Reviewer COLIN STEELE looks at three Australian science fiction (or speculative fiction) books that provide future scenarios reflecting fears of the impact of artificial intelligence, climate change and the growing power of China.

Science fiction or speculative fiction, never sci-fi, has always been a reflection of underlying public fears. 

Think the 1950s novels that reflected the American Russia Cold War and nuclear fears. Three Australian writers now provide future scenarios that reflect fears of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), climate change and the growing power of China.

Canberra-based former diplomat and aid worker Tim Napper is a Ditmar and Aurealis fiction award winner. He received a creative writing doctorate for his thesis: Noir, Cyberpunk and Asian Modernity, elements that feature strongly in his fourth novel, Ghost of the Neon God (Titan $24.99), set in a near future Australia dominated by government surveillance and corporate capitalism. China is the omniscient global power.

Napper’s main character, first generation Vietnamese, Jackson Nguyen is a Melbourne small-time thief with a standard cochlear-glyph implant. Jackson’s life goes awry when, in attempting to rob a rich Chinese woman, he later finds she has transferred into his brain the world’s first empathetic and self-aware AI, which the Chinese and the Australian government desperately want to possess.

Jackson, initially unaware of his AI presence, flees Melbourne for WA and hijacks the car of young student Sally, who becomes a reluctant partner as they escape from a number of corrupt police and Chinese operatives. 

They are increasingly assisted by the emerging AI, which is ultimately seeking its own individual release. Napper has mused: “What is the formula for consciousness? For freewill? Where is consciousness located?”

Napper, who currently works as a Dungeon Master, running campaigns for young people with autism for an ACT charity, deftly juggles in Ghost of the Neon God, a high-paced cyberpunk narrative while examining issues of class, freewill, populism and global dominance.

Former Australian special forces troop commander and Australian Survivor winner,  Mark Wales, published his memoir, Survivor in 2021, which became a national bestseller. He sets his debut novel Outrider (MacMillan. $34.99) in 2034, against the background of a Chinese invasion of Australia in 2029 after a Taiwan war, although the local and global geopolitical framework is only sketchily outlined

South-east Australia is in the hands of the Chinese with their stronghold in Victoria. SA is a no- man’s land with the only free state being WA. Wales’ main character Jack Dunne, an Outrider, is one of a dwindling elite group of AUKUS SAS soldiers. The last major Australian resistance centres on “The Hill” in the Dandenong Ranges.

Jack’s wife has been killed in that resistance and his main task is to protect his 11-year-old son Harry, while continuing to fight the Chinese and, in particular, the turncoat Victorian militia. The involvement of the latter allows Wales to soften explicit Chinese racial implications.

Tacit American support is essential for the resistance but is dependent on Jack’s survival, as he confronts and combats “death and destruction” in Jack Reacher style. Characterisation is not deep, but the focus is on the action, the confrontations and military hardware. Wales succeeds in delivering a novel on the Tom Clancy thriller level.

Jordan Prosser is a Victorian writer, filmmaker and performer. In his debut novel, Big Time (University of Queensland Press. $34.99), he imagines a near future, climate-impacted, Australia, divided into two areas. The Western Republic of Australia is linked to the rest of the world, while the Free Republic of East Australia (FREA) is a conservative, almost ’50s, dystopian autocracy with closed borders. Here the Internet is strictly controlled, cultural dissidents are imprisoned and immorality is punished.

Prosser’s main character Julian is a member of a successful rock group but their second album is seen as a threat against the state. Julian, like many others, takes a designer drug: “F”, a synthetic hallucinogen, administered by eye drops, which allows users to see fragments of the future. Julian can see far more than most, but will his future be real and/or distort existing reality?

Prosser has said: “Big Time considers the responsibility of artists during times of great social unrest – should they be spearheading the revolution, or offering simple escapism? 

“I also see this story as a lament for the end of your (my) 20s – it’s about having the scales fall from your eyes, seeing the world for what it truly is, then deciding what – and who – you’re determined to hold on to as the band plays you off”.

Big Time, with its various narrative sections and wide-ranging ambitions in relation to societal commentary, ultimately becomes something of a psychedelic trip in itself.