![]() ![]() ![]() John Marsden's Tomorrow series is the environmental-political Australian dystopian series par excellence. That somewhat gentle introduction to the ''harsh Australian weather'' subgenre of dystopian literature led me to darker fare that mixed its narratives of personal and communal heroism with pointedly political calls to arms. ![]() ![]() While she's better known for other works, my favourites were a five-part series, beginning with Music From the Sea, set in an Australia so parched by the sun that humans have become nocturnal and are living a lifestyle reminiscent of early farming/gathering societies. The first author I got into in a major way (and who, indeed, has the dubious honour of writing the first novel-length book I ever read) was Jackie French, whose hippie-like existence in a small town near Braidwood informed her futuristic science-fiction novels for children. Growing up in Australia in the '90s, much of what I read was dystopian, before I even knew what the word meant. I've always found it both surprising and amusing when people talk about the recent dystopian young-adult boom as if it's a new thing, as if Suzanne Collins plucked The Hunger Games out of the (dystopia-free) ether and opened the floodgates to a host of imitators. ![]()
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