Centaurus : The Best of Australian Science Fiction

Centaurus is the canonical Damien Broderick and David Hartwell anthology of Australian SF, from 1999, and it is the book I would press into the hands of any reader who wants to understand why Australian SF is one of the genre's most consistently strong national traditions. The selections include the obvious major figures (Greg Egan, Sean McMullen, George Turner, A. Bertram Chandler) and a series of more recent writers who would not be familiar to most American readers.

The Greg Egan stories alone earn the volume. Egan in his short-fiction mode is one of the most rigorous hard-SF voices working anywhere, and the selections here include several of his strongest pieces. George Turner's contribution is from his The Sea and Summer/Drowning Towers material and is one of the great climate-SF stories.

Four stars. Highly recommended as both a reading anthology and a working primer on the Australian tradition.