AustLit

'Step up, as close as you dare…

'…to a place at the edge of sanity, where cicadas scritch across balmy summer nights,

'at the edge of town, where the cellphone coverage is decidedly dodgy,

'at the edge of space, where a Mimbinus argut bounds among snowy rocks,

'at the edge of the page, where demon princes prance in the shadows,

'at the edge of despair, where 10 darushas will get you a vodka lime and a ring side seat,

'at the edge of the universe, where time stops but space goes on...

'From the brink of civilisation, the fringe of reason, and the border of reality, come 23 stories infused with the bloody-minded spirit of the Antipodes, tales told by the children of warriors and whalers, convicts and miners: people unafraid to strike out for new territories and find meaning in the expanses at the edge of the world.

'Compiled by award-winning editing team Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray, and including a story by Arthur C. Clarke finalist Phillip Mann and foreword by World Fantasy Award winner Angela Slatter, At the Edge is a dark and dystopic collection from some of Australia and New Zealand’s best speculative writers.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

In 1922 ('Year eight of the Great War of Empire'), recon pilot Flinder, an Australian seconded to the RAF, crashes in Tunisia, carrying photographs of a great horror the enemy are creating in a lake in Tunis. Rescued by men of the New Zealand Maori Battalion, she finds herself co-opted into their mission to eliminate the threat in Tunis. As they travel across the desert, she must confront her own racism and the terrible act she once committed under its influence.