The tiles below include a list of speculative-fiction works by Australian authors of ethnic backgrounds other than 'Anglo-Celtic.' Many of these works first appeared on the original blog post, published on 11 March 2015 (and still available here). Since that date, however, more works have been published or uncovered.
Our focus here is on the declared cultural and ethnic background of the authors, rather than the backgrounds of the characters or the origins of the story's mythos.
This means omitting such well-known works as the oeuvre of Patricia Wrightson. It also means not drawing attention to less well-known works such as The Long Way Back, in which African scientists explore the long-forgotten ruins of the British Isles.
But our concern here is to draw out the diverse writers who are producing speculative-fiction in Australia–and what a range of them there are.
The works are divided into general sections, to make the lists easier to navigate. Click on a tile to open up the list. For the purposes of this list, a series is three works or more, so works that include a book and its sequel will appear under other categories.
Note: Main links take you to the AustLit record for the works. Where possible, we have also included links to the works themselves.
Sylvester Abanteriba was living and working in Australia when he wrote this novel, in which a team of South African scientists make contact with life on Mars, only to find that the Martians have been watching Earth, and they don't like what they've seen, especially apartheid.
A tale of two brothers and their adventures on a wildly innovative airship, Passarola Rising marks a change from Azhar Abidi's usual historical realism.
Merlinda Bobis's work has long walked the boundaries of magic realism, but Locust Girl makes the uncanny explicit, as Amedea wakes from her ten-year sleep with a locust embedded in her brow, and sets out to walk through the border of her dry land.
Michelle de Kretser is not known for her speculative fiction, but among her many prize-winning works is this ghost story, an extended pathetic fallacy in which the dawning of spring brings ghosts to a new life.
Two voices coincide in A Tree Like Rain: a bored middle-class woman in the contemporary US and a brilliant teenage scientist in the unimaginably far future. It is Samar Habib's only full-length work, although she has also published poetry.
Tunku Halim lives in Australia but primarily published in Malaysia, and this novel straddles his two worlds, in a tale of shamans and medicine women, revenge and murder.
The first of two novels starring inventor Asher Quigley and his sometime fiancee Minerva Lambkin, Asher's Invention is a steampunk fantasy romance by Coleen Kwan. As well as a handful of other steampunk romances, Kwan also writes contemporary romances, including some–for example, {{Short Soup}}(6700092)–with a strong focus on Chinese-Australian families.
'When I was growing up I would see other ghosts, like Americans, and would practise my English with them. Sometimes they would be wary, other times not. I have gradually learnt not to be afraid of strangers.'
So says the protagonist of The Other Shore: Kim, a sixteen-year-old psychic hired by the Vietnamese government to reunite the remains of the dead with their descendants
Hoa Pham is one of Australia's most significant diasporic Vietnamese writers, and this was her second novel–the fleeing of a fox fairy from Vietnam to Australia.
One of the earliest works on this list, Apocalypso is a surrealistic whirl of skeletons, gargoyles, sour wine, and doves.
Shalini decides to make the most of the opportunity when she unexpectedly inherits an old warehouse–but she doesn't expect that opportunity to be 'matchmaker to things that go bump in the night.'
Sami Shah's first novel (and his first full-length work after the autobiographical I,Migrant) Fire Boy is Dungeons and Dragons, corrupt police officers, and djinns on the streets of Karachi.
A cyberpunk thriller, Robotomy explores a world of mutants, ghosts, and the disintegration of the self.
Anguli Ma is a menacing figure from Buddhist lore, but here he is an abattoir worker, an inner-city Melbourne dweller in a city changing shape with the Vietnamese disapora.
The Boundary is a legal thriller and whodunnit centring on native title land claims and the historic isolation of Brisbane's Indigenous people–but it also has a frisson of the supernatural.
Still Sam Watson's only novel, The Kadaitcha Sung was written at a time when most use of Indigenous imagery and mythology in fantasy fiction was in the hands of white Australian authors such as Patricia Wrightson–the novel is a very early stage in the turning of the tide.
