Editor Nicole Murphy tells us in her introduction that the theme for The Outcast was suggested by well-known Australian author Maxine McArthur, whose then-unpublished manuscript Time Future won the George Turner Prize in 1999.

Outcasts — exiles and strangers — are a quintessential speculative fiction theme, whether in science fiction, fantasy or horror. Everyone feels like an outcast, sometimes. McArthur's own story, set in a vividly realised rural Japanese swamp, is one of the best of the 20 stories in the anthology. It's an atmospheric, convincingly gory detective horror story, with a charming, depressed narrator, venial local officials, and a swamp monster.

Kaaron Warren's "Woman Train" was, for me, the outstanding story of the collection. It's powerful, passionate and literate, perhaps reminiscent of the young Peter Carey's speculative fiction short stories. Women dressed in red have opted out of what they see as the men's war and live on a surreal train, which is supposedly taking them to "the woman town". As the train continues to travel endlessly, conditions deteriorate, and the narrator gradually realises that something is very wrong.

The smaller a social group is, the more painful the status as an outcast can be. It is doubtless no accident that many of the stories have a tribal background. Richard Harland's touching "On The Way to Habassan" involves a female doctor on an alien planet rescuing a tribal girl from undeserved punishment as a scapegoat. A. M. Muffaz tells us a story of battling man-toads, a voracious goddess, and blood — menstrual and otherwise — in a marsh full of life and death. Kylie Seluka draws on an Aboriginal snake myth for the story of a misfit girl in a tribe-like group living in a cave after the Pacific Ring of Fire has erupted.

Outside of the tribal milieu, Cory Daniells (otherwise known as Rowena Cory Lindquist), tells a story of vicious priestly politics in the Shallow Seas on the back of a giant turtle; and Cat Sparks sets her confronting "Blue Stars for All Saviours' Day" in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Several of the stories are humorous; the best of these may be Tansy Rayner Roberts' "Holding Out for a Hero", which plays knowingly with heroic stereotypes.