Borderlands
Entry updated 1 April 2016. Tagged: Publication.
Australian Small Press magazine of Speculative Fiction, which included not only fantasy and horror but also Slipstream SF, published and edited in Perth, Western Australia, by a consortium that included Stephen Dedman, Simon Oxwell and Anna Hepworth. It made small token payments for fiction. Its name was derived from a small Convention held in Perth in 2001 which had seen the release of an anthology Borderlands: The World Within (anth 2001 chap) edited by Anna Hepworth, Simon Oxwell and Grant Watson. The magazine was in a similar perfect-bound, digest format, its striking black-and-white photographic covers giving it the appearance of a literary magazine. It ran for eleven issues, from April 2003 to March 2009, each one usually released at a local Convention in Australia. To many it was regarded as a successor to Eidolon, but lacked the distribution or exposure, selling mostly by subscription or through specialist stores. It restricted its fiction to work by Australian writers, which included Lee Battersby, Simon Brown, Cathy Cupitt, Stephen Dedman, Robert Hood, Trent Jamieson, Cat Sparks, Robert N Stephenson and Sean Williams, though the standout story was the surreal, almost absurdist fantasy "The Fear of White" (June 2006 #7) by Rjurik Davidson, which won the Ditmar Award. Also of note was the hard-hitting "Qasim" (March 2009 #11) about a young boy's desire to be a superhero so that he could rescue victims of religious persecution. The print run was only between 200 to 300 copies per issue and though there were attempts to distribute it through specialist shops sales were never high and eventually, as other commitments grew, the magazine was shelved. [MA]
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