Claire G.Coleman believes speculative fiction is a powerful political tool. ‘It’s a genre in which there’s great scope for Aboriginal literature … It’s able to sneak politics into places people don’t expect to see it.'

Coleman's revelatory 2017 debut novel, Terra Nullius, depicted an alternative Australia – a continent of either the distant past or the distant future –…

Claire G. Coleman believes speculative fiction is a powerful political tool. ‘It’s a genre in which there’s great scope for Aboriginal literature … It’s able to sneak politics into places people don’t expect to see it.'

Coleman's revelatory 2017 debut novel, Terra Nullius, depicted an alternative Australia – a continent of either the distant past or the distant future…

In Memoriam, Peter Nicholls, 1939–2018

‘Science fiction writers are the hounds of hell. They raise their shaggy black heads and sniff the wind, and feel the future coming,’ the late critic and editor Peter Nicholls once said. ‘And then they howl.'

Can the same be said of writers of other forms of speculative fiction? What do the future and alternative…

Krissy Kneen is a writer of lavish imagination.

Over seven books – including five novels, one volume of poetry and a memoir – she's invented bizarre fictional technologies, conjured extravagant sexual escapades, and speculated about consciousness-fusing with jellyfish. Female sexual adventure is front and centre in much of Kneen's work, but her writing twists and traverses several genres including literary…