Epic fantasy set three thousand years after a devastating global thermonuclear war, Weller's novel draws strongly on Indigenous mythology for its world-building.–a strong counter-point to the overwhelmingly Eurocentric focus of traditional epic fantasy.
In an Earth protected by super-powered guardians, Shattergirl is still a first: a black, openly gay guardian. So what does it mean when she walks away from the role, and how can the rogue-guardian tracker sent to bring her in convince her that humanity is worth guarding?
Rosalia Wong's novel delves deep underground, into the tunnels that lie beneath an ancient Chinese home, and the even deeper secrets that lie beneath the tunnels.
Published after the stupendous Carpentaria, The Swan Book is set in a future world in which everything has changed and yet very little is different.
Yahp's first novel, The Crocodile Fury follows three generations of women through a Malaysian landscape drenched in spirit lore and superstition.
Tom Malory has a fourteenth birthday he wasn't expecting, when the shapeshifter Myrddin who takes him through a no-time door to meet his real parents: the Celtic warlord, King Artos and the collector of human heads, Queen Gwenhwyfar.
When Lord Ironwolf is killed by a dragon, Worm must avenge his father's death. But how can a boy fight a dragon?
Lan Chan's self-published debut novel is a young-adult post-apocalyptic tale of mothers and daughters, poisoned land, an oligarchy of scientists, and the pursuit of revenge.
A young-adult paranormal romance, Rise of the Fallen follows a fire elemental and a water elemental, on the run and in hiding as students in a Brisbane school.
Chaise Eade was a finalist in the Deadly Awards for this novel, which he self-published when he was still a teenager.
In Leanne Hall's most recent work, Iris and the Tiger, Iris finds more than just freedom when her scheming parents send her to Spain to cozen an eccentric relative into making a will in their favour.
The sun never rises in the suburb of Shyness, and a stranger needs a guide through the endless dark. Will Wolfboy be able to guide Wildgirl through the streets of Shyness?
The sequel to This is Shyness, Queen of the Night brings the two protagonists back together to find out why people keep vanishing into the ever-dark suburb.
Science fiction from an experienced writer of books for young readers, Lifespan of Starlight follows a group of teenagers, on the run from the authorities, who push their ability to jump forward in time to dangerous limits.
Samuel dreams of being just like the goblins around him, but he isn't: he's a human boy. But once he gets the the Goblin Academy, he can prove he's as goblin as anyone.
Tommi, Scottish born and raised, with a Maori father whom she has never met, is also a werewolf. Fortunately, she's tough enough to handle all manner of family skeletons.
Rebecca Lim is one of Australia's most prominent young-adult writers of the moment–two of her standalone novels are on this list, and her Earthbound Quartet appears under 'Series'. This novel involves motorcycle gangs, terrifying ghosts, rundown pubs, and enigmatic boys from school.
Missing mothers, uncanny predictive abilities, brooding boys, and cold cases: The Astrologer's Daughter is another of Rebecca Lim's chilling supernatural novel.
Milton Lance thought it was silent in space. But it's even more silent when he re-enters the ship after completing hull repairs: all the crew are dead. Now it's just Milton, a pointy-eared simian, and a mysterious, heavily armed woman–and they have to save the world.
Co-written by Shane Smithers, a Darug man of the Burraberongal clan, Wraith follows the adventures of Jamie, who crashes into a cloud-city desperately trying to protect itself from climate change.
Mimi's new pastels can draw a picture so vivid and beautiful that people are drawn inside it–but their power isn't all benign.
When Celeste flies to China, she finds a grandmother who is a ghost hunter, and comes to terms with the raft of differences between her upbringing and her mother's culture.
Can Oriole and Boy save Oriole's beloved Wishbird and the entire city of Soulless, whose bewitched king is bringing the city down to darkness?
More ghost-busting grandmothers in this Gabrielle Wang book, as Annie moves to the slowly dying town of Tiger Bay, overlooked by The Pearl, a formerly majestic hotel haunted by a thirty-year-old mystery.
