June 2012

COMPETITION: Australian author Tim O’Bree has kindly donated a copy of his new SF book entitled Galaxy Battle League (Part One of Eight) to a lucky Bullsheet subscriber or Twitter follower. The winner will be randomly chosen on Sunday 10 June so sign up/follow before then to be in the draw. You can read more about the book at Tim’s website: www.galaxybattleleague.com.

The Aussie Spec Fic Snapshot 2012 runs the first week of June and features interviews across the Australian spec fic scene.

Australian spec fic writer Sean Williams joined the ABC Adelaide’s 891 Book Club for a discussion about the growth and popularity of speculative fiction as part of Writers Week in Adelaide.

Notions Unlimited Bookshop is a new genre-specialist bookshop located in Chelsea, Victoria. It opened earlier this year and offers free meeting facilities for genre groups as well as supporting local genre authors and publishers with in-store events. You can find an ad for Notions Unlimited on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUcRSaqt8U0.

The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild anthology, next is open until 15 October to Australian writers until 15 October, and you can view the full submission guidelines at their website: http://csfg.wordpress.com/.

MOVIES

View the first episode of new Australian web series Event Zero on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PatL5k6oQ74.

A new Australian film project is to be the world’s first Indigenous sci-fi film. Short film Kindred is based on a Dreamtime story by the Worora tribe of Western Australia who tell the story of the Wandjina, a tribe that “came down from the sky in boats and created the world”. The project is raising funds using crowd funding platform Indiegogo. The campaign has 60 days left. SF Bullsheet is a “witness from afar”. Who wants to be an abductee?

Australian actor Liam Hemsworth has been nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the “buzzworthy” Breakthrough Performance category for his role as Gabe in the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games. Which is impressive since he’s on screen for about five seconds. Apparently he’s “hungry” for the award. These headline writers…if I could think of a good pun right now, maybe I too could enter the glamorous, fast-paced world of internet headlines.

Ethan Hawke will be visiting Australia next year for the filming of time-travel action thriller Predestination, which is about a secret government agency designed to prevent killers and terrorists from ever committing their crimes; and which description makes it sound like a Minority Report clone; but which is based on the Robert A Heinlein short story All You Zombies. It will be directed by Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig.

Continuing on the film theme, Australian horror film Muirhouse has been selected to screen at Louisville’s Fright Night Horror Weekend Film Festival, June 29–July 1. It is currently screening at Marche Du Film at this monthʼs Cannes Film Festival and the director has announced it will be included in the Official Selection of the US horror festival.

Australian singer/actress Kylie Minogue is starring in new “surreal” SF film Holy Motors, set in Paris and telling the story of a man travelling between parallel lives.

Zak Hilditch’s short film Transmission, about a deadly pandemic and its impact on a father-daughter relationship, won Best Short Film at the St Kilda Film Festival last month. The short was made to support upcoming feature film These Final Hours, which is set to shoot in and around Perth in the second half of this year.

Ballarat actrress Jacinta John has won the best actress award at the LA Fear and Fantasy Film Festival for her role in iSolate, a psychological thriller coming to Australian screens this month.

BOOKS

Tokyo-based Australian writer Andrez Bergen, author of the well-reviewed Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, will have a new title out in the second half of this year. Entitled One Hundred Years of Vicissitude and published with Perfect Edge Books, Bergen’s second novel is a mix of surrealiam, mystery, steampunk and SF, and focusses on Japan, from 1929 on into the near future (plus a little bit of Melbourne in the ’70s & ’80s).

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

Nominations for the 2012 Aurealis Awards are open. The 2012 Aurealis Awards are for works of speculative fiction written by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published for the first time between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2012. Entries close 23 December but you’re encouraged to send in your entries as close to publication as possible to give the judges time to consider each entry.

Which must mean that the 2011 Aurealis Awards have been awarded… With a record number of entries across the 13 categories, the judges had a tough time picking their winners. Congratulations to all the finalists and the ultimate winners, and you can view the full list at the Aurealis website: http://aurealisawards.com.

The Australian Science Fiction Foundation has announced the 2012 Norma K Hemming Award shortlist, for (thought-provoking approaches to) race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction. The winner will be announced at the 51st Australian National Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne (Continuum Eight) next weekend. There’s some great books on the shortlist.

CONVENTIONS

Supanova Pop Culture Expo will be in Sydney and Perth in June. See their website for their huge array of pop culture stars.

Continuum 8 (Melbourne’s SF and pop culture convention) will take place on the Queen’s Birthday Weekend, 8–11 June 2012, and the full program is now available from http://continuum.org.au/program-available/#content.

The Unseen University Convivium 2012 takes place from 6–8 July 2012. Since it’s only a month away, it’s got a lot of deadlines coming up, including for buying exclusive merchandise and booking tickets for events, so get onto it if you’re onto it.

Con 9 will be held in Melbourne on 14–15 July 2012. Con 9 is a not-for-profit science fiction convention devoted to the “golden age” of classic Sci-Fi movies, TV shows and radio programmes up to 1965 (though the primary focus is mainly the 1950s). For the fans, by the fans. For membership and more information check out the website.

Got more Australian SF/F news? Add it in the comments and/or send an email to have it included in next month’s issue and/or spread about on Twitter (follow @sfbullsheet).