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Earth is But A Star is a Damien Broderick-edited anthology of Australian SF stories, smaller and more recent than the canonical Centaurus and a useful entry point for readers who have not spent time with the Australian tradition. The selections include several of Broderick's own pieces and short fiction by Sean Williams, Lucy Sussex, Greg Egan, and others.
What the anthology shows is the particular character of Australian SF, which has spent most of the post-war period developing in productive isolation from the American and British scenes. The hard-SF strain represented by Greg Egan is one of the most rigorous in the contemporary form. The lyrical-cosmological strain is represented by Sussex and others.
Three stars. A useful overview anthology. Recommended to readers interested in expanding their SF reading outside the American and British defaults.
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