Is everyone sitting comfortably?

I wanted to take this chance to do a bit of spruking for a couple of extremely talented (and damn prolific!) australian novelists, who had turned out several stellar (pun unintentional) sci-fi series.

Sean Williams and Shane Dix, they often work as a team, and have written several series both together and seperately which I can't recommend highly enough. They have had the chance to write Star Wars books as part of the New Jedi Order (please, don't hold it against them!) and that has meant that these Aussie authors have gotten enough notice in the States that they seem to have a strong following. So much so in fact, that shamefully enough their most recent series are published there before they are published here!

I have just finished their most recent offering, the Geodesica Duology, and basically I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I would urge any science fiction fan to get out there and give it a try, you can't miss it! (The covers of the two books are bright neon orange and green, so just scan the bookshelves and when your eyes shut down in horror, you have found them). The pair of them have some fascinating concepts about the future, an excellent writing style and some gripping storytelling.

Other noteworthy series are the Orphans of Earth trilogy, which is probably their best, and the Evergence trilogy. Shane Williams seems to come first, so they are generally found in the W's.

That is assuming that you can find them at all of course. As someone who reads fantasy and science fiction, I well know the frustrating of reading a genre that people look down on, and one that is often severely under-supported in all but the biggest bookstores. Luckily the most conveient bookstore for me is the Dymocks in Broadway, which does have a fairly good range, but I am so sick of walking into a smaller shop to find that a whole quarter shelf has been devoted to an entire genre, and 50% of that is just copies of Lord of the Rings.

I find it sad that excellent aussie authors like these two have difficulty getting into stores due to a combination of sellers not considering an entire genre as worth supporting, and the total ignorance of what to stock which leads us to have a millon copies of LotR and David Eddings books and little else.