The judges awarded Honourable Mentions to Sue Isle for Nightsiders, Meg Mundell for Black Glass and Tansy Rayner Roberts for The Shattered City. Selected comments from the judges are:

Nightsiders by Sue Isle, published by Twelfth Planet Press:
Just as the Western Australian landscape is the site of discord, of discovery, of dissociation, so too is the body, in Sue Isle’s journeys into and out of self.

Meanwhile. Today the Aurealis Award shortlist came out and I’m delighted to see the Twelve Planets series get a few nods. Namely, Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, Nightsiders by Sue Isle and Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts are all shortlisted for Best Collection. I’m so very proud of these three books. Additional nods came in the Young Adult category where both “Nation of the Night” (Nightsiders) and “The Patrician” (Love and Romanpunk) also got shortlisted.

Huge congratulations to all the other shortlisters. The full list is over at Tehani’s blog if you’re interested.

Gwyneth Jones has this to say on the Twelve Planets volumes so far, which she posted about on her personal blog:

I’ve been reading The Twelve Planets’ latest selections, and enjoying them very much, starting with Deborah Biancotti: police procedural with a sinister undertow of the weird, progressing through Tansy Rayner Roberts (Romanpunk), Lucy Sussex (Thief of Lives), and Sue Isle (Nightsiders). These collections, just four stories in a slim paperback, are an excellent idea, a tasting menu of Australasian female genre writers. Romanpunk has an intriguing twist on the noble vampire and mortal girlfriend* story (see, these vampires are really Lamia, they’re Roman in origin, and very well connected, but they find the C21 street has its uses). Ever wondered why pretty-boy Caligula was such an unmitigated horror in private life? Or why Nero was finally forced to kill his mother? Refreshingly, unlike Buffy, the mortal girlfriend is not allergic to education and actually has a life… Lucy Sussex I can safely say needs no introduction: I loved her beautiful story about modern and ancient Babylon, “Alchemy”. Sue Isle has created a daunting, yet not hopeless day after tomorrow Western Australia; linked stories all set in the same moment, the moment, for various characters, when you realise that climate change has won, and civilisation is not coming back. So you stop mourning, and you move on… Made me wish there was a novel.

Someone said, recently, the Finnish sf community gives me hope for the future of the genre… These Australians give me hope for the future of female, and even feminist, writers in sf.

I couldn’t hope for better feedback.

We have teamed up to offer the next five people who donate $50 or more a signed copy of Marianne de Pierres’s Glitter Rose! This is in addition to the regular reward. De Pierres is the very successful author of the Parrish Plessis books from Orbit and the SF series Sentients of Orion.

We are also offering copies of Twelfth Planet Press books Nightsiders and Love and Romanpunk to anyone donating just $25 or more!

Please help us raise more money for the fund, towards a third year of operations!

To claim the offer, make a donation through the peerbackers project, then e-mail worldsftravelfund@gmail.com with your name, the amount of your donation and your choice of reward. Remember these rewards are in addition to the regular ones you’ll receive!