Through Soft Air

by Lee Battersby

There are places where the world you know, and the worlds you don't, swap, or merge, or disappear entirely. These are the soft places, the transparent moments. The ghosts of World War One will steal your future. Masons will carve the date of your death before your gaze. Those versions of yourself from every universe there is will meet, and haunt you for the rest of days. You will find no safe footing, and the ice beneath you is cracking . . . Lee Battersby is one of Australia's fastest rising speculative writing stars, and here, for the first time, are collected twenty-five journeys into the pop-culture melting pot he calls a mind.

284 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2006

About the author

Lee Battersby is the multiple-award winning author of the novels 'The Corpse-Rat King' and 'Marching Dead' (Angry Robot, 2012, 2013) as well as the children's novel 'Magrit' (Walker Books, 2016) and over 70 short stories, many of which are collected in 'Through Soft Air' (Prime Books 2006). He has appeared in markets as diverse as Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Volume 20; Year's Best Australian F&SF; Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror vol. 3; and Dr Who: Destination Prague.

His work has been praised for its consistent attention to voice and narrative muscle, and has resulted in a number of awards including the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and Australian SF ‘Ditmar' gongs. He was the 6th Australian, and 1st Western Australian, winner in the international 'Writers of the Future' competition in 2001.

Lee lives in Rockingham, Western Australia, with his wife, writer Lyn Battersby and an increasingly weird mob of kids. He is sadly obsessed with Lego, Nottingham Forest football club, dinosaurs and Daleks.

You can read more about him at his blog The Battersblog, and he will often wave back if you throw pebbles at his window.