Mykaela Saunders
UQP
Mykaela Saunders’ Indigenous speculative fiction collection Always Will Be, published in the year following the failed referendum, is a very timely endeavour.
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Research suggests the act of creative writing can have therapeutic benefits.
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Married couple Woppa Diallo and Mame Bougouma Diene won for their powerful short story A Soul of Small Places.
An artist’s vision of a future underwater Lima, Peru, graces the cover of the short story collection ‘Llaqtamasi.’
Art by Juan Diego León via Pandemonium Editorial
In the Global South, a group of writers are rejecting the norms of science fiction and commenting on the future in a way that embraces Indigenous culture.
Exxon, 1972. That decade, the firm’s private research predicted that fossil use would heat the planet.
Dennis Brack / Alamy
An alternate timeline that ends with a Nobel prize for Exxon’s CEO.
Raffiella Chapman in ‘Vesper.’
(Signature Entertainment)
In the shadow of the climate crisis, a wave of speculative stories ask what it means to live in a world where everything is not an extractable resource — and where humans are not in control.
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Noongar author Claire Coleman’s new novel forces us to question what we value and how we live by combining dystopia and utopia, in a near-future very like our own.
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What might our future look like? Together, these speculative fiction stories offer a First Nations response to this burning question.
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In his latest novel, Steve Toltz cements his reputation as an exceptional comic writer.
The Witch - Luis Ricardo Falero (1882)
Public domain
Part historical novel, part speculative fiction, A History of Dreams examines the themes of inequality and authoritarianism from the perspective of a coven of witchy young women.
The work of imagining alternate futures is also about re-casting alternative pasts, as is done in the award-winning novel, ‘Washington Black’ by Esi Edugyan and adapted for the screen by podcast guest Selwyn Seyfu Hinds.
Washington Black/Random House
Stories about alternative worlds can be a powerful way of critiquing the problems of our own world.
Science fiction offers readers a way to rethink social dilemmas.
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Fantasy fiction provides more than escapism for young readers.
Tabitha Guy
Even in a world where 99% of the male population is dead, patriarchy is still a very comfortable pair of shoes and very easy to slip into.
Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future.
Marvel Studios
Afrofuturism allows Black people to not only imagine their distant futures but also how to survive the anti-Black present.
© James McKay
We need to create a transport system that is zero carbon – and socially just – in only a few years. We just need to recognise that it’s possible.
Costumes from the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.
Jim Lo Scalzo
Speculative writers flesh out our passing thoughts into complete, functioning societies and explore how they might unfold.
Biologists are gathering evidence of green algae (pictured here in Kuwait) becoming carbohydrate-rich but less nutritious, due to increased carbon dioxide levels. As science fiction becomes science fact, new forms of storytelling are emerging.
Raed Qutena
As we enter the age of the Anthropocene, there is a growing recognition of different kinds of ‘un-real’ storytelling.
© Warner Bros.
In this vision of the future, everything that we currently do in the real world – going to school, going to work, socialising, leisure – is done in a vast virtual environment.
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The future and the past, money, technology and politics documented and imagined in fact and fiction, in an economist’s recommended reading.
Former Globe and Mail newspaper reporter turned novelist Omar El Akkad contemplates his debut book American War in his publisher’s Toronto office in this 2017 file photo.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)
Astronomer Bryan Gaensler picks five speculative and science fiction novels worth reading, including Omar El Akkad’s American War.