin

as the day cooled
ray upon ray
she shawled herself against the chill
and spun
until the last

until the night

and then
the loom

clack clack
and clack again

warp
weft
the shuttle flew
she wove for morning

for another rising
of the sun

she drew her hands from the pool
squeezed and shaped the mud
sang a murmur while she patted the form
la la  la-la-la  la la
and moulded a small man-figure
that she sat down beside her

she gave him a mouth
smiling
and two eyes
then breathed on him once

breathed again

la la  la-la-la  la la

it was no surprise at all
when he moved his arms
clambered up to stand wobbling
on the legs she’d made
especially for him

the first word that he spoke
was her name
la-la-la

and that was the song they sang together
la-la-la-la-la

when the call rang out for supper
she put him down
back in the water he came from

she would return later
to squeeze and shape the mud
and breathe him into life
again

la

la la
la-la

la-la-la-la

I danced in the flames
the heat licked all over me
but I did not burn
not at all

I lay down in the stream
the water rose above me
but I did not drown
not at all

I stood in the storm
the wind raved around me
but I was not moved
not at all

I speak to the sun

I listen to the night

I dream this world
in its laughter and its tears
but I do not asleep
not at all

I speak to the sun

I listen to the night

I dream this world
in its laughter and its tears
but I do not asleep
not at all

not at all

no
I do not sleep

not at all

a man is seated at the table
in a small house 
behind the sun

he is old
fingers gnarled
but he grasps tight the cogs
in his stiff bony hands
and adjusts the links
in a length of chain

sings
underneath his breath
to a time-piece rhythm

ah-yay ah-yay ah-yay ah

ah-yay ah-yay ye-ah

mutters to the woman beside him

old lady
can you get a working man
his cup of tea

for if the sun’s to rise
I’ll be freeing-up these cogs
all night

it’s going to be a long slow time
until morning

Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.

She is the author of The Butterfly Stone (YA/ Fantasy — available now) and White Fire (Sci Fi — available now)

You can read more of her work on her blog Look for her on Facebook <www.facebook.com/WriterLaurieBell/> or Twitter: <@LaurienotLori>

Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).

All this science hasn't damped his love of fantasy and science fiction. It has, however, ruined his enjoyment of rainbows, colourful flames on romantic log fires, and rings around the moon. He has previously been published in Stupefying Stories Showcase, Everyday Fiction, Escape Pod, Perihelion and also on AntipodeanSF where he is part of the narration team.

Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.

In addition to short stories at AntipodeanSF and NewMyths.com, his SF novel is available internationally in print and ebook formats. "Avians" draws on his love of alternative aviation to tell the tale of a girl who runs away from home to join a cadre of glider pilots on a world without metal or fossil fuels.

On Twitter, he is @timothygwyn, and his blogs are at <timothygwyn.com>.

Carolyn's work spans devising, performance, theatre-in-education and a collaborative visual art practice.

She tours children's works to schools nationally with School Performance Tours, is a member of the Bathurst physical theatre ensemble Lingua Franca and one half of darkroom — a visual arts practice with videographer Sean O'Keeffe.

(Photo by Jeremy Belinfante) 

Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.

You can read examples of Garry's fiction on his website <https://garrydean.wordpress.com>

Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.

She feels so lucky to be a part of the AntiSF team.

Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.

She enjoys writing short fiction, plays for radio and stage as well as her own brand of weird poetry.

She hosts the 'Off-Beet Poetry Slam' held bi-monthly in Katoomba,

And is a theatre reviewer for 2SER FM in Sydney.

David Whitaker is originally from the UK though has travelled around a bit and now resides in India. He has a degree in Journalism, however decided that as he’s always preferred making things up it should ultimately become a resource rather than a profession.

His stories, covering everything from sci-fi to philosophy, have been published across the globe and links to each can be found at <wordsbydavid.com>