AustLit
Subcategory of Tin Duck Award, Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation (WASFF)
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2023
winner She Who Played for the Morrocks 2021 single work short story fantasy
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 145 2021; -
Year: 2021
winner 1827 : Napoleon in Australia 2020 single work short story
— Appears in: Alternate Australias 2020; -
Year: 2019
winner Beautiful 2018 single work novella fantasy
— Appears in: Aurum : A Golden Anthology of Australian Fantasy 2018; (p. 237-274) The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy : 2019 Edition 2019; -
Year: 2018
winner This Silent Sea 2017 single work short story
— Appears in: Review of Australian Fiction , vol. 24 no. 6 2017; -
Year: 2017
winner To Take Into the Air My Quiet Breath 2016 single work short story science fiction
— Appears in: Defying Doomsday 2016; (p. 49-76)After a flu sweeps the country and leaves most of the population dead, Georgie cares for her two younger sisters and worries for their cystic fibrosis: Annalee had lung transplants before the epidemic and only needs medicine, while Eliza is severely ill. They stay in their house, self-quarantined.
A call comes from the hospital, informing them they have lung transplants ready for Eliza. The sisters travel into inner Melbourne, where they meet a girl, Mari, with an unnamed baby. Mari leaves the baby with them and commits suicide as they're about to reach the hospital.
The hospital is bombed-out, and Eliza reveals that the phone call was a recording she kept from before the epidemic. Annalee is growing more ill as her body rejects the lung transplant, and they're running out of medicine. Eliza faked the calls to get them out of the house. As Georgie begins to despair, the phone rings.