Queenie Chan's story has identical twins, mysterious boarding schools, ghosts, and Indigenous mythology–an ingenious blend, considering how often traditional boarding-school stories were designed to impose the mainstream culture on outsider-students.
Put together by a group of thirty young people from the Ieramugadu (Roebourne) in the Pilbara, NEOMAD has a strong focus on country, identity, and connections–but also spies, robots, and intergalactic adventures.
The first in Brenton McKenna's graphic novel series, Ubby's Underdogs is ripe with both Aboriginal and Chinese mythology, and centred on the daily life of Broome's child inhabitants.
The second of Brenton McKenna's graphic novels, Heroes Beginnings brings Aboriginal and Chinese mythology into direct collision with Broome's pearling industry.
Angela Rega's short stories appear on the Short Stories and Collections tile, but in this, her only picture book, the cobbler who made Cinderella's glass slippers is searching for his creation across modern-day Paris.
While Shaun Tan has illustrated a wide range of wonderful works by a number of Australian authors, we wanted to highlight those that he had also written (though we recommend checking out his illustrations for speculative-fiction short stories, especially Eidolon). And what list could be complete without this seminal work?
Fairy tales. Small sculptures that change as you view them. Sparse, stripped-back narratives. The Singing Bones is a haunting work.
This crowdfunded anthology of fantasy stories from twelve Australian artists includes work by artists from a wide range of backgrounds, including the brightly coloured surrealism of Sheree Chung and the gorgeously intricate, often Asian-inspired fantasy work of Eevien Tan.
Can the long-distance relationship of two space gods survive not only their separation but also an inter-galactic war?
A computer scientist turned speculative fiction author, Eugen Bacon crafts a range of works, from high fantasy to science fiction. She also co-writes with American author E. Don Harpe. Although her first novel has been announced by 2019 (from Meerkat Press), we'd draw particular attention to 'A Mage's Prophecy' in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.
Thoriaya Dyer draws on a wide range of sources and concepts when building her short stories, from post-apocalyptic survivors in the far north of Australia to a sphinx stalking prey across Lebanon.
Thoraiya Dyer has been publishing richly fantastic short stories for some years now, but this is her first collection–tales wandering from Australian werewolves to wages of luck to the complex counter-balancing of motherhood and warfare.
For an immediate start to Thoraiya Dyer's oeuvre, why not begin with Ditmar-winning story 'The Wisdom of Ants', available to read here?
An Aboriginal Australian author of horror short fiction, Raymond Gates is currently based in Wisconsin. Most of his work is in anthologies and so we can't link to it here, but we recommend looking up 'The Little Red Men' (in Dead Red Heart) and 'The Legend of Georgie' (in Pacific Monsters).
A Greek Turkish Australian author of horror fiction, Dmetri Kakmi is steadily building a catalogue of some genuinely creepy stories. We recommend starting with 'Haunting Matilda' (which, alas, appeared in a very limited edition collection), which attracted an Aurealis nomination for fantasy novella, and (as a bonus!) is set in the Cthulhu mythos.
While Tessa Kum hasn't published as much as we'd like her to, she has a range of rich fantasy and science-fiction stories to her name. Unfortunately, none of the stories appeared in publications we can link to, we'd draw particular attention to 'Acception' (republished in The Year's Best Australian Horror and Science Fiction 2010) and 'The Fate of All Wens' (published the The Review of Australian Fiction).
Stephanie Lai is an emerging writer, producing coruscating prose on Chinese-Australian experiences, as well as short fantasy and science-fiction stories. Unfortunately, as with Tessa Kum, few of the stories have appeared in linkable publications, but considering picking up a back issue of The Review of Australian Fiction for 'The Dàn Dàn Miàn of the Apocalypse', or forthcoming anthology In Your Face for 'Cherries in Winter, Rivers in Spring'.
For an immediate start to Stephanie Lai's oeuvre, try this short story, available here.
