IAN McEWAN What We Can Know. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
How will the future judge us? Ian McEwan’s new novel looks back at our world from the perspective of 2119. In a year that has already delivered some fascinating climate fiction, one of England’s best, Ian McEwan, enters the fray. What We Can Know is a book about a...
RHETT DAVIS Arborescence. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The new novel from the award-winning author of Hovering asks big questions about the environment, AI, and what it means to be human. Rhett Davis burst onto the Australian literary scene in 2020 with the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book...
BEN PEEK The Red Labyrinth. Reviewed by Lucy Sussex
Slim but richly imaginative, Ben Peek’s new novella combines dystopia and dark fantasy to hold a mirror to current times. In 1958, Patrick White decried Australian literature’s tendency to be the ‘dreary dun-coloured offspring of journalistic...
JENNIFER MILLS Salvage. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The new novel from the author of Dyschronia and The Airways is climate fiction focussed on human adaptability. There is plenty going on in Australia at the moment that reflects the impacts of climate change. Massive bushfires, years-long droughts, tropical cyclones...
INGA SIMPSON The Thinning Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from the author of Understory explores what happens when mining dramatically changes life on Earth. We haven’t always lived on amber alert, ready to run. When Dianella was the photographer in residence and Dad the head astronomer, we used to have a...
ANTONIA PONT The Memory Library. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Memories are not merely recounted in Antonia Pont’s novella. How would you like to share someone else’s memories? No, not to just listen to them or read them, but to experience them, to be where they were, do what they were doing, hear what they heard (voices, birds,...
KA LINDE The Wren in the Holly Library. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
In KA Linde’s latest fantasy series, humans and monsters live together under a tenuous peace treaty in an alternate New York. Kierse’s latest contract – to break into some rich guy’s house and steal a ring – seemed simple enough until she realised the rich guy,...
JOHN RICHARDS The Gorgon Flower. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
John Richards’ stories explore the phantasmagoric, the mysterious, and the follies of empire. The Gorgon Flower, John Richards’ first book, is an intriguing collection of speculative short fiction of impressive range that explores the space-time continuum. It...
MYKAELA SAUNDERS Always Will Be. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Mykaela Saunders’ stories imagine a future where the connection to land and culture is central. Mykaela Saunders won an Aurealis award for her exciting and thought-provoking anthology of First Nations speculative fiction This All Come Back Now. In the same year her...
SEBASTIAN FAULKS The Seventh Son. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sebastian Faulks’ latest novel explores the consequences of amoral genetic research in a not-too-distant future. Alaric teaches disinterested children history in an English comprehensive school. … he enjoyed giving them an idea that the world had not always been as it...
MYKAELA SAUNDERS (ed.) This All Come Back Now. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
This anthology showcases the range of First Nations speculative fiction. This All Come Back Now is a collection of speculative fiction by First Nations authors curated by Mykaela Saunders, who observes that First Nations writers in this genre are rarely able to get...
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