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Best Collected Work (2000-)
Subcategory of Ditmar Awards
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History

Inaugurated in 2000, this award distinguished collections from novels for the first time at the Ditmars (where both forms has previously been included under the category 'Australian Long Fiction').

Notes

  • Any collection of science fiction, fantasy or horror (anthology, magazine, journal, ezine, webzine) which must pay contributors in other than contributor copies and incidentals, or is sponsored by an institution other than a fan club, or the editors of which declare the work to be professional.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon Cut to Care : A Collection of Little Hurts Aaron Dries , Melbourne : IFWG Publishing Inc , 2022 24465081 2022 selected work short story

'An agency that sends social workers into the homes of grieving families to impersonate dead loved ones…

'The kind old woman who saved a teenager’s life but now finds herself haunted by the weight of a cheated suicide…

'And the daughter of a candlestick maker as she tries to survive a painful existence after her father’s execution for making human chandeliers of drunken cowboys…

'These stories and more-ranging from supernatural to the frighteningly domestic, Splatterpunk to the weird and cosmic-stain the pages of Cut to Care: A Collection of Little Hurts by Aaron Dries. They serve as a timely reminder of the cost of caring too much. Or not caring enough. Of how we mask cruelties behind kindness. And of our willingness to rip ourselves apart in the hope of satisfying a world that doesn’t always care for you back. ' (Publication summary) 

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Tool Tales Kaaron Warren , Ellen Datlow (illustrator), Gold Coast : IFWG Publishing Inc , 2021 21018457 2021 selected work short story

'Multi-award winning creators Ellen Datlow and Kaaron Warren teamed up on Facebook a few years ago when Ellen posted photos of antique tools and Kaaron wrote microfiction pieces to accompany them, without either of them knowing what the tools were for.

'This chapbook collects and preserves their playful interaction for readers to enjoy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Dark Harvest Cat Sparks , England : NewCon Press , 2020 19689020 2020 selected work short story

'Multiple award-winning author Cat Sparks writes science fiction with a distinctly Australian flavour – stories steeped in the desperate anarchy of Mad Max futures, redolent with scorching sun and the harshness of desert sands, but her narratives reach deeper than that. In her tales of ordinary people adapting to post-apocalyptic futures, she casts a light on what it means to be human; the good and the bad, the noble and the shameful.

'Dark Harvest gathers together Cat’s best short fiction of recent years, as selected by the author herself: fourteen stories, two of them novelettes, including one brand new tale and two Ditmar Award winners.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Collision : Stories J. S. Breukelaar , Atlanta : Meerkat Press , 2019 15647027 2019 selected work short story

'A collection of twelve of J.S. Breukelaar's darkest, finest stories with four new works, including the uncanny new novella "Ripples on a Blank Shore." Introduction by award-winning author, Angela Slatter. Relish the Gothic strangeness of "Union Falls," the alien horror of "Rogues Bay 3013," the heartbreaking dystopia of "Glow," the weird mythos of "Ava Rune," and others.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Mother of Invention Tansy Rayner Roberts (editor), Rivqa Rafael (editor), Australia : Twelfth Planet Press , 2018 12913318 2018 anthology short story essay

'An ambitious anthology from award-winning Australian publishing house Twelfth Planet Press, Mother of Invention will feature diverse, challenging stories about gender as it relates to the creation of artificial intelligence and robotics.

'From Pygmalion and Galatea to Frankenstein, Ex Machina and Person of Interest, the fictional landscape so often frames cisgender men as the creators of artificial life, leading to the same kinds of stories being told over and over. We want to bring some genuine revolution to the way that artificial intelligence stories are told, and how they intersect with gender identity, parenthood, sexuality, war, and the future of our species. How can we interrogate the gendered assumptions around the making of robots compared with the making of babies? Can computers learn to speak in a code beyond the (gender) binary?

'If necessity is the mother of invention, what exciting AI might come to exist in the hands of a more diverse range of innovators?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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