Singaporean-born Anya Ow writes short stories and novels, both drawing on Asian mythology and constructing an Asian-focused future. In 'The Magpie Bridge' for example, she draws on the Chinese and Korean legend of the Magpie Bridge that joins the three bright stars in the constellation of Aquila. In 'Machine Language', she focalises the story through a Singaporean-born Australian resident seeking entry into the Australian space program, which 'only has enough resources to build two starcruisers, and public opinion's been definite on prioritising Australian citizens in the crew'. In 'The Mourning Hour', linked below, she shows an Asian city in the far future.
See also sexual and gender diversity.
This elegiac and deeply moving story is one of an Asian city in the far future, of future technology and obsolescence, but grounded through the prickly relationship between a father and his daughter.
This fantasy story draws from Ow's maternal heritage, Peranakan (sometime Nyonya) culture. As Ow explains on her blog, the role of food in the story is of particular cultural significance.
Angela's Rega's background as a Sicilian woman growing up in Australia has helped create a writer who can give an antipodean twist to the most classical European stories.
To get a sense of Angela Rega's work, we've linked to two works available online, both of which show this rich imaginative collaboration between European folkloric traditions and Australian landscapes.
Werewolves? Of course.
Shapeshifting dingoes? Much less common.
Read the story in full here, via Genre Crossings.
The not-quite-human bride is a staple of folklore, from swan maidens to selkies. But this is a far more marsupial bride than most.
Read the story in full here, via SQ Mag.
Jeremy Szal, an emerging writer, is of Slavic, Egyptian, and Lebanese descent. His first short stories were published when he was still in his teens, and he's been working in the form ever since.
As an example of Szal's work, try this short science-fiction story from Nature magazine, available to read here.
While most of Shaun Tan's works fall more squarely into the picture book category, this one is a series of short stories–albeit illustrated short stories–exploring the fantastic in the everyday.
Ellen van Neerven's Heat and Light has rightfully been drawing international attention for its beauty and lyricism. While 'Water', the second novella in the work, is the most explicitly speculative, all three are tinged with the magical.
Sulari Gentill is perhaps better known at the moment for her Rowland Sinclair series of historical detective novels, set in the 1930s. But as Gentill was publishing those, she was also publishing this alternate telling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, creating a forgotten people whose story weaves in and out of Homer's narrative.
Beginning in 2017, Titan's Forest is a fantasy trilogy from Thoraiya Dyer (who also features on the short story list), set in a richly striated world of giant forests and resurrected gods.
Only one book has appeared in this planned series to date, but it's a particularly apt choice for this list, since lost-heir Leon is accompanied by friends drawn from across the range of the kingdom's people.
So far, only one novel has been released in this self-published series, which begins with a reluctant Katerina Lyrille being dragged back to her supernatural high school–the way all good paranormal romance novels should begin.
This trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic future world, one that has narrowed to a very small human population and their handful of cities. In this wake of the the utter devastation of the population, racism has become less urgent–but prejudice has not, and the fragment of the population that are manifesting new powers become subject to wholesale detention and bigotry.
Two of Rebecca Lim's standalone novels are included on the Children's and YA list, and here is her quartet of unearthly fantasies–not only is Mercy an earthbound angel, but she is doomed to repeatedly wake up in the bodies of different women, living their lives until their mysteries are solved. Nothing could possibly go wrong–certainly not falling in love with a mortal boy ...
The work of one the most significant young-adult authors in Australia, the Lumatere Chronicles tell of a cursed land, of a trapped people and of others forced to live and die as exiles in foreign camps.
Really, how do you choose a Sophie Masson work? But with 330 works listed on her AustLit record, we thought we'd highlight one. We've chosen the Chronicles of El-Jisal because the stories take place all over the world, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to India.
Lauren Nicolle Taylor, who published this series with Clean Teen Publishing in Texas, describes herself as the 'daughter of a Malaysian nuclear physicist and an Australian scientist'. The Woodlands series–dystopian works set in a tightly controlled future state–place great emphasis on forced conformity versus the memories of past individuality.
Set in South-east Asia, these novellas tell the story of a young girl living an idyllic existence–but what terrible secret from the past does her unique sixth sense threaten to uncover?
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